Ebonyi Voice Buhari: Avoiding Lincoln’s myth of political failures Another long journey to the presidency ANOTHER long journey, the fourth in a row, has begun for former Head of State, retired General Muhammadu Buhari, 72 (born December 17, 1942), in his quest to lead Nigeria as a civilian president. He first came on the political stage of the country in December 1983 following the military overthrow of the elected government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari. Buhari was subsequently made the Head of State. After his junta was deposed in August 1985, he remained literally outside politics until 2003 when he picked the ticket of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) for the presidential election, which he lost. He had lost two other consecutive presidential elections in 2007 and 2011, heading into a fourth contest in February 2015. Interestingly, Buhari’s repeated contest for the presidency is being erroneously linked to the relentless political struggles of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. Lincoln was legendary for his reported failures, but without those parroting this near-fallacy acknowledging and giving credit to the many elective and appointive positions he held in his checkered political career that spanned over three decades. Because Buhari has had three presidential election defeats between 2003 and 2011 — a span of eight years — many seemingly uninformed Nigerians (more Americans are uninformed about Lincoln’s political life) likened him to Abraham Lincoln. In 2003, Buhari contested and lost the presidency to Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, who was seeking a second term in office. In 2007, he squared up with the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and lost. Ditto in 2011, when he lost to President Goodluck Jonathan. Undeterred, Buhari has again got into the ring, ready to battle for the presidency the second time against President Jonathan, who is pursuing re-election in the February 2015 contest. Amusingly, Nigerians had begun to complain, right from the second time that Buhari wanted to go for the presidency, asking if he thought he was the only person qualified for the job. And by 2011 when the retired General was up against President Jonathan, the reference to Abraham Lincoln had crept into the political lexicon of Nigeria. “Does he want to be like Abraham Lincoln, who failed the presidential election several times,” was the refrain from ignorant critics and those opposed to his ambition. Lincoln never failed a presidential election but nomination for vice president in 1856. The “exasperation” over Buhari’s aspiration to be president has reached its zenith with the 2015 general elections barely two months away. “Maybe the man wants to die in office,” is the new song, as he turned 72 and got ticket for another presidential race. However, the only pieces of resemblance between Muhammadu Buhari and Abraham Lincoln are that both were heads of state and they never let go of their dream of assuming political office to better their respective constituency or country. Thus, they tried several times to actualise those dreams. The point of divergence though is that while Buhari has gone straight to vie for the presidency — which he will be contesting for the fourth time on February 14, 2015 — Lincoln only competed for that office and won, after he had contested and lost into seven other political offices. Still, a reminder that Lincoln also won elections or nominated into many positions between 1832 and 1864! But for the record, and for the trend of this analysis, History professor, Lucas Morel, compiled a comparison of the so-called “Lincoln failures” (and successes) from the Chronology in Selected Speeches and Writings/ Lincoln by Don E. Fehrenbacher (ed., 1992), appearing under Abraham Lincoln Online. Lincoln, a self-educated lawyer (born on February 12, 1809 and died on April 15, 1865) started out in 1832 (the same year he lost his job) by vying for the legislature in the State of Illinois. He was defeated. But he was elected company captain of Illinois militia in Black Hawk War, and was also elected to the Illinois State legislature in 1834. In 1836, Lincoln was re-elected to the Illinois State legislature, and in 1837, he led the Whig Party delegation in moving Illinois State capital from Vandalia to Springfield. In 1838, he was defeated for the post of Speaker of Illinois House, but got re-elected to the House. He was also chosen presidential elector by first Whig caucus in 1839, while he was re-elected to the Illinois State legislature in 1840. Lincoln was defeated for nomination for Congress in 1843, a seat he won three years later — in 1846. Then in 1848, he lost re- nomination and chose not to run for Congress, abiding by rule of rotation among members of the Whig. In 1849, Lincoln was rejected for the post of Land Officer, and he declined appointment as Secretary and then as Governor of Oregon Territory. He was defeated for the U.S Senate in 1854, but elected again to the Illinois State legislature. Abraham Lincoln’s first shot at the presidency was a defeat for nomination for Vice President in 1856, and again defeated for the U.S Senate in 1858. Finally, in 1860, he was elected President, and got re-elected in 1864, thus becoming the 16th President of the United States. Barely six months later on April 15, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated. Wikipedia described Lincoln as leading the United States through its Civil