Nigeria has tumbled from the majestic era of a highly cerebral and world-renowned economist as her finance minister, when her public debt was nearly zeroed out, to the travesty of an unremarkable misfit under whom the country’s economy has become remorselessly overleveraged.

By Chudi Okoye

She appears to think very little of publicly disagreeing with her professional superiors. So presumably she will not mind this little exercise in public reproach, despite its slightly irreverent approach.

A little less than two weeks ago, she got into a kerfuffle with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) about the latter’s proposed remodeling of some Naira notes. Although her ministry’s permanent secretary is, by law, a member of the CBN Board, she claimed that her ministry had not been consulted about the proposed currency make-over and warned about the timing as well as some serious risks if the plan went ahead. This invited an immediate clapback from the CBN which insisted it had followed due process and secured needed approvals.

A little before this dustup, she had publicly disagreed with the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, over the problem of Nigeria’s public debt. The discord played out at a Nigeria International Economic Partnership forum in New York this September. In a pointed rebuttal of Dr. Adesina’s warning about the risks of Nigeria’s rising debt, she told the forum, without a hint of hesitation, that Nigeria did not have a debt problem, only a revenue problem. She had made the same claim earlier in an interview with a national newspaper, amid a surge in the country’s debt burden.

In the annals of peculiar statements made by supposed leaders of Nigeria, this one is right up there with Gen. Yakubu Gowon’s 1973 boast that Nigeria’s problem was not money but how to spend it. Perhaps, the then head of state wasn’t too far from the truth, given that Nigeria was earning a vast oil rent so soon after a traumatizing civil war, with the inflow of an unprecedented pile of petro-dollars which the country had probably not expected, much less planned for. But it was still an inarticulate and stupendously innocent – some think stupid, others arrogant – statement by a head of state, and it has haunted him ever since. Just as the military later assessed that Nigeria had a leadership problem in Gowon, leading to his overthrow in the coup of 1975, it is also clear that the country has a gargantuan finance minister problem in Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed. Gowon might be excused, if one were feeling generous, because the oil boom probably bamboozled the then 39-year old head of state who had just emerged from leading a war-worn country. But how can we excuse a 62-year old Zainab Ahmed making such a preposterous statement in the current zeitgeist?

Our finance minister’s claim that Nigeria does not have a debt problem appears to be based on a belief that the country has a relatively low debt-to-GDP ratio. According to data from the DMO (Debt Management Office), Nigeria’s total public debt stock as at June 30, 2022, including federal and state government debt, stood at $103.3 billion (₦42.8 trillion at the official exchange rate or about ₦94 trillion at the fast-falling parallel market rate). This clocks in at a 23.06% debt-to-GDP ratio, the DMO says, which the finance minister claims is well-within Nigeria’s self-imposed limit of 40%.

There are a couple of problems with this position. First of all, the DMO’s debt-to-GDP ratio seems to be at variance with data from multilateral institutions such as the IMF which estimates a ratio of 37.4%, a figure nudging the government-defined limit. Even so, the finance minister’s argument of a comfortable debt ratio ignores the fact that the debt limit set by government has been a moving target, growing consistently from 13.4% at the start of Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency in 2015. With a shifting target, it is nonsensical to argue that we are well within the imposed limit: we are, evidently because the ceiling keeps being raised!

Beyond this critique, however, it seems disingenuous to consider debt merely as a proportion of nominal GDP, ignoring its impact on the broader economy, especially with a tumbling Naira. The finance minister’s argument that Nigeria has a revenue problem might be correct, in the sense that it speaks to the country’s ability to pay, particularly given the burden of debt servicing on revenues. But it is ludicrous to deny the intrinsic risk of the country’s current debt burden. In a mono-modal economy such as ours which is highly susceptible to external shocks and which, additionally, is passing through a hyper-inflationary phase, a rising debt profile represents a huge economic drag. A high and growing debt level hinders long-term economic growth by preventing or minimizing capital investment, as we are seeing currently in Nigeria with a rising proportion of government loan dedicated to debt servicing and other recurrent expenditure. Fiscal disarticulations and real economic shrinkage could result where, as in our case, the burden of external debt repayment outstrips the net real benefits of external borrowing. High debt also depresses wages, and in this way destimulates the economy, again stalling growth.

A finance minister with a solid background in economics who understands these deleterious effects of debt would be more exercised and would pursue an aggressive deleveraging of the economy, especially if they had the clout to resist political pressure. We haven’t seen much of this with Zainab Ahmed, and this is perhaps why she compares most unfavorably to her penultimate predecessor, the cerebral Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

Ngozi vs. Zainab
It might seem somewhat improper to venture a comparison of these two subjects, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala and Ms. Ahmed, considering that one is so far outside the orbit of the other to justify a juxtaposition. Still, you can’t measure deviation if you don’t have a norm. You can’t know how far you’ve fallen if you don’t measure the distance from your previous altitude. To borrow from statistics, this is not so much about propinquity, a measure of nearness, as a measure of dispersion.

With that, let’s turn to our two subjects.

Zainab Ahmed became Nigeria’s minister of finance after the unceremonious exit of Kemi Adeosun on September 14, 2018. About a year later, on August 19, 2019, Ahmed was made Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, her portfolio thus expanded. In the four years she has been at the helm, Nigeria’s external debt grew 86%, from $21.6 billion in September 2018 to $40.1 billion as of June 2022. In the same period, the domestic debt grew 70% from ₦12.3 trillion to ₦20.9 trillion. Total debt, if we accept the DMO’s estimate, is 23.06% of GDP, as indicated earlier.

Contrast this with Nigeria’s debt profile under the illustrious Okonjo-Iweala. The external debt dropped by a factor of 10 from $35.9 billion in 2004, not long after she became finance minister, to $3.5 billion in 2006, the year she left office in her first tour of duty under President Olusegun Obasanjo. By the time Okonjo-Iweala returned, in 2011, to serve in the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s external debt stood at $5.6 billion and domestic debt was ₦5.6 trillion. The external debt would grow to $10.3 billion and domestic debt to ₦8.4 trillion by the time she left in 2015, but total debt still represented 13.4% of GDP, as we saw above.

These highly contrasted records are probably explained by the vicissitudes of the policy environment. But they also point up the stark differences in the backgrounds of the two finance ministers.

