The 2023 Presidential Election has come and gone, but the dust it raised is yet to settle. The recent judgement delivered by the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) not withstanding, the battle of the Titans rages on, and still steaming hot. Peter Obi has vowed to fight on, and fight to the end. Atiku Abubakar on his part is very resolute in the battle. He has refused to be pacified or be discouraged by the judgement of PEPT. The Turakin Adamawa has taken the battle beyond the shore of Nigeria, precisely to the United States Court winning and losing at the same time. No retreat, no surrender! “Aroni o wa’le, onikoyi o sin mi Ogun”.
But the beauty of it all is that whether they like it or not, Presidential Election litigation has a terminal end. The Supreme Court is the ceiling and the end of it all. In a couple of weeks from now, firework will commence again between the legal teams of the appellants and that of the defence counsels. Whatever be the outcome of the judgement of the Supreme Court will definitely come with finality. No doubt, democracy and the rule of law in Nigeria is seriously on trial right now.
It is not an exaggeration to describe the February 25, 2023 presidential election as the most fiercely contested poll since 1999. The results of the top three candidates laid credence to this fact. This time around, the third force, which is the Labor Party gave the two dominant political parties, APC and PDP a run for their money. No room for business as usual! Whereas in the past, only two of the leading contestants would drag themselves to the election petition tribunal after the contest.
Today, the first three presidential candidates, that is, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr Peter Obi of the APC, PDP and LP respectively are seriously at dagger drawn in the court. Despite the PEPT landmark judgement of Wednesday 6th September, 2023 which affirmed the election of PBAT, both Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr Peter Obi are already at the Supreme Court. Expectedly, it is their right to exhaust the judicial rights that the constitution of Nigeria bestows on them to seek redress.
However, it is instructive to talk about the lessons derivable from the last presidential contest. Elections are won by addition and multiplication strategy in term of votes , and not by subtraction and division. Factionalization in political parties, depletion in membership and unresolved differences among others usually weaken the chances of a party going for election. No doubt, the electoral fortunes of parties in crisis are usually hindered on the day of election and such parties can only attempt to fly without their wings in place.
Let us use the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) as a case study. Prior to the 2023 general elections, the party was clearly broken into four pieces. The party that went as a united front into prosecuting the 2019 elections, though without success was already fragmented before the year 2023. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the party’s presidential candidate that emerged in that highly controversial manner during the primaries went only with the ‘lifeless body’ of the PDP into the 2023 election. The PDP as a house was already divided, but he has forgotten that a house that divides against itself cannot stand.
Secondly, Peter Obi, who was the Vice presidential candidate to Atiku Abubakar in the 2019 election defected to the Labour Party. He left with a fraction of the PDP faithfuls who actually constituted the limbs of the party and thereafter, picked the presidential ticket of his new party. Thirdly, another big gun in the PDP, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwanso also cut a chunk from the bowel of his former party and pitched his tent with the NNPP. He was also their flag bearer.
The last and the final straw that broke the camel’s back was the disengagement of the G-5 Governors from the presidential project of the PDP. The group led by governor Nyesome Wikke openly worked from the inside to ensure that their party’s presidential ship was wrecked at the poll. They actually seized the respiratory organs of the party, thereby suffocating their presidential candidate politically. “Bi ‘ku ile o pa ni to ‘de o le pa ni”. While PBAT added the G-5 Governors to extend his tentacles, swell up his votes and consolidate his chance at the poll, Atiku Abubakar’s camp suffered a terrible depletion. What ought to have been the PDP votes, especially from their traditional strongholds in the South East and South South geo-political zones went elsewhere.
A look into the recent history of the presidential elections in this country will give us some insight into what usually make or mar a candidate’s chance at the poll. In the build up to the 2015 general elections, similar scenario played out. At one instance, Rt. Hon. Rotimi Amaechi, the then governor of Rivers State and the Chairman of the Nigeria Governor’s Forum led a number of serving governors from the PDP to the the APC. They were then known as the New PDP (N-PDP.)
As if that was not enough, and almost at the same time, Senator Bukola Saraki did the same thing by taking a sizable number of members of the National Assembly elected on the platform of PDP to APC. It was a season of harvest of political souls for the newly registered All Progressives Congress.
All of these had a multiplier effect for the APC, but an adverse effect on the PDP in the State Houses of Assembly where the governors were members of the N-PDP with a mass defection of their State Legislatures. The impact of this on the presidential election was quite severe and tremendous. It terminated the sixteen unbroken years of the PDP in the presidency. And consequently sent President Goodluck Jonathan packing from the Aso Rock Villa.
This time around, the Obidient Movement also came into the picture as a ferocious factor. It employed ethnicity and religion as its strategy to whip up sentiments. It was the worst divisive and craziest politics of propaganda that anybody can ever play. This ethno-religious politics was pushed to a ridiculous extent at the expense of the corporate existence of Nigeria.
A particular ethnic group in Nigeria, precisely the Ibo became so hostile and aggressive to others in the name of politics. The pulpits in most churches became political stage for campaigns, and of course, shrines for making false prophecies. But the steam that all of these shenanigans generated in the polity, though potent and daring at that time, eventually ended like a storm in the tea cup.
Juxtaposing from the illustrations above, no one needs a soothsayer to predict what would have been the outcome of the 2023 presidential election. It is just a simple political arithmetic. The totality of PDP’s votes was simply shared into ratio among Atiku, Obi, Kwankwanso and Wikke while that of the APC remains relatively intact.
And from this analysis , each of the presidential candidates who had his root in the PDP only scored a fraction of what supposed to be a whole. And according to Aristotle, “A whole is always greater than the sum of the parts”. If the PDP guys had then formed a synergy in tackling the election, the results would have probably been otherwise. The fact that the PDP was already dismembered was the loophole that PBAT exploited which eventually placed the victory on his palm.
Needles to say that that division strategy worked perfectly for PBAT. Other personal attributes also contributed immensely to his victory. For example, his antecedents as a prominent and indefatigable pro-democracy activist, his enviable track record as a former Lagos State governor and, of course, the political bridges he had built across the Niger over the years. All of these could not easily be matched or wished away by any of the contenders. In all sincerity, his political sagacity, deftness and uncommon audacity actually worked for him.
Finally, attempt to hide under technicalities as being canvassed in the court by the opposition lawyers to nullify the presidential election has been punctured by the PEPT. The issue bothering on PBAT certificate saga has depicted Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as someone playing to the gallery with his kindergarten and thoughtless excursion to the United States digging deep into what is already in the public domain. Same goes for the allegation of being a drug baron and having dual citizenships which have all been painstakingly dissected by the tribunal, and a clean bill of health issued.
Therefore, barring any contrary pronouncements by the Supreme Court, PBAT’s job as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has been secured by the PEPT till 2027.
But however, it not over until it is over in politics. Therefore, all eyes are now on the Supreme Court!!!
B. Aderemi Ogundele
(Jagunmolu)
