As the results of Saturday’s presidential elections trickle in, what’s certain from the pattern of voting based on the results declared or published so far is, whoever secures the victory is moving to Aso Villa aware of the power of the people and that it’s no longer business as usual. Even though some of the opposition parties are contesting the electoral process, with Dino Melaye vying to be the year’s catalyst akin to Peter Godsday Orubebe’s collocation centre spectacle in 2015, the “third-force” parties, particularly the Labour Party, achieving seemingly insurmountable victories, were not foreseen by the incumbent party’s prognostications.
I was one of the sceptics dazzled by the performance of Labour Party’s flag-bearer, Peter Obi, because, even in my most patronising predictions, I never envisaged their electoral conquests to capture Bola Tinubu’s Lagos State, along with Plateau and Nasarawa states, the home states of the All Progressives Congress Chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, and the Director-General of APC’s Presidential Campaign Council, Governor Simon Lalong, respectively.
Notably, even President Muhammadu Buhari’s home state succumbed to the sway of the Peoples Democratic Party’s Atiku Abubakar, along with Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s Kaduna, despite a robust campaign and assurances to secure their support for the APC.
Regrettably, the voting trend that emerged is not a cause for jubilation. It is the result of a distressing impulse to align with and cater to our primal affiliations, and the incoming government will need ample time to begin the healing process for our gravely battered nation.
When Atiku emerged as PDP’s flag-bearer in a closely-contested primaries, after the party claimed it wasn’t bound by the APC-type rotational arrangement, nigeria’s political chessboard became a chaos. However, the APC was at risk of an imposition if it flirted with the idea of another Northern Muslim candidate after Buhari’s eight-year term. Among the contenders, Tinubu stood out as he possessed three key attributes – political pedigree, financial might, and Muslim background – that matched those of Atiku. Both politicians, ironically, were also disadvantaged in their bid for the presidency. Atiku was perceived as seeking to replace a fellow Muslim and northerner, while Tinubu had to persuade the Christian electorate to support his Muslim-Muslim ticket.
Peter Obi’s popularity, thus, was propelled by this predicament that both Atiku and Tinubu faced. His candidacy, beyond the partisan and intellectual analyses of where he ranks against the others, doused the concerns of the electorate who felt marginalised by the choices fielded by the nation’s two largest political parties. What was mocked as a dance for his southeast stronghold instantly became a widespread campaign to replace the APC and the PDP. While the sentiment that propelled Obi’s candidacy is rooted in a legitimate grievance, it’s worth noting that politics is not a theatre for moral contortionism.