Ngozi versus Zainab. They share almost the same birthday, though six years apart, and both attended elite high schools. One was at Queens School Enugu, as well as St. Anne’s School and the International School at Ibadan. She went on to the Ivy League Harvard University where, in 1973, she graduated magna cum laude (“with great praise”) in Economics, aged 19. She proceeded to obtain a Masters degree, aged 24, from another of the world’s top colleges, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a doctoral degree in Regional Economics, also from MIT, aged 27.

The other attended Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria where she obtained an accounting degree in 1981, aged 21, and then went on to secure an MBA in 2004, aged 44, from a state university in Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State (now named Olabisi Onabanjo University), an institution founded in 1982.

One has a professional resume that stretches from here to Timbuktu. She is a highly respected player in the most rarefied circles of global finance, trade and development. She was appointed finance minister by two presidents of southern Nigerian origin, one himself not without regard in global circles and the other a PhD holder. She came from professional renown and global celebrity to help rescue her home country. And what a success she was!

The other had various stints in Kaduna State ministry of finance and varied parastatals before being fetched up as finance minister by a president of northern Nigerian origin, a president with doubtful academic provenance. She was plucked from obscurity to the highest perch of national finance. And what a disaster she has turned out to be!

The difference in the accomplishments of these finance ministers is clear as day. Not only did one lead efforts to secure relief from Nigeria’s $30 billion Paris Club debt, she also set up an ‘Excess Crude Account’ where surpluses from crude oil revenues were lodged and used in ways that helped to reduce macroeconomic volatility in Nigeria. Perhaps most spectacularly, she led the National Bureau of Statistics to re-base the Nigerian GDP, thus establishing the country as the largest economy in Africa, with the prestige attending upon that distinction. The list of her accomplishments stretches from here to Timbuktu.

The other? Well, in her time Nigeria’s debt has ballooned, inflation is raging, the Naira has tanked, the Nigerian economy is sinking, and she appears to have little command over fiscal or broader macroeconomic policy.

Nigeria has had 22 finance ministers since independence (serving 24 terms), from Festus Okotie-Eboh (1960-66) to Zainab Ahmed (since 2018). The last three finance ministers have been women, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala being the gender trailblazer. But we have gone from the incomparable Dr. Okonjo-Iweala to the confused and over-promoted Kemi Adeosun (she of the forged NYSC certificate fame), to the absolute train wreck that is Ms. Ahmed. The last two were appointed by Muhammadu Buhari. Go figure!

Ngozi versus Zainab. One used her influence in global finance to advance Nigeria’s independence from Western financial imperialism; the other has plunged the country deeper into debt. One is an avatar for Nigeria’s ascent in global respectability; the other, the emblem of her unmitigated decline.

When you elevate inferiority, you instigate mediocrity. That is the tragedy of Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed as Nigeria’s hapless and extremely unremarkable finance minister.

The advanced age and chronic illness of the Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, have quite possibly helped to imperil his presidency and most likely caused wider malaise in the country. Nigeria must avoid the mistake of electing another aged and feeble leader in the coming presidential election. It should also seek a long-term constitutional remedy to avoid the problem of incipient gerontocracy.

By Chudi Okoye

Our president has gone AWOL again! He ducked out on October 31st, we have been told, for yet another ‘medical check-up’ in the United Kingdom. It seems the president needed another foreign trip to recover from his last foreign trip – you know, the one he made just a few days earlier to attend the World Bio Summit in South Korea. That’s the summit where, by the way, the president made nary a splutter, despite the utter size of his entourage and the heavy toll on our treasury. No doubt the president was exhausted from all that hard work he put in doing next to nothing in Seoul. Hence the well-deserved escape to London. This man is like a dilapidated jalopy in need of constant repair: a raddled old man running an addled presidency in a saddled country.

It’s either the president rushed abroad to recover from his last foreign trip, or he’s simply taken a temporary flight from the plethora of domestic problems plaguing the country he supposedly governs.

Several corners of our country are currently flushed, traumatized by tides of uncontrolled flooding caused by previous negligence. Many have lost their lives; many their livelihood and property. There’s reported terror in the nation’s capital, acknowledged by scampering foreign missions and even some government security agencies. There is widespread concern about an impending currency redesign proposed by the Central Bank, with certain hidden interests appearing to resist the plan. The country’s currency has taken a serious plunge, yet again, partly as a result. The oil sector, the federal government’s revenue mainstay, is in utter chaos, so there’s a revenue crunch. We are thus borrowing more to fund government spending, and yet more to service our burgeoning debts, ending up in an inescapable debt trap. The nation faces a fiscal cliff; the economy is tottering and seems almost out of control; there’s unmitigated misery all over the land.

What better time, then, for the leader of our country to go on the lam, to go seeking refuge in a foreign land!

It would be comical if it weren’t so tragic, if our leader’s foreign flights weren’t such a stain on the nation and a mighty strain on our treasury. We are lavishing the nation’s vanishing resources on a tarnished president, on a man with absolutely no ability or intent to continue governing our beleaguered country. Unlike the self-correcting parliamentary system in the UK where a leader who was out of her depth simply departed, what do we do with an aged president who runs out of steam mid-stream but doesn’t have the decency or integrity to quit?

Muhammadu Buhari is a screaming argument against the election of another aged and ailing president to pilot the affairs of our troubled polity. He embodies, in quite every sense, the disturbing pathology of ageing, including chronic debilitation. We have in him a man with little spark running a presidency with little sparkle. He is a strident alarm warning us against ignoring the risks of dotage in the coming election, as we seem currently, and curiously, to be doing.

Age and Governance
This is not merely a matter of age; nor is it about one being ageist. A scan around the world shows a current roster of national leaders with a wide range of age distribution. There are young’uns like Sanna Marin of Finland, Gabriel Boric of Chile and Dritan Abazović of Montenegro, who are all in their 30s. There are also the likes of Serdar Berdimuhamedow in Turkmenistan, Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Rishi Sunak in the UK and Irakli Garibashvili in Georgia, a pack that’s smack in their 40s. But then we also have others like Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the United States, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Alexander Van der Bellen in Austria, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil (who just won an election as president 12 years after his last term), and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel (former PM who is now plotting a comeback), all in their 70s.

Africa too has its share of presidential graybeards. There’s for example Mr Paul Biya, now nudging 90, who has been president of Cameroon since 1982 (before that prime minister from 1975) and is currently the oldest serving leader of a state. Alpha Condé of Guinea was a little older than 83 as he wrapped up his presidency in September 2021. Alassane Ouattara, now headed for his 12th year as President of Ivory Coast, clocked 80 in January this year. Nana Akufo-Addo, the Ghanaian president, is 78. He is only a few months older than Yoweri Museveni, current president of Uganda who helped to topple Idi Amin (1971–79) and later Milton Obote (1980–85) but has remained president for over 36 years – since January 1986!