War — “its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernised the economy.” Like Lincoln, will history repeat itself in the Buhari case at a time Nigeria, though not going through a civil war, has huge security challenges in a vicious insurgency in the Northern part of the country, and an economy running on auto-pilot of austerity measures? Buhari’s emergence GENERAL Buhari’s win of the presidential ticket of the APC was a story foretold by pundits, but which many, including those interested in the same ticket and had the necessary wherewithal in funds, the reach and experience in the political terrain doubted. A man of limited means but with his name and character to market in a land swarming with corruption, Buhari saw the battle ahead, as he was set against formidable opponents, including a former Vice President, two sitting state governors and a national newspaper publisher. “Hence, he had insisted on consensus to pick one aspirant, as his sure way of getting the coveted ticket to represent his political platform in next February’s presidential election,” an analyst said. However, the other aspirants objected to the suggestion, arguing that the persistent General-turned politician was afraid of an open contest, and that he wanted a ceremony of crowning (him), where none existed. In truth, the party leaders wanted a compromise that would produce a candidate without going through the rigours of pitting two or more of the aspirants against each other. Such window for unanimity was extended to the venue of the primary contest on Tuesday, December 10 and Wednesday, December 11, 2014 at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Surulere in Lagos. Which was why the “rumour” broke that three of the aspirants had stepped down for one of the leading contestants, General Buhari. It was gathered that the three aspirants — Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of Kano, Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State and Mr. Sam Nda-Isaiah, publisher of the Leadership Newspapers — had actually agreed to step down for Buhari. “But on one condition: that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar would also agree to step down for General Buhari,” a top official of the APC told The Guardian. Besides the contest for the presidency, Kwankwaso and Okorocha, respectively reportedly had a ‘Plan B’ — the one going for a Senate seat and the other for the governorship — should the presidential ticket elude them. Nda-Isaiah, too, would return to his newspaper business. “That’s why it was easier for them to step down for General Buhari, who many of the party people felt would stand up to President Jonathan in the general elections,” the party official said. But the last-minute “consensus” did not fly — as it never did — with the Atiku camp, “which promptly rejected it, making the party leaders, through the primary conveners, to label it as rumour and urged the delegates to discountenance it as such,” the source said. With the party leaders unable to cobble any modicum of agreement among the contestants, it asked the primary organisers to go ahead with the balloting for the five presidential aspirants. And lo and behold, Buhari bested the rest aspirants, including Atiku, who is reputed to have the financial muscle that could last the distance of a two-month bruising electioneering campaign in a vast country like Nigeria! In the results of the primaries held under the supervision of former Ekiti State governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Buhari polled 3,430 votes of the 5992 valid votes cast. Accredited delegates were 7,214 from the 36 States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. Kwankwaso came a distant second with 974 votes, followed by Atiku, 954 votes, Okorocha, 624 votes and Nda-Isaiah 10 votes. Due to the transparent conduct of the primaries, the defeated aspirants immediately congratulated Buhari and pledged to remain in the APC and work with the flagbearer, in line with the pact the party leaders extracted from them before the convention. This is the background to Buhari’s fourth challenge to the presidency since 2003, and the second time against President Jonathan, the first being in 2011 when Jonathan won the contest. The APC convention was a litmus test for the party that came into being barely a year ago fighting for legitimacy from a sceptical populace, and credibility from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which obviously saw it as a threat to its hegemony since democracy returned in the country in 1999. And from the smooth and transparent conduct of the exercise, and the unanimous acceptance of its outcome by the losing contestants, the APC, an amalgam of mainly three registered political parties, and a faction of another, has proved bookmakers wrong that alleged internal contradictions would mar its selection of a presidential candidate. The choice of a running mate THE candidacy in the bag, it was still no celebration time for the APC, as the search for Buhari’s running mate was almost fiercer than picking the presidential flagbearer. It was gathered that the running mate issue was a lingering fear among the APC leaders. This is due to the configuration of the party and the zoning system that plays out in the current dispensation. Manifold issues, particularly two were for utmost consideration: the Muslim-Christia n balancing, which flows from the North- South divide of the country; and the power blocs and individual or group contribution to the