By Albert Oladapo Ogunwusi
President Muhammadu Buhari will win the next presidential election not because he should, but because the opposition is incompetent. Three major requirements were necessary to unseat an incumbent in Nigeria as per the only example available (2015).
One is that the incumbent must be intrinsically unfit as to be enough opposition to itself. That ingredient is fully met. It is a brutal fact that the present party in power has been less capable of managing victory than abeyance. It has been more renowned for its classic mendacity and failure (if not refusal) to deliver. The president has showed grave nepotism and avarice in a way that beats any previous Nigerian leader to a distant second place, while maintaining the empty mantra of fighting corruption.
On this score alone, Buhari flunked it. But like in most things Nigeria, there are other salient considerations.
The second leg of the tripod that would grant the opposition any chance of success is that power as it is in Nigeria today can only be wrested in two ways: a military coup or an overwhelming amalgam of the opposition. That for the time being will remain a pipe dream. From the calculations on ground, it isn’t going to happen.
Greed and incompetence on the part of the elements of the opposition would stand in the way like a bleeding Berlin Wall.
Where will PDP find the votes when the ADC, APGA, SDP and co. are also tearing up chunks of the nation that should go into the pool of resources critically needed?
These parties also lack the temperance (pun intended) for arranging a meaningful working arrangement.
Perhaps the biggest chink in that armour is the arrow-head of the opposition itself, ex-president Obasanjo. You could see his trade mark egocentricity behind all the turbulence that cascades from the vortex of the opposition. APC succeeded because Tinubu and Co were ready to subsume immediate personal interests and desires and rally round a single driver (Buhari). The contest for the party’s ticket was almost tokenist with minimal rancour. Even the PDP cannot manage such a level of amity on its own not to talk of the entire spectrum of the opposition.
I must hurry to the third leg of the tripod. The sad fact today is that it is possibly impossible to remove anybody from power in Nigeria without foreign help.
The British arrogated to themselves that role from Balewa to Gowon and handed over the baton to the more capable and more ambitious Americans from Shagari to Buhari. They put in place and removed. They play God over Nigeria.
When Jonathan crossed the rubicon with his aggressive China rail projects, I knew the die was cast. He also fell into the perdition of forgetting his Machiaveli at home by not crippling Obasanjo on getting to power. He topped it with a larcenious lethargy towards corruption in government.
Anyway, a genuine alliance that could translate into a credible pool of votes was required and it materialised. The entire operation was US backed to the hilt.
The critical moves that could provoke foreign interest are lacking in this version. The kid voters of Kano, the cavalier almost recreational murder of innocent women and children in rural farms by Fulani herdsmen are among the many subjects that should have attracted global interest. The opposition failed to capitalise on all these by taking the case beyond the walls of the nation. The Fulani murders alone should have formed meet reason for a UN
country rapoteur. Nobody made any move!
The Nigerian opposition stands at a rakish angle like a dumb wall waiting to be demolished.
If you want to remove APC from power, I am afraid you have to come back in 2023.
Except for Factor X.
TO BE CONCLUDED.