There were many other sit-tight vegetatives in African history before this lot. Who can forget the late Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, once a revolutionary who remained in office as president for 30 years (before that as prime minster for seven years) until he was tossed out in 2017, aged 93. He died in Singapore barely two years after leaving office.

There’s indeed a wide dispersion in the ages of state leaders around the world. But before anyone tries to justify our local gerontocracy on grounds that other nations also have leaders who are getting on, let’s consider the issue of fitness, mental and physical, not just age. Can anyone, for instance, look at Israel’s Netanyahu (73) and really say that Bola Tinubu, flag-bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who claims to be 70, is in a better shape for being supposedly younger? Or that Tinubu is as fit and rude in health as the Russian dude, Putin, who is supposed to have been born in the same year as he?

Or could one deign to compare Biden, an avid biker, with Buhari, a pallid lagger, even though the two are very close in age, separated only by weeks?

Could one with a straight face compare the frenetic Trump with Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who is presumably his age mate?

No! There is old and there is old. Our ageing leaders tend to be frail and unfit, both physically and mentally.

This is not simply about age but rather what is predicted by old age. Medical experts tell us that ageing and ill-health are highly correlated. Humans typically experience cognitive and physical decline with advancing age, with many geriatric syndromes experienced simultaneously. This is particularly the case in our environment with our abysmal health care system, which explains Buhari’s frequent foreign medical trips. Although the exact condition of Buhari’s health has remained a state secret, he has spent so much time on official medical trips – as of mid-August 2021 he had spent over 200 days on seven trips to the UK – that it is clear the president must be in dire condition. Alarmingly, the candidates of the two major parties have also themselves undertaken a not-infrequent medical trip abroad – even before the campaign had got fully underway and before they’ve encountered the rigors of office.

Physical and mental challenges are a serious concern, particularly when we consider the ability of our political leaders to keep up with the speed and complexity of social change. But there’s also the issue of demography and democratic representation. A geriatric skew at the apex of power is incongruous with the hefty youth bulge in the Nigerian population, with about 70% aged below 30 and the median age standing at 18.1. The United States of America has a much older population than Nigeria, having a median age of 38.8, more than twice Nigeria’s; yet, even in that country, there are growing concerns about dotage in political leadership. Recent polls by CNN and the New York Times, for instance, found that neither Democratic nor Republican voters seem excited by a likely rematch of Biden and Trump in the presidential election of November 2024, with one by that date aged nearly 82 and the other over 78.

Can you blame the Americans? Age matters. It matters very much. It should matter in our upcoming election in 2023, and in our future constitutional design.

Term Limit and Age Limit
Nigerian constitutions have usually stipulated a lower age bound for elective offices (40 years currently for the presidency) but, as in several other countries, never an upper bound. They prescribe term limits but never an age ceiling. This was the reason some of Nigeria’s notable political grandees came out of retirement to contest the presidential election in the 2nd Republic. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo were aged 75 and 70 respectively when they contested the 1979 presidential election; and they’d turned 79 and 74 when they returned for the 1983 contest. But of course, neither of them won. Buhari has somehow managed to succeed where those other septuagenarians failed, becoming the only head of government so far in our history to assume office in his 70s. Buhari was pushing 73 when he emerged as democratic president in May 2015, a clear 25 years older than the average inceptual age of all previous incumbents, military or civilian (see chart below). In fact, Buhari started his democratic tenure at an age older than Olusegun Obasanjo was when the latter ended his second term. Whereas Obasanjo – the next oldest in our pantheon of incumbents – ended his second term aged 70, Buhari is set to finish his second term pushing 81.

We are now witnessing a repeat in the current presidential election cycle. As we show in the chart above, where the average inceptual age of all incumbents before Buhari was 48, the average age of the top three candidates in the 2023 election would be 70!

It becomes quite glaring when we consider individual candidates. If Atiku Abubakar wins the 2023 election, he would assume office five months shy of his 77th birthday, and would be edging toward 81 as he wraps up his first term in 2027. If Atiku seeks re-election and wins, he would be almost 85 by the end of his second term! He would then become the oldest person ever to head the federal government of Nigeria, wresting that dubious distinction from Buhari.

The age issue is only slightly less gripping for Bola Tinubu. He’d be the second oldest ever to assume the office of president if he wins instead of Atiku, ranked behind Buhari. For his part, Peter Obi of the Labour Party would be 62 on assumption of office, the same age as Obasanjo had been when he became civilian president in 1999.

The key issue here is whether, in the coming election, we want a further tilt to senectitude, or whether we want a return to the central tendency of previous incumbent age. After the experience with Buhari, can Nigeria afford another ailing – almost cadaverous – president? Do we really expect an ailing presidential candidate, were he to win, to be able to effectively govern our equally ailing country?

This matter is not being discussed with the urgency it requires. It is not a major focus of political punditry, and it is not being litigated in the campaign field. The mountain of problems facing the country commends the imperative of an energetic presidency. As such, the age and health of the contestants should be a matter for critical scrutiny.

We should confront this issue in the current election cycle, but also, in the long run, seek a constitutional remedy. It is odd to have candidates running for public office who are well past the civil service retirement age. This is of course not peculiar to Nigeria. But there is no reason why we couldn’t blaze a trail for the world with a constitutional innovation that caps the upper age bound for elective offices. We could curb the tilt to gerontocracy with a combination of age limits and an innovative term limit. For instance, we could prescribe an upper bound of 74 for the presidency but also stipulate a one-term limit for anyone aged between 70 and 74. This should cascade to all levels of down-ballot offices as well.

Such innovation would be one way of freeing the country from creeping caducity, and ensure that political leadership has a level of vim and vigor befitting what is after all a youthful country.

Incarcerated IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, won a stunning legal victory this week, with the Abuja Court of Appeal dismissing all the outstanding counts in the federal government’s treason case against him. The government, however, insists Kanu has not been acquitted and seems disinclined to release him from detention. Government recalcitrance could unleash a spate of violence in the South East and agitation elsewhere, except if regional leaders intervene to secure the legal result or find a political solution.

