The huge crowd that attended the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) rally on Sunday at the Sani Abacha Stadium in Kano and other previous rallies in Jigawa, Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto and Kebbi States signals a huge shift in momentum for the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, who has laboured to shift the election narrative from one centred on anti-corruption to one focused more on the economy – employment, poverty alleviation and economic growth.
Incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari and candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), conscious of the poor performance of his administration on the economic front, the worsening unemployment and poverty levels, and the vacuous election programmes that lack real vision and intellectual rigour, has, however, worked hard to make anti-corruption the central issue in the elections.
The president and his party have constantly blamed all the ills of the country on the corrupt “16 years of PDP” rule and have harped on the need to prevent those same corrupt politicians from coming back to power. But corruption is less of an issue in the 2019 elections, unlike in 2015.
“Unlike 2015, corruption as an issue is considerably less important than employment and poverty alleviation – the people are looking for a president who can address these issues,” said an August 2018 study on public attitudes in Nigeria by Williams and Associates Opinion Research and Consulting.
But Atiku has focused his campaign on the economy, setting out a comprehensive and radical vision of economic as well as public sector reforms anchored on deregulation and liberalisation to free the economy from the shackles of the state.
Despite Atiku’s impressive plans, however, and the predictions by a slew of international research firms that the PDP presidential candidate may win the elections, his campaigns took a while to gain momentum and President Buhari and his party continued to dominate and dictate the election discourse until last week.
The Northwest and Northeast states have always been considered as stronghold of the president and impenetrable to the opposition. In 2015, Buhari won in the regions by 78 percent and 83 percent, respectively. He had always won in those regions since 2003 when he began contesting for the presidency, making many analysts believe the regions are firmly pro-Buhari and out of reach of the opposition.
But last week, Atiku’s rallies in Jigawa, Kaduna and Katsina, home state of the president, witnessed such unprecedented turnout that the crowd could not have been paid to attend as is usual in Nigerian political campaigns. This has left many in the ruling party wondering whether they had a firm grip of the region like they had always thought.
Atiku’s rally in Kano defied all expectations. Kano is a former Buhari stronghold where Buhari secured over 2 million votes in 2015 and the state governor promised him 5 million votes this time around. However, on arrival, Atiku and his campaign team were greeted with such huge crowd lining the streets of the city that it took the former vice president and his team up to four hours to get to the palace of the Emir of Kano, an otherwise 20 minutes’ journey, and another three hours to get to the 16,000-capacity Sani Abacha Stadium which was also packed full with the party’s supporters.
Impressed by the huge crowd that came to welcome him, the Atiku and all others that spoke at the rally focused on the economy, accusing the Buhari government of mismanaging the economy and spreading poverty, joblessness and despair. Atiku promised to revitalise “agriculture, industries and commercial activities so as to boost the economy, which has been killed by the APC government”.
The change in momentum for Atiku Abubakar began last week with unprecedented endorsements from different socio-cultural organisations from all parts of the country – Afenifere Renewal Group, the Middle Belt Forum, Ohaneze Ndigbo, Northern Elders Forum (NEF), the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) and the Forum of Nigerian Elders and Leaders. The endorsements, though only symbolic, shows the thinking and preferences of major elites in the country towards a change in government at the centre.
Atiku’s presidential bid has also witnessed an upsurge in international support, with the United States of America granting him a visa to visit the country after about 12 years of visa ban. This was seen as a tacit support and to quell the speculations that his inability to travel to the United States was due to allegations of corruption, an allegation the APC was already focusing on in its campaign.
Recently, Stuart Symington, United States Ambassador to Nigeria, openly warned Nigerian public officials against obeying illegal directives issued in the name of the president, saying any politician whose utterances incite people to violence would be held to account for the crime. This was interpreted as an open warning to members of the president’s party who had grown increasingly jittery over the slew of endorsements and international support Atiku has gained recently and are threatening international actors with violence over interferences in Nigerian affairs.
Signs that Buhari will face an uphill task getting re-elected emerged late last year when opinion polls conducted in October 2018 by NOI polls showed that the president’s approval ratings dropped to an all-time low of 36 percent, from 80 percent in October 2015. The polls put disapproval ratings at 50 percent and 14 percent were undecided.
The drop followed growing dissatisfaction with the 76-year-old retired general’s rule that has witnessed an economic recession – the first in more than two decades. Even after coming out of recession, Nigeria’s economy continues to stutter, growing at a sluggish rate far below the country’s population growth. Meanwhile, food inflation continues to grow at an alarming rate, making most of the rural poor fall into the extreme poverty hole. The country, Africa’s largest economy and biggest energy exporter, was recently tagged by the Brookings Institution as the poverty capital of the world, overtaking India. According to the Institution, over 87 million Nigerians were living in extreme poverty and six Nigerians fall into extreme poverty every minute and 8,000 every day.
The 76-year-old leader has also lost the support of the powerful club of ex-generals who had backed him in the 2015 elections. The ex-generals, led by the loquacious former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, had scored his administration low and urged him to honourably stand down and not present himself for re-election. Buhari’s refusal to countenance that advice has led to a series of recriminations and accusations of attempts at manipulating the forthcoming elections.
In a September 2018 report, HSBC, one of the largest banking and financial services institutions in the world, said Nigeria’s current economic struggles would continue if Buhari wins a second term in office.
Also in 2018, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) predicted a straight win for the PDP in the 2019 elections.
“With the vote likely to be split in the North, Abubakar will find it easier to garner support from the country’s south, which has traditionally been a safe haven for the PDP,” the London-based research unit of The Economist Magazine said.
Just yesterday, analysts at Citigroup posited that Nigeria’s stocks were the worst performing in the world in the four years of the Buhari presidency and the stocks may rally if Buhari loses this weekend’s election.
According to Citigroup, some foreign investors would prefer a government led by Buhari’s challenger, Atiku Abubakar.
CHRISTOPHER AKOR
