Our politicians are already up in arms, nagging and threatening fire and brimstone about the INEC list of politicians cleared for the January 16, 2027 election. The electoral body is being accused of bias and favouritism. There are allegations that while some names have been excluded from INEC’s list on the grounds that they did not meet the deadline to be registered members of their parties, others in the same situation who are of the ruling party or close to it have allegedly been cleared. These are still very early days since the release of the list. As the days go by, it would be clear where the truth of these claims lies and INEC explains its position, or that position is either subjected to legal challenge or legal interpretation. Once this hurdle is crossed, the next stage is the campaign. What is even probable is that any legal challenge of INEC would go apace with the campaigns, which many Nigerians are coming around to conclude have so far been mediocre.
As the election draws close and the campaigns gain traction, Nigerians would need to be more attentive to the nature of the campaign and how it is prosecuted within the bounds of decency and acceptable practices. This is not only about the next election but also for the consequences it may have for future elections and the politics of this country. One of the politicians Nigerians must have their eyes on is the African Democratic Congress’ Atiku Abubakar, whose desperation to be president increasingly takes him into dangerous territories. The former Vice President’s electoral modus operandi has been the naked mobilisation of ethnicity and religion. This comes from a sense of entitlement that has seen the perennial presidential candidate stand for election for nearly three and a half decades non-stop.
Atiku’s politics is motivated solely by his personal interest, which those who know him say is repugnant to integrity. From President Olusegun Obasanjo, under whom he served as Vice President, to Nasir El-Rufai, who worked under him during Atiku’s leadership of this country’s privatisation drive, the verdict has been damning. President Obasanjo only a few weeks ago had cause to remind Nigerians that one of his greatest regrets in life was choosing Atiku as his running mate. Even Babachir David Lawal, President Buhari’s SGF, a man who has very harsh words for President Bola Tinubu, somehow considers the worst of Tinubu better than the best of Atiku. He would rather embrace Bola Tinubu than shake hands with Atiku. For him, Nigeria is doomed should Alhaji Atiku Abubakar find himself anywhere close to Aso Villa. The picture he paints of an Atiku presidency is one of national ruin. He speaks of him in binary terms of good against evil, and it is clear where he thinks Atiku belongs.
In a series of recent interviews, he has restated this position without any response from Atiku, who gets youthfully energised when the conversation turns to Bola Tinubu. The reason for this is very obvious. Tinubu is the only obstacle to his fading dream of becoming Nigeria’s president. He is the only politician in today’s Nigeria that he fears and loathes in equal terms. The only one that can and has defeated him in an election. Now he sees nothing good about him for purely political reasons. Should Atiku become the president right today, he would be the first to consecrate President Bola Tinubu in saintly registers. He would dress him in robes made of looms that are yet to be invented. But for as long as he occupies the position he covets, sleeps and dreams of, he cannot see anything good in him. Which is why he has added petulance to his political message that was, until recently, filtered through ethnic and religious affiliation. He calls the president by his first name during formal presentations and has not only doubled down on it but encouraged a battery of paid hands to propagate his rage-baits. It remains to be seen how well petulance looks as a political strategy on an eighty-year-old grandfather.
But Atiku’s main strategy is to sell ethnicity and religion among the disaffected section of the northern electorate. He adds a dose of insults for the benefit of a president who knows the game and has refused to take his bait. How does calling the president by his first name affect a man who has been called the worst thing in the books? It is for Atiku’s own good that he has been advised to show decorum for the office he covets. His insults would not bring down the presidency. If anything, they diminish the Waziri Adamawa. How long ago did Babachir Lawal label him Kachalla to the amusement of Nigerians who didn’t know what it meant? But Atiku seems to be living up to the billing of a kachalla, a militia czar or warlord with enough followers on standby to lob insults as campaign ads.
What should worry Nigerians, particularly those of northern extraction, is what Atiku Abubakar’s disregard of political rules and conventions portends for the region’s leadership of Nigeria post-2027. If, despite their antagonism, Tinubu wins the next election, what argument would they have to counter a southerner who chooses to stand for the presidency when it’s the north’s turn to produce the president? One is by no means saying the presidency should be a rotating game between the north and the south without regard for competence. What is in place now is a convention that should hopefully be terminated soon. If that ameliorative measure must end, it shouldn’t be mid-stream or soon after an eight-year, two-term presidency of a northerner and specifically a president of Fulani extraction. Is that section of the northern oligarchy pushing for a Fulani-led leadership mindful of what that might mean for Nigeria’s continued existence?
We did not get to where we are today three and a half years ago. Nor can the northern oligarchy absolve itself of responsibility for the economic, social and religious condition of the northern poor. That is not a problem that can be blamed on anyone but those who have governed that region. The reforms that have aggravated the situation in the north, as in other parts of Nigeria, are for the most part necessary for the survival of the country. The conditions created by the reforms have themselves been aggravated by global geopolitics. They were not targeted at any region. We all suffer equally. To seek a solution that suggests that only a northerner or a Fulani can restore economic salvation, as Atiku Abubakar and some northern religious and political leaders have been doing, is to be short-sighted. It is dousing a tinder of wood in petrol.
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