By Chudi Okoye

It has a whiff of Greek mythology and an unmistakable hint of political chicanery written all over it. On one level, it is a mesmerizing judicial victory; a grand vanquishment of the mighty federal government by an overmatched but scrappy Biafra agitationist. Yet, it could become a victory that revives history; one that rekindles a waning but toxic Biafra separatist movement, potentially hurting the South East’s chances in the arena of conventional politics. Especially in the upcoming presidential election.

Choose your allusion: A Greek gift. A Pyrrhic victory. A Catch-22. It might be all that, and possibly done by design. The question however is how to harness the opportunity afforded by the unfolding legal drama whilst avoiding the landmines probably being laid by canny political strategists.

News broke late afternoon on Thursday, October 13, that the Court of Appeal sitting in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, had vacated the seven remaining counts in a treason and terrorism case which had been brought by the federal government of Nigeria against Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The three-member appellate panel, led by Hon. Justice Jummai Hannatu Sankey, based its unanimous decision chiefly on the technicality that Kanu’s extraordinary rendition by the federal government – allegedly from Kenya to Nigeria – was an illegal act which made the terrorism charges against him incompetent and unlawful. “With [its] appalling disregard for local and international laws,” the Appeal Court ruled, “the federal government has lost the right to put the appellant on trial for any offence.” The court also argued that it was fatal to its case that the federal government failed to disclose where and when the alleged offences were committed, making the charges liable to dismissal.

This new Appeal Court ruling follows an earlier one delivered in April by the trial court where the presiding judge, Hon. Justice Binta Nyako, struck out eight of the 15 counts filed by the federal government against Kanu. The trial judge had argued that the liquidated counts were “incompetent” because they did not disclose any valid offences committed by the defendant. Whilst dismissing those charges, however, the judge had overruled the objection of Kanu’s lawyers by upholding the legality of the federal government’s forceful rendition of Kanu and the validity of the remaining charges. She upheld those charges on the ground that there was a “surviving bench warrant” for Kanu’s arrest which predated the 2021 rendition, having been issued by her in 2018; and that the rendition was lawful because Kanu had jumped bail. “There is a bench warrant for the arrest of the defendant,” the judge had insisted. “He is a fugitive that is wanted in court. The bench warrant survives until he is brought to court.” This is the argument now roundly rejected by the appellate panel.

Legal Wrangle
With the Appeal Court striking down the remaining charges against Nnamdi Kanu, the question now is whether the federal government will be inclined to release him in compliance with court order. It appears, for the moment at least, that there is some reluctance to do so. The Attorney General of the federation, Abubakar Malami, has already stated through a spokesperson that “Kanu was only discharged and not acquitted.” He claimed that the court’s decision was only based on the extradition of Kanu, and that it did not apply to those charges predating it which “remain valid issues for judicial determination.”

Experts seem to disagree on this matter. One constitutional and human rights lawyer, Luka Musa Haruna, told the BBC that although Kanu is now technically a “free man” and should be released, there is nothing preventing the federal government from re-arraigning him on different charges. Similarly, a Lagos-based lawyer, Eustace Odunze, told Awka Times that the Appeal Court’s ruling “completely sets [Kanu] free from detention by the government because the government committed an illegality of extraordinary rendition of [Kanu].” Odunze argued that “the decision also discharges [Kanu] from both current and further prosecution by the government on any post-rendition charges.” He noted however that since Kanu “was undergoing pre-rendition trial for which he has neither been discharged nor acquitted,” the Appeal Court’s ruling “may not have ousted the government’s right to continue that particular case at the lower court where it subsists.”

As might be expected, Kanu’s lawyers have a different view of the Appeal Court’s ruling. One of the IPOB leader’s attorneys, Aloy Ejimakor, wrote on Twitter that “no new charges can ever stick against [Kanu] because the extraordinary rendition has created a permanent barrier to his prosecution.” Another one of Kanu’s lawyers, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, offers an equally aggressive interpretation. He argues that the federal government is at liberty to challenge the Appeal Court’s ruling at the Supreme Court but he insisted that the government cannot re-institute the charges pending against Kanu before the rendition since they were the same charges that the Appeal Court had already vacated.

Similar to his colleague Aloy Ejimakor, Ejiofor argues that

“the declaration by the Court of Appeal that the Federal High Court has no jurisdiction to try… Nnamdi Kanu because of the illegality of his abduction and extraordinary rendition to Nigeria is an all pervading instrumentality that effectively bars any indictment of… Kanu in any court in Nigeria.”

Nnamdi Kanu’s lead counsel, Chief Mike Ozekhome, takes the argument further, telling Channels television that “Nnamdi Kanu was set free and discharged by the Court of Appeal” and that “the Supreme Court has said such a discharge amounts to discharge and acquittal.” Ozekhome urged the federal government to accept the ruling, noting that an appeal would “amount to persecution and no longer prosecution.”

We should not perhaps expect Kanu’s lawyers to offer anything but a maximalist interpretation of the Appeal Court’s favorable ruling. We will see if Kanu will be released imminently as his lawyers demand, or if the federal government will continue to detain him whilst exploring other legal recourse.

Political Implications
Whether or not Kanu will be immediately released, this latest court ruling has been received as some sort of triumph for the tested IPOB leader, reportedly sparking spontaneous jubilations across Igboland. The jubilation, if correctly reported, is understandable: it is a humane and spontaneous show of empathy for the person of Nnamdi Kanu who has languished in long and lonely detention since his capture last year; it is a sigh of relief from South-easterners who have been suffering the strangulating effects of IPOB’s sit-at-home campaign and the reign of terror associated with it; and it might be a triumphal exclamation from IPOB protagonists seeing this as a boon to their movement.

But there could yet be a different form of ‘jubilation’ manifesting elsewhere for reasons that may not be altogether benign. A judicial victory for Kanu, if not carefully managed, portends the resurgence of IPOB and a rekindling of Biafra agitation possibly in a manner that threatens Igbo claim in mainstream Nigerian politics. In particular, it could impact the political mobilization of the South East in the current presidential election cycle, possibly disorienting even the campaign of Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate who is currently making great strides in his quest for the Nigerian presidency. Herein lies the risk, which I will do my best to articulate below.

Potential Risks
There are two broad tendencies in Igbo politics that can be easily discerned. On the one hand, there is an otherish or outsider mentality, driven by an acute sense Igbo marginalization, which leads to a persistent separatist tendency or at least a desire for a semi-autonomous existence within the Nigerian federation. There is, on the other hand, an integrationist complex seeking admission to the apex of power in Nigeria, in a way as a corrective to the perceived marginalization. (In an earlier article, I had disaggregated these two broad complexes in Igbo politics into a model of five behavioral tendencies. See here for that article, and here as well where I did a follow-up). These strains have historical resonance, reaching back to the pan-Nigeria politics of Nnamdi Azikiwe versus the separatist drive of Odumegwu Ojukwu which led eventually to the Civil War.

