A few weeks ago, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research and analysis arm of the renowned Economist media group, predicted that Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) would lose next year’s election.
Swiftly, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, seized on the prediction to mock Atiku, saying: “Once again, another bid for the presidency of our country by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is slipping away.”
Well, Tinubu was being presumptuous. The EIU’s predictions are not sacrosanct; they are not determinate. In 2019, the same EIU predicted that Atiku would defeat President Muhammadu Buhari. Yet, Atiku lost; Buhari won! So, the EIU could be wrong again. Thus, Tinubu was unwise to write off Atiku so soon.
That said, Atiku and his party, PDP, are doing everything to prove the EIU and Tinubu right. According to the EIU, Atiku’s prospects of becoming Nigeria’s president are increasingly being undermined “by wrangling within the PDP.” That’s, of course, true. PDP is utterly divided, and divided parties don’t win elections.
Recently, at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, the veteran US pollster Frank Luntz told the warring Tories: “If you want to win, stop bitching, stop griping, stop complaining and get together.” He was simply saying: Divided parties don’t win elections.
First, if Atiku loses next year, his sixth attempt, he would cement his place in Nigeria’s political history as the preeminent serial loser in presidential politics
We don’t have to go further afield for an example. Ahead of the 2015 presidential poll, the same PDP splintered after five governors and many other influential party leaders, including Atiku, left the party in a bitter opposition to the then president, Goodluck Jonathan.
Had PDP entered the 2015 general election as a united and cohesive party, it probably would have defeated the insurgent opposition All Progressives Congress, APC. But PDP entered the 2015 elections riven by infighting; and lost five of the eight Northern states it won in 2011, and the presidency. Well, it’s déjà vu all over again; history is repeating itself!
Let’s face it. Two albatrosses could lose Atiku the presidential election next year. One is Nyesom Wike, the narcissistic and combative governor of Rivers State. The popular saying “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” can be adapted to Wike, who’s hurt by how the PDP treated him and wants to hurt it. Wike leads a gang of five PDP governors and other prominent PDP leaders, all of whom boycotted the inauguration of the party’s presidential campaign in Uyo, Akwa Ibom, last week.
Utterly vindictive and vengeful, he recently, derecognised Celestine Omehia, an Atiku ally, as a former Governor of Rivers State, and has frequently vowed to “crush” PDP leaders in Rivers State who do not belong to his camp. Wike is pivoting towards Tinubu’s APC and wants Atiku to lose the election next year!
Well, the other albatross is Iyorchia Ayu, the PDP’s smarmy, conniving and hubristic national chairman. Recently, Ayu said: “I came to return PDP to power.” Yet, everything he has done over the past months has pushed the party further away from power.
His leadership and management of PDP remind Nigerians about the party they rejected in 2015: corrupt, dysfunctional, crisis-prone and captured by vested interests. Perhaps, I’m missing a hidden stroke of genius, but if Ayu thinks PDP can enter next year’s presidential election warring and divided and still win, he must have learned the wrong lessons from the party’s humiliating 2015 defeat!
To be sure, what’s happening in PDP is mutually assured destruction – you can call it MAD! No one would emerge unscathed. First, if Atiku loses next year, his sixth attempt, he would cement his place in Nigeria’s political history as the preeminent serial loser in presidential politics; second, a PDP defeat would consign the party to opposition for at least 16 years and could eventually become extinct; third, a PDP defeat could inflict serious personal pains.
Take Chief Bode George, a PDP chieftain and prominent member of Wike’s gang. He says repeatedly that he will go on self-exile if Tinubu becomes president. But that could become a self-fulfilling prophesy because if he undermines Atiku’s prospects, he might enhance Tinubu’s. He would be honour-bound to keep his vow if Tinubu wins, but it would be a self-inflicted, stomach-churning pain if he has to leave Nigeria having contributed to Tinubu’s victory. PDP leaders are cutting their noses to spite their faces; they are shooting themselves in the foot!
But what exactly are the issues? Well, everyone says they are more sinned against than sinning. Wike feels betrayed and hurt, for instance. Everyone quotes the party’s constitution to justify their position; everyone cites equity, justice and fairness to paint themselves as principled and cast others in a bad light. Yet, it’s all self-serving; it’s all about self-interest; there’s no iota of principle involved.
In their book The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind, Jason Weeden and Robert Kurzban argue that politicians engage in unconscious rationalisation of their political positions, portraying them as fair and benevolent, whereas, they are governed by self-interests. That’s exactly what’s happening in the PDP.
Take Wike’s gang of dissident Southern PDP leaders. They said the party’s presidential candidate should have come from the South, citing section 7(3)(c) of PDP’s constitution, which says the party shall “adhere to the policy of the rotation and zoning of party and public elective offices in pursuance of the principles of equity, justice and fairness.”
But a party’s constitution is primarily intended for its internal politics, democracy and cohesion, and equity, justice and fairness principles must apply internally if a party must survive. Given that, how could anyone interpret the above provision to mean that PDP should zone its presidential ticket to the South when, out of PDP’s 16 years in power, the South ruled for 13 years, the North for only three?
Read also: PDP, what really is the matter?
Of course, the counterargument is that national politics should trump party politics, and, thus, that a Northerner shouldn’t succeed a Northerner as president. Fair enough. But in 2007, Southern PDP governors, led by then Governor Peter Odili of Rivers State, wanted a Southern candidate to succeed President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Surely, if Southern PDP governors thought it was alright for a Southerner to succeed a Southerner in 2007, their successors couldn’t credibly argue in 2022 that it’s wrong for a Northerner to succeed a Northerner. Truth is, Southern PDP leaders often disguise self-interest as principle!
So, what about Ayu? Where does he come in? Well, he created the current poisonous atmosphere in PDP. By embracing and calling Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State “the hero of the convention” after he withdrew for Atiku during the presidential primary, Ayu showed he wasn’t a disinterested and even-handed umpire. The perceptions of bias, collusion and complicity fuelled division in the party, and led Wike’s gang to call for Ayu’s resignation, frowning at the party chairman and presidential candidate coming from the same region.
But there’s precedent. Umaru Yar’Adua and Ahmadu Ali were, respectively, PDP presidential candidate and national chairman at the same time ahead of the 2007 presidential election. Why is Ayu’s case different? Well, it’s different because of Ayu’s divisive leadership, which makes his chairmanship of the party an obstacle to its victory in 2023.
William Hague, former leader of the British Conservative Party, recently said: “Unity is seldom produced by calling for it. Unity arises from a leader creating the conditions for it.” Well, Ayu has not created the conditions for unity in PDP! Of course, Atiku is complicit too. Wike said he made several promises to him that he didn’t keep. That’s not how to engender party unity.
Existentially, PDP is self-destructing. It must tackle its Wike and Ayu problems and get together. If not, Atiku stands little chance of winning next year. Remember: divided parties don’t win elections!
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