emergence of the candidate. More by expediency rather than by design, the North-South divide in presenting a candidate for the presidency is a creation of the political parties because of the sensitive nature of ethnic and/or tribal sentiment in the country. This has resulted in the zoning of positions by the political parties between the South and the North. In the case of the APC presidential running mate under reference, the party had its focus on the entire Southern part of the country, but it zeroed in on the Southwest from where comes Professor Femi Osinbajo to pair with the standard bearer, General Buhari, for the 2015 election against President Jonathan and Vice President Namadi Sambo. It was reported repeatedly in the media that Buhari was looking in the way of some top shots of the APC in the South for his running mate. But as later revealed, and as reported by The Guardian on Thursday, December 18, Buhari actually gave the APC National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the task of helping out on the running mate from the Southwest, and that Tinubu could present himself if he so wished. Nevertheless, anticipating opposition to Tinubu’s pick as his running mate, Buhari had a ‘Plan B’ to endorse any Tinubu nominee. Opposition, indeed, came against Tinubu offering himself or accepting the offer he said Buhari made to him for the vice president position. “So, switching from Tinubu to Osibanjo was a difficult decision for Buhari who, nonetheless, was happy that the choice had the blessing of Tinubu,” a source said at the weekend. The pick of Prof. Osinbajo, on the recommendation of Tinubu, also satisfied the second arm for consideration by the APC for the vice presidential slot: the power blocs and individual or group contribution to the emergence of the presidential candidate. Besides General Buhari, who has millions of followers behind him on account of his three consecutive contests for the presidency, Chief Tinubu is, undoubtedly, the singular most influential and powerful politician in today’s Nigeria, who has had no national contest for elective office, but still commands a large following built with his time and resources, especially in the Southwest. And as an aide to the former governor of Lagos State said the other day: “Tinubu makes no bones about flaunting this huge asset or availing it to others in his determination to expand the frontiers of his political influence beyond his base in the Southwest and the contiguous states. “The Asiwaju placed this asset before Buhari, to turn a seemingly complex situation of a man with limited means to fight others into winning ways.” Little wonder that Buhari rewarded Tinubu in kind by asking him to help out with the pick of his running mate, including the APC leader himself. Certainly, Tinubu pushed his luck for the vice presidential candidacy but in the end, the party sentiment favoured Prof. Osinbajo, a Tinubu acolyte any way, who General Buhari announced as his partner in the race for the presidency. PDP baying for blood FOR the major, and perhaps, the only opposition political party in the country, the choice of Prof. Osinbajo was the icing on the cake following the election of General Buhari the previous week at the APC third national convention and presidential primaries in Lagos. But critics would not allow the party any victory lap. Firstly, they had expected, as reported in the media, an implosion of the APC in the choice of its presidential candidate. When this hope was dashed, they quickly turned attention to the running mate, the moment its choice dragged into days until the sixth day when the party leaders and Buhari settled for Osinbajo. Particularly incensed by the “delay” in picking Buhari’s running mate, and choosing Prof. Osinbajo, for that matter, was the ruling PDP, whose spokesman, Olisa Metuh, went for Buhari and Tinubu’s jugulars. The PDP, latching on media reports that Buhari had asked Tinubu to pick a running mate for him, was all over town, castigating the General for compromising his position and surrendering his authority to Tinubu. The PDP alleged that it was the same thing that Buhari did when he was Head of State, yielding those powers to his second-in- comma nd, the late Major- General Tunde Idiagbon. And when Buhari finally announced Osinbajo as his running mate, the PDP denounced it, as the height of incompetence, “the belated choice of Osinbajo by Buhari as his running mate, six clear days after his emergence as the presidential candidate of APC.” In a statement by Metuh, the PDP also said: “Our citizens should indeed be concerned about this: That it took the APC, six days to produce its vice presidential candidate and that the founder and funder of the party, Tinubu, as always, had his way. “No doubt, this is how Tinubu is going to impose his mercantilist interest on major decisions affecting the entire country.” The PDP said it was particularly worrisome that Buhari had surrendered his first official responsibility of choosing a running mate, “invariably his powers to Tinubu even before he goes to the field to ask for votes.” “This is not surprising of Buhari, who has consistently exhibited a track record of incompetence. This is the same man who as, military Head of State, surrendered all his powers to his second in command. “The story of his headship of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) is not different, as he also got lost before the flurry of portfolios of paid consultants.” The PDP said the choice of Osinbajo was a