These political tendencies are also, to some extent, class-based. The Igbos with favorable prospects in the political economy of Nigeria will find the unthreatening cadence of conventional politics appealing. Other Igbos, however, especially those at the margins who are more seriously impacted by the perceived marginalization of the South East, will find the pull of separatist rhetoric irresistible.

But we must not assume a strict class differentiation here. The radical rhetoric of Biafra separatism has cross-cutting ideological appeal, with avid adherents even within the relatively affluent strata of Igbo society. Part of the reason for this is the absence of an alternative logos. Mainstream Igbo politics tends to be sterile and transactional, bereft of any organizing or animating ideology, with mainstream political leaders seen mainly as self-seekers out to feather their own nests. Of course this is not unique to Igbo political leaders. It is an affliction of the entire Nigerian political class. But the egalitarian and acephalous nature of Igbo society places Igbo political leaders under greater scrutiny, and thus probably more graphically revealed in their shortcomings. As such, mainstream Igbo political leaders lack firm affinitive following among the Igbo rank-and-file.

There is, you might say, a vacuum in pan-Igbo political leadership. And it is into this vacuum that IPOB breathes its political radicalism.

Nnamdi Kanu and his cohorts embody that radicalist strain in Igbo politics. Though with a myriad personal faults, including a tendency to megalomania, Kanu serves as a fulcrum of Igbo disaffection, with a name recognition and personal magnetism that cuts across social circumstances – something which eludes any single mainstream Igbo politician today, except perhaps for Peter Obi. Kanu’s incarceration had hobbled his already proscribed IPOB to a great degree; the malevolent terrorism and wanton criminality unleashed by his associates on Igbo communities had also greatly damaged IPOB brand among the Igbos. Peter Obi emerged in these circumstances – a soft-spoken, mild-mannered, complaisant fellow squarely located in the mainstream of Nigerian politics. But, although Obi has presumptive appeal – especially among the youths, the urban dwellers and the intelligentsia as well as those in the diaspora, he does not aspire so much to a pan-Igbo essence as to a pan-Nigerian leadership. There remains therefore something of a lacuna in pan-Igbo political leadership.

If the new Appeal Court ruling occasions the imminent release of Nnamdi Kanu, he could re-emerge as a gravitational force for Igbo political radicalism: not in the sense of formal leadership but symbolically and charismatically (to invoke a Weberian distinction), notwithstanding the setbacks his IPOB group has suffered. The Igbos love a hero, a dike who overcomes great odds to accomplish great feats. If Kanu emerges from the cavernous entrails of federal detention with an irreversible judicial victory, there will be wild welcome awaiting him, a triumphal reception for a ‘hero’ who entered the lion’s den so to say and came out unscathed. Some admirers already laud him as the ‘Lion of Biafra’. He’ll enjoy a new level of empathy and admiration which could possibly translate into political leverage. This sentiment may not endure, but Kanu is savvy enough to exploit its window. Yet, there is no knowing how he might deploy such leverage. Will he mobilize his following for full engagement with conventional politics, perhaps even urging them in favor of a particular presidential candidate? Certainly Kanu will not have significant influence across all strata of Igbo polity, but he might hold sway with a swathe of the disaffected rank-and-file unenthused by conventional politicians but whose instincts were sublimated into mainstream politics with Kanu’s detention. His return could unlatch them from previous compromises.

If, on the other hand, the federal government continues to hold Kanu in detention in contravention of court order, there may be great upheaval across Igboland, hampering voter turnout or probably even preventing elections from holding in the Igbo country. Kanu’s IPOB associates are already threatening mayhem if he is not released imminently. No one should minimize the seriousness of that threat. We are dealing with a set of arguably irrational actors who might not see reason to modulate their reactions and not hurt South East chances in the arena of conventional politics. They will not be persuaded to act in the interest of the larger group, especially if they become convinced, based on the interpretation of Kanu’s lawyers, that the IPOB leader, having survived prosecution, is now being ‘persecuted’. We have only to recall the reign of terror visited upon Igboland in the course of Kanu’s trial to imagine what might be unleashed in the circumstance of a sabotaged legal victory.

The question then is whether the federal government will act in the interest of peace, or continue to prosecute the case against Kanu, holding him in detention despite the appearance of wanton persecution. Put differently, does the federal government have any incentive to pursue the path of peace? Or might the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC), in order to stall the supposed surge of Peter Obi in the run-up to the February 2023 presidential election, orchestrate the extension of Kanu’s case as a way to destabilize Peter Obi’s primary constituency, the South East? We have not seen any major party in Nigeria shrink from using dirty tricks to achieve its political objectives.

We are not clear yet about the formal reaction of the government to the Appeal Court ruling. Besides the statement released by the Attorney General’s office, the National Security Council has also issued a statement, after a meeting on Friday October 14, affirming the AG’s position that Kanu was discharged but not acquitted. The NSC said it was “considering the appropriate action to be taken,” and that the government would explore other legal instruments to pursue the matter.

In light of the developments, it is imperative that the political leadership of the South East should rally to avert what looks like a looming crisis over Nnamdi Kanu’s supposed judicial victory. So far, it appears that only the Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohaneze, as well as Alaigbo Development Foundation have weighed in on the matter. Both applauded the Appeal Court ruling and urged the release of Kanu from detention. There is not as yet a concerted intervention by the political leadership – not the presidential candidates or governors or legislators or party leaders from the South East.

It is important to have a concert of opinion from South East political leadership on this matter. The conflagration that could result if the federal government is not persuaded to release Kanu will engulf the entire region.

The South East political leadership also has a role to play, if and when Kanu is freed, to corral his post-release exertions into the mainstream.

The isolated interventions so far on display from Igbo leadership simply will not do.

Nigeria is beset by a torrent of security and economic issues threatening the upcoming election. Decisive action is needed to correct the situation and ensure a successful election.

By Chudi Okoye

Will the coming election in Nigeria be derailed by ongoing crises in other spheres of Nigerian life? This question demands an urgent answer as we observe the gale of confounding catastrophes clobbering the country.

