To several Nigerians, Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president, should not run for president next year. Some cite age, others zoning. On the first, the general view is that, at 80 years old by the time of the next presidential election in January 2027, Atiku would be too old to run for president. On the second, many posit that the South, which currently holds the presidency, should be allowed to complete the conventional second term.
Thus, Atiku, being a Northerner, should respect the unwritten zoning rule, and desist from seeking the presidency next year. But while there are some merits in the age and zoning arguments, they are not the real obstacles to Atiku becoming Nigeria’s president next year if he decides to defy the zeitgeist and run for the presidency.
Take age. Although the frailty of old age must be creeping in on Atiku, the truth is that, despite being nearly 80, he appears a lot healthier than President Bola Tinubu, who is supposedly just 74! President Donald Trump will be 80 in June this year, yet one could hardly tell by his energy, dynamism and exuberance. Of course, there was President Biden, who, at just over 80, was tripping at public events, utterly frail, physically and mentally. Ideally, gerontocracy should have no place in a democracy, but, ultimately, health matters more than age. Thus, we can all agree that Atiku could be president at 80, provided he is physically and mentally fit to do the job!
But what about zoning? Well, it’s a desideratum for political stability. However, without constitutional guarantees of geopolitical power rotation and religious balance, politicians would always mismanage Nigeria’s diversity and put their self-interests above the national interest. In 2023, Tinubu ran for president on a Muslim-Muslim ticket and a Yoruba lokan platform, playing both religious and ethnic cards; he disregarded the strong feelings of Christians, who constitute nearly 50 per cent of Nigeria’s population, and ignored the view that, on grounds of fairness, equity, and justice, power should shift to the Igbo, who had not produced the president since 1999, while the Yoruba had for eight years. In the end, politics is a game of numbers, and Tinubu narrowly and controversially won the presidency without most of the Christian and Igbo votes. Yet, today, Christian leaders queue up to visit President Tinubu, and Igbo leaders are some of his cheerleaders.
So, what’s my point? Simple: If Atiku gets the votes and becomes president next year, heavens will not fall, just as heavens did not fall when Tinubu clinched the presidency after ruthlessly deploying the wedge issues of ethnicity and religion. Indeed, if Atiku wins, Southern traditional rulers, led by the Ooni of Ife, would immediately pay him a courtesy visit at Aso Rock, and prominent Southern leaders would ingratiate themselves with him, all in the name of promoting national unity. That’s the nature of politics in Nigeria: success has many fathers!
To reiterate my point. Neither age nor zoning is the reason Atiku may not be president of Nigeria. The reason is Atiku himself. He lacks what it takes to win a national election. Put simply, Atiku lacks Tinubu’s political smartness and calculatedness. For both, becoming president was a lifelong ambition, but while Tinubu saw the race as a marathon, Atiku approached it as a sprint. Tinubu knew he would never be president unless he did two things: first, build a strong political base in the South-West; second, form a strategic partnership with the North, particularly the North-West. In the end, it was the 2.4mn votes from Tinubu’s South-West base that General Muhammadu Buhari added to his own 12.5mn Northern votes to become president in 2015 after three failed attempts. Those strategic calculations, coupled with ruthless political machinations, paved the way for Tinubu’s presidency.
By contrast, Atiku has never had the combination of a solid political base and formidable political alliances to propel him to the presidency. Instead, he has been jumping from party to party and burning political bridges. Although Atiku claims the North as his political base, he has never secured overwhelming votes from the North. In 2007, when Atiku ran against Umaru Yar’Adua and Buhari, he won only 2.6mn votes, most of them from the South-West, as he ran under the then Action Congress. Of the 11, 262,978 votes he secured nationally in 2019, only 5.5mn came from the entire North, as against Buhari’s nearly 13mn votes. In 2023, Atiku won 6, 984,520 votes nationally, but only got 5.2mn in the entire North, scoring fewer votes than Tinubu at 5.6mn, while Peter Obi secured just over 2mn.
So, where is Atiku’s political base? He simply lacks Buhari’s cult personality in the North. To become president, Atiku must win overwhelmingly in the North, and then garner sizeable support in the South. But he doesn’t seem to have that capacity. In 2019, Atiku had more votes in the South than in the North. But in 2023, he massively haemorrhaged votes in the South after deciding to run for president against the clamour for power shift to the South and refusing to make any concession to pacify his party’s Southern wing. Atiku may be a successful businessman, but he lacks political judgement; he lacks the capacity to make good political decisions, resulting in repeated political failures.
Sponsored
Last week, I watched Atiku’s interview with Charles Aniagolu on his popular Prime Time programme on Arise TV. It was Atiku at his worst presentationally. He came across as arrogant, self-regarding and utterly lacking in self-awareness and humility. Asked why he wanted to be president at 80, he kept saying he wanted state governors to learn under his tutelage. It’s utter hubris. Please, hear him.
“Take the cases of the state governors in a number of states being headed by relatively young people and failing woefully simply because at the apex they do not have a capable and experienced president to guide them and give them the benefit of his experience.” Referring to President Goodluck Jonathan, Atiku said: “I know Goodluck Jonathan very well. A decent young man but also inexperienced.”
This is beyond belief. Atiku first tried to be president in 1993, aged 46, yet he called Jonathan, who became president at 54, a young, inexperienced man. He was elected governor of Adamawa state in 1998, aged 52, yet he described today’s state governors, many of whom are in their late 40s or early 50s, young and inexperienced. Atiku kept saying he benefitted from learning under President Obasanjo as vice-president, but he fell out spectacularly with him, so much so that, at the start of their second term in 2003, Obasanjo stripped Atiku of all official responsibilities. So much for tutelage!
By the way, isn’t it a God complex, a messianic self-belief, a delusional fantasy, all wrapped into one, for Atiku to think that state governors, who have their own mandates, would learn under his tutelage as president? He said 2027 would be his last presidential contest. So, if he wins, he will only do four years in office and spend the four years showing state governors how to govern. One of the Aristotelian modes of persuasion or rhetoric is appeal to ethos, that is, to authority or credibility. Yet, with his reputation as a serial defector and a perennial presidential aspirant, Atiku lacks a track record of sound political judgements, with embedded wisdom and experience, worth embracing. Yet, he wants to seek the presidency at 80 for the sake of the “young generation”. It’s utterly self-regarding.
But I repeat, the chink in Atiku’s armour is not age or zoning; it’s his perennial failure to win overwhelmingly in the North and sufficiently in the South to clinch the presidency. If he gets the ADC’s ticket, he has his work cut out to overcome his electability challenge. The stakes are high for his putative seventh attempt. Yet, without a miracle, it risks being yet another jinxed attempt.
*Dr Fasan is the author of ‘In The National Interest: The Road to Nigeria’s Political, Economic and Social Transformation’, available at RovingHeights bookstores.
SPONSORED