confirmation of its stand that the APC was the personal project of a cabal commanded by Tinubu, to expand its political and economic frontiers. “Should power get to this cabal, who is desperate to control the political and economic power centre of the nation, then Nigeria is finished,” the PDP said. Watchers of these blistering attacks would not fail to notice the contradictory stands of the PDP in the respective choice of Buhari and Osinbajo, although its unmistakable target of denigration was Tinubu. In the Buhari case, the party described his choice as an error, as if the retired General is going to stand for election on its platform, while in the Osinbajo selection, the party attacked the process and those it felt facilitated it. Which left two questions hanging in the air, which only the party can answer. Why is the PDP concerned about the process and the choice of its rival’s candidates? Is this a sign of panic in the party, as had been reported in the media? Buhari versus Jonathan THE die is cast for the two big masquerades, among several contenders to the presidency, to test their popularity, acceptance and electability with the electorate. Going by the presidential election of 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan, representing the PDP, defeated General Muhammadu Buhari of the invalid Congress of Progressive Change (CPC) to the second position in the contest of 19 candidates. Jonathan scored 22,495,187 votes or 58.89 per cent of the valid votes cast at the election. Buhari got 12,214,853 votes or 31.98 per cent of the ballots. Jonathan won in 23 states and the Federal Capital Territory. They are: Abia, Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Enugu, FCT, Imo, Kogi, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers and Taraba. He also got the mandatory 25 per cent (one-quarter) of the votes in Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Osun, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara. Technically speaking, Jonathan had the statutory requirement for election as President (as stipulated in section 133(b) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) in 34 states and the FCT. On the other hand, Buhari received his highest votes in 13 states of Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Osun, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara. He equally got 25 per cent of the votes in Adamawa, FCT, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Plateau and Taraba. So, theoretically, Buhari won in 19 states and the FCT. All things being equal going into the 2015 presidential election on February 14, President Jonathan, from the actual votes received in the 2011 poll, will have a surplus of 10 states and 10,250,334 votes over Buhari’s in his kitty. However, all things are never equal in politics, especially the Nigerian variant, which experienced seismic movements in the past year following the founding of the opposition APC. From defections and counter- defecti ons of governors, who symbolise the states, Jonathan (and the PDP) initially lost five states of Adamawa, Imo, Kano, Kwara and Rivers to Buhari (and the APC). But the PDP has since regained to its fold Adamawa, and added Ekiti (as a result of the June 21, 2014 governorship election) and Ondo (following defection of Governor Olusegun Mimiko from the Labour Party (LP)) along with the votes they gave President Jonathan in 2011. Even at that, the PDP and Jonathan may forego substantial votes in Rivers and Imo should they vote for the APC and Buhari. In 2011, Imo and Rivers gave Jonathan 1,381,357 and 1,817,762 votes respectively, while Buhari garnered paltry 7,591 and 13,182 votes in the states. Besides, some poll watchers argue that Buhari got his 12,214,853 votes in 2011 with a single state — Nasarawa — on the platform of the CPC (which he formed a few months before the election) but which voted for Jonathan. Now, he has eight APC states of Edo, Imo, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Ogun, Osun and Oyo in addition to the 15 states that voted for him in 2011. Thus, calculating from the 2011 votes, Buhari and the APC will stand to gain from 21 states (13+8), leaving only 15 states for President Jonathan and the PDP. But this is mere academic exercise, as the margin of winning in the states carried by Jonathan is higher than those taken by Buhari in the past election. The highest margin of winning for Buhari was 81.69 per cent got in only Bauchi, whereas Jonathan polled above 82 per cent in eight states of Abia (98.96%), Akwa Ibom (94.58), Anambra (98.96), Bayelsa (99.63), Cross River (97.67), Delta 98.59), Ebonyi 95.57) and Enugu (98.54%) — all still under the PDP belt and probably waiting for Jonathan’s harvesting. Still, in the matter of 2015 presidential election, many issues capable of swinging votes from tradition bases of the contestants will come into play. Among such issues are religion; ethnicity; performance in office, both past and present; personality of the contestant; the mood of the nation to change or otherwise; believability of the party manifestos; and mobilisation of the voters. Do General Buhari and his camp, the APC, have control over these considerations and others to upstage President Jonathan and the PDP or will the tag of “Lincoln failures” attend his fourth, and perhaps, last attempt at the presidency? It’s, indeed, another long journey to Aso Rock!
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 07:39:09 +0000
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