CENTUS NWEZE
Nigerians, on Saturday, will be going out to the polls to elect a new president to replace the outgoing president, President Mohammadu Buhari, a Fulani, Muslim from the North of Nigeria.
Truth Live News’ Centus Nweze takes a look at what makes the contest ahead tense in the country and perhaps of keen interest to global observers is that power transfer in the country comes along with unwritten rules that appear to favor balance, equity, and the need to bring about inclusivity.
Eight years ago, a political heat-up in the country that led to the famous defeat of an incumbent, erstwhile president, Goodluck Jonathan was because he breached the gentlemanly agreement of power rotation between North and South. Jonathan’s decision to rerun in 2015 ate into North’s turn, hence the defeat argues many.
By the same calculation, all presidential contenders for Saturday 25, February presidential election should have all Southern candidates. But politics has never yielded long-prescribed convention as it now appears with two out of the four leading candidates in the contest from the same ethnic, regional bloc, and faith as the outgoing PMB.
These are Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Abubakar Atiku. From the south are Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Who are they and what are their chances?
Bola Tinubu: ‘It’s My Turn To Rule’
The drug, age discrepancies, forgery allegations, failing health, and godfatherism; are recurring controversies around the standard bearer of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, APC. Despite these seeming drawbacks, it is a testament to his political savvy that he has remained a contender among the four.
Aside from the profile that reads like something out of a Mario Puzo mafia thriller, Tinubu has over the years since 1999 demonstrated political astuteness to remain relevant in the politics of the country.
He is a Muslim Yoruba, southwest. He is a co-founder of the APC back in 2013 alongside the outgoing President. But he stirred more controversies when he picked Kashim Shettima, former governor of Borno State, from the North, also Muslim, ignoring political backlash from sizeable Christians in both North and South.
But Tinubu, a kingmaker of a sort believes it’s time he earns some payback as president of the country. Tinubu’s political career started in the 1990s when he voiced his opposition to military rule in Nigeria. He spent many years building political, ethnic, and religious alliances throughout the country, before taking his shot at the presidency.
His biggest enemies might just be with accusations of corruption and misappropriation of funds, allegations which he has denied. So far, nothing has stuck despite documents being shared by the US Justice Department dating back to 1988, which show that accounts in his name held proceeds from sales of heroin.
One charge against him brought by a firm two years ago was settled out of court. He was also cleared twice by Nigeria’s Code of Conduct Tribunal of allegations of breaching the code of public officers.
Tinubu has also been fighting off suspicions that his health is failing by posting videos of himself exercising on a bike. Since President Buhari had to undergo repeated medical treatments abroad, Nigerians have become wary of having a head of state with health problems.
Tinubu, according to sworn affidavits, was born on 29 March 1952. Disputes over his age, educational qualifications, and name emerged throughout his political career due to conflicting documents and statements from Tinubu himself.
Abubakar Atiku: Serial Presidential Candidate
Perhaps North’s most liberal-minded politician, Atiku intends to retain power in a region where the outgoing president hails to the consternation of a large swart of geopolitically sensitive voters and politicians. He is a former Vice President, which speaks to his political strength. At 76, he is running for the sixth, and probably last time.
Another multimillionaire, Abubakar is Fulani ethnic group. When Buhari was still in politics, Abubakar’s chances to win the presidency were seen as slim. But with the current president out of the competition after two consecutive terms, Abubakar now hopes to win the polls in the north, where the largest blocks of voters reside.
But like his friend, Tinubu, Atiku is seen to be waging a demographic war where the number does seem to favor him. He will likely struggle to capture the younger electorate in a country where most of the nearly 10 million newly registered voters this year are under the age of 34.
Atiku believes strongly in his track record as former vice president between 1999 and 2007 when he headed an economic team that implemented successful reforms in the telecommunications, pensions, and banking sectors.
He likes to take credit for a particular policy that he says led to jobs and economic growth during this time, and which he has promised to repeat for the country. The policy in question is designed to allow the private sector to play a greater role in the economy, thus liberalizing the exchange rate of the naira currency.
But his achievements are largely responsible for the cloak of corruption around him. He is alleged to have favored cronies with national assets and cornered national patrimonies to himself. In searing expostulation, former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, pilloried his former deputy, accusing him of theft, disloyalty, greed, and many more.
Atiku has however denied any wrongdoing. Abubakar has chosen Ifeanyi Arthur Okowa for his running mate, a Christian governor from the oil-producing Delta state, hoping to thereby generate support in the largely Christian south.
This is all the more important, as there is a feeling among southern governors that it was their turn to present a candidate for the presidency after a northerner held office for the past two terms.
