On August 19, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) signalled the beginning of campaigns by political parties towards the 2027 general elections. The date was really only of theoretical significance. In reality, campaigns never cease in Nigeria from the end of one electoral season to the beginning of another. It is not incorrect to assert that the commencement of the race for the 2027 presidential election started right from the announcement of the outcome of the 2023 presidential polls; an outcome which the leading opposition candidates, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, then of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Mr Peter Obi, formerly of the Labour Party (LP), refused to accept as legitimate.
Indeed, Mr Obi did not even accept that Atiku, who placed second, had emerged ahead of him in the election. Although placing third, he claimed to have won the election outright. Ever since, Obi in particular has been on the perpetual campaign trail. From the church tourism itinerary that characterised his 2023 campaign, Obi has made mosques and communities in the far North his new political hunting grounds while stepping up philanthropic gestures across the country and making an endless round of television and radio talk shows as he sought, not illegitimately, to cultivate a new persona and gain wider acceptability towards 2027.
The President Bola Tinubu administration was not yet six months in office when opposition elements, as revealed by the often tactless former Rivers State governor and federal minister, Rotimi Amaechi, began plans towards forming a coalition to oust the All Progressives Congress (APC) from power in 2027 after Tinubu’s first term. Former federal minister and Kaduna State governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, in numerous television interviews before his indiscretion landed him in troubled waters, contemptuously sneered that the opposition would “chase Tinubu out of Aso Rock” come 2027.
Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and other opposition elements soon converged on the African Democratic Congress (ADC) as their preferred vehicle to oust the APC from power in what amounted to a hostile takeover bid that turned awry, with combustible fragments of litigations still lingering before the judiciary. Not content to be a sitting duck to be effortlessly taken out by its adversaries, the APC also commenced its preparations for 2027 early and began to aggressively expand its scope thus becoming the behemoth it is today with 31 of 36 states under its banner.
Representatives of the various political parties have signed an agreement under the aegis of the national peace committee to run decent, issue-based campaigns devoid of divisive ethnic and religious rhetoric. Running this time on the platform of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) that offered him its presidential ticket on a platter without contest, Obi flagged off a campaign that had never really ceased from his country home in Onitsha. Curiously, his running mate, the mercurial Rabiu Kwankwaso, was not by his side on this momentous and significant occasion.
But what do party campaigns mean, and how significant are they to electoral outcomes in the politics of Nigeria? My first consciousness of political campaigns was that of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), which held in Kano in 1979, shortly after the ban on party politics was lifted by the General Olusegun Obasanjo military regime. Watching on the network of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) the mammoth crowd that had turned out to attend the UPN rally in the key northern State, my impressionable mind was convinced that the great Awo enjoyed considerable mass support in the North.
Nothing could be more mistaken. No political party invested as much time, energy and resources in campaigns criss-crossing the country in the Second Republic as the UPN. Going beyond state capitals of the then 19 states, Awolowo also personally campaigned in other key urban and rural communities. In Kabba, my home town, he famously sought to demonstrate through calculations on a blackboard how his party would finance its promise to provide free education at all levels. Yet, in the final analysis, the UPN’s investment in nationwide campaigns at that time yielded only minuscule electoral dividends.
With far less expenditure of time and energy on campaigns, the triumphant National Party of Nigeria (NPN) emerged outright winner in nine of the 19 states, won 25 per cent of the votes in 12 states and a significant percentage of votes in Kano State on the basis of which the judiciary proclaimed it victorious in the contest. The UPN only won massively in the four Yoruba States of Ogun, Ondo, Oyo and Lagos as well as Bendel in the Midwest.
But this was only a repeat of a similar scenario in the First Republic. Then, Awolowo’s Action Group (AG) again expended tremendous time, energy and resources campaigning across the country, particularly in the Northern Region. AG helicopters emblazoned party symbols in the sky and dropped huge amounts of party materials such as pamphlets, tracts and mementoes on communities. Awo himself was exultant that his party’s aggressive campaigns in the North had forced Alhaji Ahmadu Bello and other Northern leaders to embark on grassroots campaigns much against their will.
