Penultimate week, I was virtually emphatic that Bola Ahmed Tinubu had been boxed into the corner of picking a fellow Muslim as his running mate. His emergence, after a longdrawn battle, made it inevitable that he must play the balancing act, which is a cardinal point in the politics of Nigeria. Ideal as it might seem to dismiss such seeming sectional leanings in preference to competence the sensitivity of disparate sections of Nigeria require such seeming inanity, as Governor Nasir el-Rufai once described such sectional and religious considerations. But the Nigerian Constitution provides for federal character in spread of appointments. The political implication of such a provision for a nation birthed on the merger of Norther and Southern protectorates in 1914 is weighty. It is a political move to douse the expected squabbles from any lop- sided hold on power and appointments.
When Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT) got the ticket of the ruling party after a hard battle, it became inevitable that he had been cornered into making a choice for the election, not for Nigeria. The winning choice for him was to go for a fellow Muslim as running mate, given that the northern part is said to have more Muslims than Christians. But there are more Christians in the South than in the North. The Constitution does not compel him to balance the act in terms of religion. So he announced Senator Kashim Shettima, former Governor of Borno State, as his running mate. He may have relied on the largely unsubstantiated but widely held views that there are more Muslims in the country, and voters may toe religious lines.
Tinibu is in a fix, between the devil and the deep blue sea. Already, Christian leaders are virtually up in arms against his choice. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has cried blue murder on his choice. They feel ostracized from the corridors of power. The question is: “Can any party in today’s Nigeria contemplate Christian-Christian ticket?”
Some social media friends have drawn my attention to the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe who paired with Professor Ishaya Audu, and Chief Obafemi Awolowo tagging with Chief Philip Umeadi in the past. Those were the golden days of Nigeria’s politics, when the country had not been visited with Boko Haram, banditry, ISWAP, and other security infractions that wear religious garbs. In 1979, when those pairings happened, no one would have blinked on the matter. It was not too long before that a Muslim from the North won an election to become the mayor of Enugu. When Awolowo paired with Philip Umeadi, no one made any bones about their religious inclinations. They did not lose the election on that score just as MKO Abiola and Babagana Kingibe won in 1993 not on that score. The point is that Nigeria has, sadly, steeped too down the slope of religious and ethnic divisions that another name for not factoring them into political strategies today is illusion. The Tinubu strategists may have measured religion and ethnicity and held that the later weighed higher in the winning scale just as Kwankwaso did in his postulations for which he insisted that being Peter Obi’s running mate would deny him votes of his kinsmen. But that ethnic calculation is floored because the North West haboures more voters than the North east where Tinibu pitched his tent .
The Senator representing Adamawa North, Ishaku Elisha Abbo, stopped short of declaring war on the party in his protestation. Mr. Kenneth Okonkwo, Actor, Lawyer , Businessman and member of the APC Presidential campaign Council is so miffed that he has ditched the party . That is a very strong reaction. The fact though is that we are all crying over spilt milk. The decision has become irrevocable given that the window of substitution may have closed. As Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah noted, people should respond with their votes, rather than whine over an irreversible decision; 1993 differs, not just in number in the politics of Nigeria, from 2023. It is an illusion to wave away religion as irrelevant in a country where worshippers are killed in church pews and a girl is literally stoned in a higher institution for expressing views considered to have offended her traducers. As I have noted, such views as expressed here is crying over spilt milk.
The real reason for voters to reject that pair would stem from the scorecard of the ruling party, not religion, as strong a point as the factor presents. The other day, in Daura, his hometown, President Muhammadu Buhari said he was eager to return home. At an address to party bigwigs and others who came to pay homage during the Sallah holiday, the President said, although he had a better house in Kaduna, he would retire to Daura. He had consistently lamented that the country has a revenue problem, which is why he found no money to actualize he desires. On many occasions, he had pleaded with Nigerians to be fair to his administration, insisting that regimes before him, that were awash with petro dollars, have nothing to show for it. But what the President seemed to have forgotten was that he sought the mandate to turn the situation around. The Tinubu pair would stare at the brick wall of being judged by the seeming abysmal performance of the man they want to succeed. He has given the excuse that oil prices nosedived in his era and did not look up for much of his tenure. Such excuses would hardly fly because they show a man who just wanted power to satisfy the seeming life ambition, with no inkling about what to do with power. We have people with the same ambition angling for power now. Nigerians must be wary to entrust such people with power again. Life ambition should not be fulfilled at the expense of national good.
Tinubu’s electoral invincibility suffered a setback last Saturday in Osun State, touted to be his ancestral base. Senator Ademola Adelek defeated Governor Gboyega Oyetola with a wider margin than the incumbent used to beat the senator after a run-off in 2018. Adeleke’s 403,371 (50.14 per cent) as against Oyetola’s 375,027(46.62 per cent) showed a margin of 28,344 votes. Oyetola defeated Adeleke with 482 votes after a run-off in 2018, an indication that a lot of water has passed under the bridge over the years. This may repeat in the general election against the ruling party. It is evident that votes do count, for which more votes would be cast. Those who boast about their structure and incumbency would now see that the music has changed. The odds are heavy for those carrying the seeming burden of the ruling party because they may have little to show, a situation that would push voters to try something new. For this commentator, President Buhari’s greatest legacy is the new Electoral Act. Nigerians should remain eternally grateful to him for signing it into law. He has left an indelible mark in the sands of Nigeria’s democracy.