2nd April, 2015
1) Credibility Is Key
Success in politics requires credibility. A politician desirous of success must be persuasive. To persuade, you have to be believable. General Muhammadu Buhari’s promise to address the plethora of challenges facing the country was better believed by Nigerians.
Buhari and President Goodluck Jonathan promised to combat corruption and insurgency, two equal opportunity threats to Nigerians. Buhari’s record of squelching the Maitatsine uprising in the 80s, when he was in the army, resonated more than the injury-time military success against the Boko Haram menace which, for five years, Jonathan treated like a rash rather than the cancer it is.
Jonathan’s government is perceived as one that high-fives corruption. On the other hand, Buhari’s perception as a man of integrity, a product of his Spartan lifestyle, wowed the public. Efforts by the Jonathan campaign to discredit him were undone by its credibility deficit.
2) South-South &South East Prefer Transformation To Change
Anyhow you slice it, the All Progressives Congress’ chances of making an impression in the South-South and South-East geo-political zones were thinner than dental floss.
Allegations of vote rigging in the zones have been long and loud, but it would have required something close to turning water into wine for the APC to post a decent showing in last week’s election. Only two states-Rivers and Imo- are controlled by the APC. Even then, the governors of those states decamped from PDP and APGA respectively. Add that to the fact APGA had adopted Jonathan as its presidential candidate, while South-East, which has always sat on an opposite political bench to the South-West, had announced long before the poll that it was queuing behind the President. Being the President’s zone, the direction the South-South was going was a no brainer.
3) It’s Suicidal To Have Bantams Fight Heavyweights
Headline disappointment: Vice President Namadi Sambo. He was thought of as some heavyweight, whose rumoured bid for presidency in 2019 would have been boosted by a Jonathan victory. It turned out that he was a bantamweight in a heavyweight contest and had the stuffings knocked out of him by the All Progressives Congress in the core North, including on his home patch in Kaduna State.
Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State, man with a penchant for non-stop chatter, has already expressed intention to seek the presidency in 2019. He is probably reviewing that decision now, as he was pummeled in his state, where he also lost his senatorial bid to the APC candidate.
Whatever Senate President David Mark and incumbent Governor Gabriel Suswam did was inadequate to save Jonathan in Benue. Suswam got stuffed in the senatorial election. Adamu Mu’azu, PDP National Chairman and Governor Isa Yuguda were swatted aside in Bauchi. The Director-General of the Jonathan Campaign Organisation, Dr. Ahmadu Alli and Idris Wada of Kogi State were similarly brushed off by the APC.
Down in the South-west, Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State, who promised to deliver a million votes for the President, has been made to look more plywood than Iroko. Bode George and his PDP crew in Lagos State continued as also-rans.
In Ekiti, Governor Ayodele Fayose repeated his trick of beating the APC in all the 16 local councils of the state, but not in the debilitating way we saw in the governorship election. The APC isn’t dead yet, not when it won over 40% of the votes cast.
4) A Cartoon Character Wife Is An Invitation To Derision
“Love her or hate her, but you cannot ignore her,” was the favourite opening line of many articles on Dame Patience Jonathan. Fair, even if the line, more often than not, was inflected with writers’ wish to have her viewed as something the country badly needs.
In truth, you couldn’t ignore her because she delivered fun aplenty; the type you’d have watching your drunk uncle say all the inappropriate things at a family gathering. Almost always, she acted drunk. If she wasn’t insulting Northerners, she was recommending that members of the opposition be stoned for chanting the Change slogan or describing Buhari as “brain dead”. Nevertheless, the former Permanent Secretary’s vocabulary of a motor park local gin hawker has endeared her to stand-up comedians and creators of memes, but not to voters beyond the South-South and the South-East zones.
5) PDP Is Victim Of Its Own Hype
Africa’s largest political party. That is the way it advertises itself. It was destined to rule Nigeria for 60 years, a former national chairman once boasted. It may yet do so, but for now, that boast has been busted, as it has been restricted to 16-a fairly long way from 60. Accustomed to steamrollering all comers since 1999, the PDP took the 2015 presidential election as another cakewalk.
This was in spite of the rise of the APC fortified by heavy-hitters from within its ranks, but which it dismissed as a brittle coalition that would crumble in the face of a low-velocity storm. Doyin Okupe, presidential spokesman, gave APC one year to live. Jonathan, its biggest victim, said the APC was grossly overrated. A few voices of caution from within were ignored. The major architect of the Jonathan presidency, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, left the party in anger and made a public show of having his membership card shredded. He was laughed at.
The PDP campaign was heavier on attack on Buhari than at selling its modest achievements, which it bigged up without basis and assumed the public found “Africa’s biggest economy” seductive. The APC, like an opportunistic infection, got in and produce an ailment that proved near-fatal.
6) Jagaban Is Bigger Than We Thought
Those eyes! They saw far ahead. The former Lagos State governor is not everybody’s cup of tea (he need not be), but he is recognised as a supremely gifted strategist, even by opponents.
He was instrumental to the coming together of the South-West and the North, the biggest shareholders in the APC enterprise; got other disparate groups on board and had the slot of Buhari’s running mate conceded to his camp.
Interestingly, this is the year the PDP believed will mark the end of his dominance in the South-West. It looked like it was going to happen when his party was defeated in the Ekiti State governorship election last June. But the man is back and with a deafening bang-to the chagrin of those who had penned the first chapters of his political obituary.
7) Toddler Orubebe And St.Jega
When an elder conducts himself, especially in public like a tantrum-throwing toddler, he has earned the right to be addressed as a toddler. Toddler Godsday Orubebe, a former minister, was a mad as a box of frogs at the National Collation Centre on the second day of results announcement. He bawled at Professor Attahiru Jega and machine-gunned him with allegations of bias to which he was unwilling to allow a response. Jega, remarkably exhibited the patience of a saint. When Orubebe finally handed over the microphone, Jega response was calm, but spiced with a short lecture on how not to behave in public. Orubebe has since apologised.
8) The North Neither Forgave Nor Forgot
Feeling cheated since 2011, when Jonathan was thought to have gone against the PDP zoning agreement, the North was out for revenge. That a part of the zone was the playground of Boko Haram, which gleefully killed and destroyed until lately, it had an extra axe to grind with Jonathan. It leading figures, most of them defectors from the PDP, did everything to make the broad-spectrum opposition platform work and delivered spectacular numbers in votes for Buhari, one of their own.
9) Biometric Voting Is The Way Forward
Whatever difficulties the card readers brought, they made the voting system better. Previous elections have been marred by breathtaking levels of irregularities, occasionally with votes larger than the number of registered voters. The card readers prevented rigging on the scale we were used to. They wrested control of the electoral process from parties in areas that they are not popular.
10) Royal Endorsement Counts For Nothing If…
A widely circulated photograph showing the President surrounded by staff of office-wielding traditional rulers in the South-West, it was hoped, would convince voters of royal fathers’ endorsement. Even if the royal fathers did endorse him, the voters rebelled for the simple reason that he was perceived to have failed in his duty.
For any endorsement, whether by royal fathers or religious leaders, to have the desired effect, the candidate needs gravitas. The President didn’t have enough of that.
By Bamidele Johnson