This again clearly did not help achieve the desired objective, as the major parties won in their ethno-regional redoubts with a skewed population census and the distribution of parliamentary seats based on this, facilitating the victory of the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) with the AG coming third after Nnamdi Azikwe’s Nigerian Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC). An alliance between the NPC and NCNC pushed the AG to the fringes as an opposition party to the Tafawa Balewa-led coalition government.
In the aborted Third Republic, Chief MKO Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) also organised a far more expansive and intensive nationwide campaign than Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC). It would appear, however, that Abiola’s undisputed victory in the 1993 presidential election was a result more of the larger than life philanthropic image he had cultivated ever before the elections as well as a towering personality that overshadowed that of his opponent.
Election campaigns have been a permanent feature of electioneering activities in this dispensation since 1999. Like in previous republics, the aim has been to amass large crowds at campaign venues possibly to achieve a psychological advantage of an image of popularity and invincibility. But the impact of such rallies on electoral outcomes still needs to be scientifically assessed. It is, in my view, far less significant than assumed. For one, most parties deploy substantial resources to mobilise crowds from local governments, wards and even neighbouring states to campaign venues.
Again, a close scrutiny of campaign crowds indicates that large numbers of the same individuals and groups attend the campaign rallies of different parties. Furthermore, such massive campaign gatherings are of doubtful value because they are not best suited to the sober and rational presentation of party policies and government programmes. As the great economist, Joseph Schumpeter, once noted, the individual tends to drop to a lower level of mental performance as a member of a crowd. Thus, mass rallies are more noted for singing, merriment or frivolous abuses of opponents than for reasoned discourse or exchange of ideas.
Political parties cannot continue to do the same thing and hope for a different outcome beneficial to the nation. The ruling APC appears willing to try new methods that engage directly with the electorates at the grassroots on a one-on-one basis. That is at least how I interpret its ongoing door-to-door campaign or its City-boy movement. But those behind these initiatives must ensure that they are not just decentralized replicas of the mindless mass rallies that convince no one about anything and have zero impact.
There are those who believe that mass media-disseminated debates between or among contestants are the best way to assess candidates. That is disputable. In the first place, eloquence in debates and the gift of the gab is not necessarily evidence of intellectual gravitas or leadership acumen or even moral integrity. Again, in a highly politicised polity like ours in which not even the media is spared from brazen, often outrageously dishonest partisanship, hardly any media outlet or journalistic group can be trusted to conduct or superintend credible, untainted political conversations. What is the guarantee that questions will not be leaked to some candidates in advance? Not even the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) or some supposedly credible religious bodies can be relied on in this regard. Things have become that bad.
There are those candidates who incessantly seek to portray themselves as veritable polyvalent intellectuals or geniuses who have answers to all questions under the sun. Their omniscience is comparable to deity. Thus, they cite statistics from memory on national television that turn out all too often to be false and misleading. They confidently assert ‘facts’ that are difficult to differentiate from fiction and end up embarrassing the candidate, party and supporters. The presidency of Nigeria is not a one-man show. It is that of a leader who has a clear idea of a desired policy direction that is in the best interest of the country and can assemble men and women of talent in diverse spheres to help accomplish specified goals. NigerianCulture Magazine
President Tinubu’s distinct advantage in this campaign is that he can adumbrate and shed light on broad policy thrusts and direction of his administration, while the scores of men and women responsible for detailed policy implementation that he has assembled will explain their policy actions, results attained so far, and orientations for the future. Perhaps the best thing going for the President is that he did not postpone taking difficult decisions which are in the national interest simply to make his re-election easier. There can be no better evidence of patriotic love for the country.
NOTE: Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Theliberationnews
