A dull campaign season

If someone had told me a few months ago that this election season would be this dull, I would have snorted in disagreement. But there you have it. It is all quiet in the front, where the antagonist and the protagonist have drawn the battle line and pitched their tents, glaring coolly at one another. It seems settled that the opposition, all seemingly small fries now, is poised to take on the giant APC, but in a fight that would seem like the legendary duel between David and Goliath.

It wasn’t like this in the last election season. Readers will recall that in 2022, fulsome drama raged across all the major political parties. For us watching from ringside seats, it was entertainment galore: some serious, others pure comedy. In the APC, the party in government, the need to balance the presidential ticket between the Christian and Muslim populations was tearing the party apart. By the time the hullabaloo died down, the party had lost key members, including Babachir Lawan, a former SGF, and Yakubu Dogara, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Only in retrospect did one realise the uproar was not religious. It was all a struggle for the vice-presidential ticket, and they threw in religion as blackmail when they failed. Then the issue of dummy candidates reared its head. These were candidates whose names were sent to INEC as surrogates or replaceable candidates, who could be substituted before INEC’s final deadline for submitting party candidates. It made sense for those holding offices and aspiring to higher ones, e g, senators aspiring to be governors and governors wishing to be president.

There were many dummy candidates. The most famous was Kabiru Masari, the dummy vice-presidential candidate, who was later substituted with Kashim Shettima. Governor Bala Mohammed and Aminu Tambuwal also easily replaced their dummies after they failed to win the PDP presidential election. Many other dummy candidates were replaced successfully. The Labour Party and the NNPP dispensed with their dummy candidates, and they faded away quietly. However, it became a raucous battle between Godswill Akpabio and Ahmed Lawan, and their dummies, before they could wrench their senatorial candidature.

As for the PDP, the fight within was even more intense. The squabble over the presidential primary election left a breach so deep that all efforts to reconcile the gladiators failed. Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike was particularly aggrieved that Atiku Abubakar won the ticket, so he launched a wholesale rebellion, backed by four other PDP governors, to wreck their party’s bid to win the presidential election. Throughout the campaign season, we were faced with the bizarre sight of the PDP speaking out of both sides of its mouth.

While one side of the PDP was busy marketing the attributes of Atiku Abubakar, another side, led by Governor Wike and his cohorts, was openly denigrating their candidate and actively campaigning for their party’s opponent, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the APC candidate. It was a most hilarious situation, but it ended with grave consequences for the PDP. When the votes were counted, it was obvious that it was the rebellion of Governor Wike that was the most consequential factor in deciding the outcome of the presidential election.

No wonder President Tinubu offered the prime position of FCT Minister to Nyesom Wike, to the consternation of many of his party’s faithful. To add insult to injury, Wike remained a PDP member and played further roles in wrecking the party, reducing it to the mere footnote it is now. It is no surprise that, in this APC government, Wike, a PDP member, is strutting about like a prima donna. He knows his worth to the president.

We watched, amazed, the show of strength the APC exhibited as it launched its campaign council last Wednesday. For the opposition, it must have been a bewildering sight to see the involvement of an array of 22 APC governors, some of whom were turncoats who won their seats in opposition parties but were later wooed into the APC. But that is not all. The campaign team also included Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Accord Party, Governor Chukwuma Soludo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and, of course, Minister Nyesom Wike of the PDP. It looks like all the parties have coalesced into APC and are poised to clear the 2027 election.

You might ask, how has our democracy been reduced to the point where the country is becoming a one-party state? The blame, from my perspective, lies at the feet of the leadership of the opposition political parties. They have so thoroughly mismanaged their parties and have abandoned them for nondescript new associations. It is a pity that the new parties, ADC, NDC, APM, SDP, etc., have so far failed to excite and capture the attention of the electorate.

Four years ago, during the last election season, and seeing what was happening to the PDP, I wrote in a piece titled, Are we headed to a one-party state?: “Now, if this quarrel (within the PDP) goes on and proves fatal, the party (PDP) will be whittled down to nothing. The country would then head willy-nilly toward one-party domination, with all the attendant consequences for democratic plurality.”

We are now at that milestone.