As it is now, the gears of the electoral process are cranking up, seemingly unhindered, as we tread toward the presidential election in 2023. And yet, the fabrics of our economic and social order are cracking up in a dizzying spate. In the electoral sphere, we observe hopeful milestones of democratic progress, creating even an odd frenzy of rising expectations in some innocent corners. And yet in the real world, we witness only millstones of despair dragging the nation down a spiral of social declension. A semblance of Yeats’ ‘ceremony of innocence’ is unfolding as the electoral machine grinds on, unperturbed; yet, ‘anarchy is loosed upon [our land]’, marked by a toxic mix of rising insecurity, economic distress and social disorder. As ‘things fall apart’ all around us, one wonders if the election will hold at all, just as one ponders what, if it does, would be the manner of country bequeathed to the next administration. An absolute chaos awaits, after President Muhammadu Buhari’s annis horribilis.

We are in a season of both great and grating expectations. While we pray for the miracle of democratic renewal tomorrow, what are we to do about our present sorrows?

Everywhere one looks there is stark evidence of systemic upheaval. There is in fact a dark premonition of imminent collapse. Things have been sliding in the country for a while, but they appear now to have reached a snapping point. Of course there has always been some presentiment about Nigeria, with predictions in the past of imminent collapse posited by pundits frustrated with theorizing an inexplicable country. But things never quite managed to tip over. Now, however, there is near-universal consensus that Nigeria has become a failed state teetering on the brink of possible collapse. With a little bit of imagination, we can easily catastrophize aspects of the present crises to see how they might impact the impending election.

A Crumbling Economy
Let us begin with the economy. When economists talk of economic collapse or meltdown, they imply the presence of some specific adverse conditions. These include: prolonged depression, hyperinflation, high unemployment, currency crash, public finance crisis, debt default, and so on. All of these are present in Nigeria today, at different levels of severity.

The country’s economy is in absolute tatters. The Naira has plunged in value, the official rate dropping from $1=₦199 on May 29, 2015, the day Buhari bounded into office, to $1=₦416 currently, with the parallel market rate at $1=₦715.

The country is nearly broke, its sovereign funds depleted; and it is heavily indebted. The external debt stock stood at $40 billion as of Q1 2022, up 288% from $10.3 billion at the start of Buhari’s presidency, according to DMO (Debt Management Office) figures. The domestic debt profile is also daunting, rising nearly 140% from ₦8.4 trillion to ₦20 trillion. The country’s total public debt portfolio, domestic and external, stood at $100.1 billion (₦41.6 trillion at the official rate or ₦71.6 trillion by parallel market rate) as of Q1, pushing the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio to 36%. Nigeria spends as much as 86% of its revenue on debt servicing, compared to just 20% for South Africa which has about 2.5x Nigeria’s debt stock and over 2x the debt-to-GDP ratio. Clearly Nigeria’s is considered a higher risk than South Africa. One expert, Prof Ebenezer Obadare of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently warned that “Nigeria is staring down the barrel of financial bankruptcy.”

Other economic indices are equally glaring. Unemployment is running at 33.3% and under-employment at 22.8%, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Food and commodity prices, including pump price, are sky high, leading to a Consumer Price Index (equivalent of inflation rate) of 18.6% as of June, the highest it has been since Jan 2017, according to NBS. Meanwhile, under Buhari’s watch, Nigeria might well have become the poverty capital of the world. With only about 16% of India’s population, Nigeria in 2018 overtook that country “as home to the world’s greatest concentration of extreme poverty,” as the London Guardian reported. Latest data from the World Poverty Clock shows that Nigeria and India now each has about 83m people living in extreme poverty, which represents a penetration of only 6% for India but a whopping 39% for Nigeria.

Meanwhile, the country’s economy is crippled by an acute shortage of fuel as well as frequent power outages on which Awka Times recently reported.

Amid the economic stress, there’s occupational unrest. The Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities (ASUU) has been on strike since February 14. The Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC) recently embarked on a two-day solidarity strike to support the ASUU action. And a strike is threatened by the Premium Breadmakers Association of Nigeria (PBAN).

Clearly, from the above, Nigeria is at an advanced stage towards economic meltdown. It could get worse if the Naira plunges further; if unemployment and inflation rates further increase; and if the crisis of public finance deepens, making it even more difficult to pay public sector salaries or maintain other recurrent obligations. Government bonds could become worthless. Nigeria could actually slide into debt default. We are already nudging the 40% limit in debt-to-GDP ratio set last year when it was increased from the previous 25% cap.

Economic meltdown often comes with its own intrinsic pain, but it is also often accompanied by social chaos, civil unrest and a breakdown of law and order. All of these tend to induce authoritarian responses from a state, an outcome that is antithetical to democratic praxis. This is one sense in which worsening economic conditions could derail the impending Nigerian election, if there’s no correction.

One could argue of course that the incidence of economic meltdown need not necessarily deter the conduct of a democratic election. A financial crisis that nearly crippled the global economy did not obstruct the US presidential election of 2008, though it forced the candidates at some point to suspend their campaigns. The UK government still went ahead with the conduct of several by-elections in the immediate aftermath of Black Wednesday – the Sterling Crash of Sept. 16, 1992. Long before that, Germany still held federal elections on Sept. 14, 1930, in the thick of the Great Depression that had started the year before. The US held a presidential election on Nov. 8, 1864 amid an economically devastating civil war. There are several such cases of political systems defying the cataclysms of their economic sector.

Despite these examples, the issue insists in a Nigeria with a nascent democratic culture and limited political institutionalization. As we have seen repeatedly in our history, the Nigerian state often betrays an instinct to authoritarianism at the slightest manifestation of restiveness in civil society, especially when there is a nexus to economic distress.

Rising Insecurity
It is not just economic crises that could impact the 2023 election in Nigeria. There’s also rising insecurity around the country, driven to some extent by secessionist and other forms of agitation but primarily by Islamic terrorism. Before Buhari assumed office, the Global Terrorism Index already ranked Nigeria among the countries most severely impacted by terrorism. Nigeria has remained in that cohort through the Buhari years, even with huge budget allocations ostensibly dedicated to fighting terrorism. If anything, under the watch of Maj.-Gen. Buhari Islamic terrorism has turned into an audacious insurgency, sacking federal prisons, overrunning security forces, and even threatening to abduct the president himself, presumably intending thereby to capture the Nigerian state. Outlying areas of the nation’s capital have been under siege. The capital itself is the unmistakable target. The insurgency seems intent on capturing the Nigerian state, some have argued, as a strategic part of transnational Islamic expansion. On this thinking, what we see unfolding is not mere banditry. It has territorial and strategic ambition. Not only that. Nigeria seems to be under attack by a bold and well-armed insurgency which may well have infiltrated the Nigerian security architecture and compromised the upper reaches of the security hierarchy.