Atiku Abubakar was born on 25 November 1946 in Jada Abubakar enrolled in the Jada Primary School, Adamawa. After completing his primary school education in 1960, he was admitted into Adamawa Provincial Secondary School in the same year, alongside 59 other students. He graduated from secondary school in 1965 after he made grade three in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination.
Following secondary school, Abubakar studied for a short while at the Nigeria Police College in Kaduna. He left the College when he was unable to present an O-Level Mathematics result, and worked briefly as a Tax Officer in the Regional Ministry of Finance, from where he gained admission to the School of Hygiene in Kano in 1966.
He graduated with a Diploma in 1967, having served as Interim Student Union President at the school. In 1967 he enrolled for a Law Diploma at the Ahmadu Bello University Institute of Administration, on a scholarship from the regional government.
After graduation in 1969, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was employed by the Nigeria Customs Service.
In 2021, Abubakar successfully completed and passed his Master’s degree in International Relations at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso: Kano’s Political Hurricane
Like his fellow Northerner, Atiku, Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian People’s Party, NNPP, seeks to keep power in the North after Buhari. There are projections that he could be more than a handful for Atiku and Tinubu, hoping to take votes in the large North. He is a two-term governor of Kano and highly connected to the politics of the North.
Several polls however do not see him as a contender.
Born on 21, October 1956 (age 66 years), he attended Kwankwaso Primary School, Gwarzo Boarding Senior Primary School, Wudil Craft School, and Kano Technical College before proceeding to Kaduna Polytechnic where he did both his National Diploma, and Higher National Diploma.
Kwankwaso was an active student leader during his school days and was an elected official of the Kano State Students Association.
He also attended postgraduate studies in the United Kingdom from 1982 to 1983 at the Middlesex Polytechnic; and the Loughborough University of Technology where he received a master’s degree in water engineering in 1985.
Kwankwaso joined the Kano State Water Resources and Engineering Construction Agency of the Government of Kano State in 1975. He served there for seventeen years in various capacities and rose through the ranks to become the principal water engineer.
His political campaign appears to be anchored on this knowledge of the Nigeran civil service and politics.
But he has his own controversies too. For instance, In 2015, the Concerned Kano State Workers and Pensioners group filed a petition to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission claiming that Kwankwaso had broken the Kano State Pension and Gratuity Law of 2007 right before leaving office earlier in 2015.
According to the group, Kwankwaso had directed that pension remittances be used for housing development but supposedly intervened in a housing project to allocate houses to his associates.
Ultimately, the housing allocations and alleged misappropriation of funds reached around 10 billion Naira according to the Concerned Kano State Workers and Pensioners group.
But on 2 July 2015, Justice Mohammed Yahaya of the Kano High Court restrained the EFCC from arresting or restraining Kwankwaso in its investigation for the alleged misappropriation of N10 billion pension funds while serving as Kano State governor.
Peter Obi: Clean Break From The Past(?)
If any candidate will elicit interest on Saturday, it would be Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party, LP. Obi, 61, has distinguished himself from the two main contenders not only by his age but also by playing a different kind of politics.
He has made himself the anti-establishment candidate, leveraging on hopes of harnessing votes among those who feel angry at the status quo.
The former governor of Anambra has managed to win the support of mostly young, urban southern Nigerians hit by economic hardship, joblessness, and insecurity.
Some recent polls have seen Obi ahead in the race.
A high voter turnout could significantly bolster his chances of winning in a country that is notorious for apathy at the polls, analysts have said. According to the Nigerian Electoral Commission, only 35% of registered voters went to the ballot boxes in 2019.
Obi is a Christian Igbo, an ethnic group from the southeast which has factions agitating to secede from Nigeria. In 2019, he was Abubakar’s running mate for the Peoples Democratic Party but left the party, claiming that he was “disenchanted” by the nomination process.
Obi has pointed to his performance as Anambra’s governor, which posted a rare budget surplus 10 years ago. He has also maintained that he is “clean” as opposed to his rivals, although he has been accused of dodging taxes, a charge he has denied.
Obi has also stated his conviction that this time around, Nigerian voters would eschew religious, ethnic and tribal loyalties which typically help the major parties dominate elections.
But to be on the safe side, he has chosen Yusuf Baba-Ahmed as his running mate, an economist and former senator from the northern Kaduna.
Obi was born on 19 July 1961 (age 61 years) in Onitsha, Anambra State. He attended Christ the King College, Onitsha, where he completed his secondary school education. He was admitted to the University of Nigeria, in 1980 and graduated with a B.A. (Hons) in philosophy in 1984.
Peter Obi has completed executive education programs at the following schools; Lagos Business School, Harvard Business School, the London School of Economics, Columbia Business School, the International Institute for Management Development, Kellogg School of Management of Northwestern University, Saïd Business School of Oxford University and the Judge Business School of Cambridge University.