2023 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS: DUMEBI KACHIKWU AND HIS ‘OPENING ARGUMENT

Nigerians have a choice to make, from the old or the new, writes Dele Olowu

After a long and interesting struggle, a gaggle of candidates, 15 in all, has emerged to engage in the Presidential election in 2023. The group is eclectic and amongst them is veteran campaigner Alhaji Atiku Abubakar; he has unsuccessfully contested five times for the office of President of Nigeria in 1993, 2007, 2011, 2015, and 2019. At 75, elder statesman Atiku may be running out of political tarmac. 2023 is therefore terminal for him and carries a special sense of history as he flies the PDP flag. Asiwaju Tinubu the Jagaban Borgu , rather well known in the barricades, has riveted the nation with his successful campaign to be the Presidential flag bearer for his APC. Many suggest that to clinch the prize, Asiwaju Tinubu defeated not only his rival candidates but also decimated their sneaky sponsors, some of whom shelter nervously in Aso Rock.

Tinubu’s supporters believe that after such an iconic triumph, the Jagaban surge will end only when Tinubu becomes President. There is also Engr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso , former Kano State Governor and formerly Minister of Defence who now bears the flag for the NNPP. Other interesting candidates include Omoyole Sowore who drips activism and has forever campaigned for social justice. He is the Presidential candidate of the African Action Congress. Some of the small parties present startling incarnations. People will trawl their memory bank and perhaps wince as they juxtapose the offering of the Chief Security Officer to the late Sani Abacha, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha (rtd), currently the Presidential candidate of the Action Alliance, with that of Chief Kola Abiola the PRP frontman. Remission might indeed flow from across the ethereal divide! A common criticism made against our political leadership is that they lack intellectual rigor. This current batch of presidential hopefuls appears to have overcompensated.

They are all acutely educated. But Professor Christopher Imumolen the Accord Party Presidential flag bearer who reportedly has three phds and two masters degrees is certainly on overdrive. However when analysts and men of prescience gaze at the horizon, they are mostly seized by the notion of an outright victory by either of the big political battalions or a surge from the flanks by Peter Obi and his labour platform. This may contain an element of truth . However it is important not to ignore the political indicators which may be welling up from what one effete analyst disrespectfully refers to as the ‘lower rungs of Nigeria’s partisan politics’.

Old political assumptions are exploding and new liberal instincts are driving developments in some of these small parties. One of them is the African Democratic Congress, reputedly Nigeria’s third largest party. It has been in existence for 22 years and in this period it has been carefully nursed by a plain sailing Nigerian entrepreneur. He proposes proletarian sympathies and many claim that there is an unpublished empathy between the ADC and President Obasanjo. Certainly there is great fraternal bond between party Chairman Chief Ralph Okey Nwosu and President Obasanjo. The party has had representations in the National Assembly and mobilizes opinion in support of many causes. In this season of elections the African Democratic Congress has hosted a wide range of persons and ideological trends. The ADC, in spite remonstrations from political contractors and wheeler dealers has upheld its integrity and true freedom to act. When it wished to elect a Presidential candidate for example, the ADC chose Abeokuta as the location.

This was probably out of respect for OBJ but it was also in acknowledgement that in the home of the former President, they were not likely to miss their lines. However, perhaps the most interesting result of the Presidential Convention was its outcome. It was totally unexpected and truly a reflection of the people’s will. The Presidential primaries took place on June 8 in Abeokuta and the keenest contestants were professor Kingsley Moghalu, Chukwuka Monye and Dumebi Kachikwu. Of the three, Kingsley Moghalu was the most well known in political circles. Or so it seemed. Moghalu, some say, was a practitioner of posh politics and high table gimmickry and had been the Presidential candidate of the Young Progressive Party in 2019. The result of the primaries came through with Chukwuka Monye scoring 339 votes; Kingsley Moghalu 588 and Dumebi Kachikwu won with a resounding 977 votes . All expectations had been upturned.

There were reasons. Kachikwu ‘s appeal was homely, intimate and pragmatic. His impressively titled ‘MY OPENING ARGUEMENT ‘was a self- generated dialectic for public governance. It addressed the roots of public service anguish in Nigeria and produced models for restoration. Dumebi Kachikwu, though a private businessman supplies impetus for his recommendations with the outstanding success of his personal life. His ethical commitment to the public good may have ancestral foundations as both his father and mother were members of the bar and bench; his mother a lawyer and his father a judge. The disgust he feels against corruption and malfeasance is neither academic nor pretentious. It comes from home training which has produced an evangelical fevour and a philantrophy about which he speaks very little. This portfolio has won huge friends for Kachikwu across board, enabling him today, to count a Sheikh, who shares a bill board with him in Kano as one of his several associates . Kachikwu is young and has had a broad sweep of experience which includes the media, estate development and international financing. Home grown and country-wise , an alumnus of Uniben , Kachikwu is anxious to use his own experiences and vision in transforming our country.

Kachikwu is most concerned about our inequalities and would use presidential initiative to protect the weak, the poor and unprotected. He ultimately wants by example and legislation, to cultivate a new civic identity for the Nigerian Union.

The redirection which saw the tide unexpectedly turning in the ADC in favour of Dumebi Kachikwu may reflect the beginning of a new dynamism in our politics. Unexpected things can happen. But even if they do not, it is important to acknowledge the new auguries!

Olowu writes from Abuja