As Islamic insurgency has escalated, Buhari has shown a weird insouciance about it. Foreign-traveling while the nation burns or simply ensconced in the capital, Buhari has seemed farcical and aloof in his response, creating wild conspiracies about his complicity. His government has displayed great reluctance and amazing cack-handedness in combating the menace. As the Nigerian Guardian reported on July 31st, experts say there is “no discernible strategy to wage war against terrorists,” and that “President Buhari has not only failed Nigerians but has also allowed insurgents to gradually make inroads and shut down governance.” This has made the Islamic insurgents even more brazen, and Buhari now commonly ridiculed as a ‘defeated general’. Recently, after the insurgents breached the Kuje Prison near Abuja, Buba Galadima, a former ally of President Buhari, told BBC Hausa service that he would not be surprised if the bandits kidnapped the president. “These bandits are disdainful to Buhari administration,” he said. “At the beginning of the government, everybody was scared of him (Buhari); expected him to be brave before he was now exposed to be toothless. Buhari knows nothing; he can’t do anything.”

Though Buhari has never seemed energetic or particularly warm in his public disposition, he has become more enervated lately in dispensing the duties of his office. He appears to be sick and insentient, as if he has succumbed to some form of mental retardation. The president, approaching 80, seems depleted, bewildered and out of his depth. He doesn’t seem to be able to work long hours, or able to cope with critical decision-making. “Currently, he won’t attend to files till 10am,” a recent report claimed, “and the moment it’s 5pm, he goes off duty. Even if Nigeria is on fire, he won’t make any decision. Nobody can see him again except members of the (Presidency) cabal and close family members.”

This is why some stakeholders have suggested that President Buhari should step aside and allow his vice-president, who is far better educated and 15 years younger, to take over the reins. The Northern Elders Forum has asked Buhari to throw in the towel. Buhari himself says that it has been tough for him governing Nigeria and that he is eager to go. But he seems determined to stick around until the end of his tenure.

There was some noise last week, an uncertain babble emanating from the ‘nattering nabobs’ in the National Assembly proclaiming their dissatisfaction with President Buhari’s handling of Nigeria’s security challenges. Finally awoken, it seems, from their privileged slumber in the chamber, the legislative members mumbled a half-hearted chant that ‘Buhari Must Go‘ and muttered some incomprehensible threat about impeaching the president if he doesn’t address Nigeria’s security problems in six to eight weeks. I won’t waste space on this, merely to mention it, because it isn’t going anywhere. The impeachment intent, even if serious, is unenforceable. The legislative math is implausible. And the logistics are, simply, impossible.

In spite of the legislative chicanery, the potential political impact of rising insecurity is widely recognized, by domestic and foreign observers alike. Not long ago, the British government cautioned that insecurity could likely derail the 2023 general elections. “Nigeria faces significant peace and security challenges,” the Director of UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, Chris Beecroft, told Governors’ Forum in Abuja. “There is an active insurgency in the North East; farmer-herder conflicts are extending across the country; resource conflicts in the Delta; tension in the South-East; and banditry in the North West. The rise in conflict risks destabilizing Nigeria’s democracy in the run-up to the 2023 elections.”

He went further: “Conflict destroys lives, destroys livelihoods, [and it] destroys hope and ambition for the future. Conflict represents an existential threat to Nigeria’s unity and its development.”

This is precisely the point where growing insecurity could intrude into the 2023 electoral process. Without meaning to seem alarmist, it is easy to imagine how an escalation of insurgent threat to the Nigerian state, and a tepid response by the civilian regime, could provoke a direct intervention by an institution charged with defending Nigeria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Perhaps this is why there has been some (admittedly fringe) talk about likely military intervention in the face of swelling insecurity. The idea isn’t raised necessarily as a welcome corrective. A few days ago, the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress and founder of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore, tweeted that “President Muhammadu Buhari #mbuhari is preparing Nigeria for a military coup d’état, everything he’s doing points to it!” Incidentally, a couple of days before Sowore’s intervention Buhari himself, speaking in Liberia, had also invoked the issue of military intervention, declaring that the only antidote is good government. Buhari was speaking ostensibly in reference to the recent military coups in Africa but he also adverted to the impending election in Nigeria, stating that the country is “working towards a free, fair, transparent, credible and acceptable outcome of elections and their results.” Buhari argued that “the deepening of democracy and good governance are essential antidotes to check-mate unconstitutional change of governments.”

We should not, of course, lightly presume the possibility of a military corrective to the present Nigerian crises. But this is not necessarily, as some may imagine, because the Nigerian state has finally shed such habit and has settled into a neo-Hegelian, end-of-history, liberal democratic order. We are unarguably in a far worse condition today than had prompted previous military intrusions into the country’s politics. Rather it is simply that the Nigerian military may be too vitiated as a force and too discredited as an institution to intervene at this particular point in Nigerian politics.

However, whilst cautioning against any lazy expectation of military intervention, we cannot casually dismiss the logic of it if insecurity escalates around the country, if the Nigerian state itself becomes more directly threatened, and if the civilian authorities continue with their ham-fisted response to the security crises. If it ever materializes, a military usurpation of power will put paid to the impending presidential election, especially if the military becomes convinced that neither the incumbent president nor any of those jostling to succeed him, would be effective as wartime commander-in-chief if the worst happens. Indeed, the clumsiness and ineptitude of Nigeria’s security forces in confronting what is but a ragtag insurgency, with seemingly easy inroads made by the latter, might prove tempting to any military adventurers out there lusting for power. Of course the sheer complexity of Nigeria’s governance problems might prove a deterrent to any such adventurism, but the calculus could change if things get much worse.

While the 2023 electoral process appears to be unfolding as planned, unimpeded by ambient cataclysms, the political risk of economic instability and rising insecurity cannot be discounted in any serious political arbitrage. The odds are only marginally higher than lower that the 2023 election will actually hold as planned. The odds will much improve if the current administration takes more serious steps, in the balance of Buhari’s tenure, to prevent an economic collapse or the fall of Abuja to Islamic insurgency.

This essay continues a series in which I have been examining how the leading political parties in the 2023 presidential election appear to have made choices colliding with the basic principles of Nigerian politics. Part 1 of the essay series discussed the ruling party, APC’s choice of a Muslim-Muslim ticket for the 2023 election. In this Part 2, I interrogate the opposition party, PDP’s ticket choices in terms of geopolitical zoning. I should say that in this piece, I focus only on geopolitical analysis, but this is not in any way to deny the salience of other levels of analysis which would include a class perspective.

By Chudi Okoye

Atiku Abubakar has a South East problem. It is almost certain that he faces an upset in that geopolitical zone in the coming presidential election, with the ascent of Peter Obi, the Labor Party candidate. But if the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) flag-bearer is worried about being upstaged by his former PDP running mate, a discerning fella with a disarming manner who still calls him “my leader”, you couldn’t tell from his inscrutable smirk as he waved off the Obi threat in his July 22 interview on Arise TV.

There has been a suggestion, from pundit and political practitioner alike, that in addition to inspiring a new and highly energized wave of electorates, Peter Obi might cannibalize traditional PDP votes, especially in the South-East which has been an electoral mainstay for the party. However, far from showing any sign of perturbation in the Arise interview, Atiku dismissed Obi’s chances in the coming election:

“I really don’t expect the Labor Party to take as much votes from the PDP as people are suggesting. We could have seen it in the last election in Osun State. What [was] the performance of the Labor Party? This is a party that doesn’t have a governor, doesn’t have members of the national assembly, [and] doesn’t have state assembly members. Politics in this country depends on the structures you have at these various levels — at the local government level, at the state level, and at the national level. So, it is very difficult to expect a miracle to happen, simply because Peter Obi is in the Labor Party.”

Atiku dismissed the large following that Peter Obi seems to have amassed, noting that they were nowhere to be found in the recently concluded Osun State gubernatorial election. “After all,” Atiku sneered, “they were saying through social media, that they had more than one million votes in Osun state. How many votes turned out for the Labor Party?” He seemed also sneery of Labor’s chances in the northern hinterland, a major vote catchment area. “In the north,” Atiku thrilled, “90 percent of our people are not tuned to social media.”

It is biting, but not as catty a comment as an earlier taunt from Bola Ahmed Tinubu, presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC). At a rally a couple of weeks ago to drive support for his party’s candidate in the Osun State gubernatorial election, Tinubu had contemptuously dismissed what he called “mushroom parties” contesting in the election. He specifically mentioned the Labor Party, telling the crowd in his mocking drawl: “They will labor till they die. God will not make you laborers.” It was a vicious twist of Revelation 14:13 which the Labor Party soon parried as an invective against working people.

Whilst overtly dismissive of the Obi threat, Atiku was careful not to say anything that might alienate voters in Obi’s native geopolitical zone where the latter is expected to do the most damage to PDP. The South East has been an undeviating PDP stronghold, awarding the party a preponderance of its votes in the various presidential elections held since the inception of the Fourth Republic. In next year’s general election, which will be exceptionally competitive, Atiku and PDP cannot afford to cede ground too much in the South East. Certainly they must expect a significant swing to Obi’s Labor Party. But they will be hoping it would not be much, or such a switch as to pitch the party below the 25% threshold needed to log a state in the electoral tally.

In the 2019 presidential election in which Atiku led the PDP ticket, the party secured 76.3% of South East votes. So it would require a swing of over 50 percentage points to deny the party a 25% beachhead in the zone in 2023, though this will differ by state. Perhaps Atiku’s demeanor issues from the sheer improbability of such a swing – especially, as he said, to a party without a single elected seat anywhere.

Despite Atiku’s equanimity, the candidate cannot be insensitive to the sense of betrayal felt in the South East towards PDP. The zone has never fully voted for APC at the presidential level; as such, it cannot be much disappointed that the ruling party completely ignored it in constituting its 2023 ticket. But PDP has raised hackles in the zone for how it tackled the issue of zoning and power rotation. There had been an expectation that in this election cycle the party would zone the presidential slot specifically to the South East, having previously fielded candidates from the South West, North West, South South and North East, all with monumental support in the South East. This was also expected, given the high sense of alienation felt in the region under the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari. The Buhari presidency has made Nigeria feel almost like an alien nation to many Igbos. This sense of alienation, in turn, has spurred Igbo separatist agitation. And this agitation, in a vicious concatenation of effects, ends up despoiling the South East, for the particular methods employed by its propagators.

Given all this, it must be particularly galling to the South East not only that the PDP presidential primary was orchestrated to favor a North-easterner at its expense but that the zone was also denied the vice-presidential slot on the PDP ticket. For all the support the South East has given to the party, it must feel as if the zone has been outmaneuvered or simply betrayed by the PDP hierarchy. The Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohaneze, has consistently decried PDP’s decision.

Pacifying the South East?
In his Arise TV interview, Atiku seemed to be setting out the contours of the argument he might be making to mollify the South East. First, he argued that the issue of zoning is local to PDP and should not be conflated with APC’s northern incumbency under Buhari. In other words, he contended, it is wrong to presume a southern turn in PDP because of a northern incumbency in APC. Secondly, he argued that PDP’s zoning arrangement has always been between North and South as monolithic regions, and that PDP’s party and public offices have never been micro-zoned. Thirdly, he pointed out that the South dominated previous PDP presidential incumbency and in fact, fourthly, that the last PDP incumbent was a southerner.

These are without doubt powerful arguments. A party with 82% southern incumbency (by our estimate) whose last presidential office holder was a southerner should be justified in choosing a candidate, this time around, from the North, right?

Since Atiku has made what is essentially a technical argument, let’s take him up on that. First of all, it is incorrect to say that PDP zoning formula stipulates a rotation between a monolithic North and South. Section 3(c) of PDP constitution merely says that the party adheres to a “policy of the rotation and zoning of Party and Public elective offices in pursuance of the principle of equity, justice and fairness.” The section does not anoint a North/South rotation. It is merely a matter of political pragmatism that this construction has been read into the party’s constitution.

The question then arises as to why such pragmatism, or even a doctrine of necessity, could not have been invoked in favor of the South East which has suffered for its keen support of the party.

We can also quickly dispense with the argument that the last PDP presidential incumbent was a southerner. One could make an equally cogent case that the last PDP presidential candidate was a northerner, in the person of Atiku Abubakar himself! It should not matter that he did not win. In fact, if this matters at all, it should be to question the political wisdom of recycling a flag-bearer who previously failed the party.

Atiku’s point about southern dominance of PDP incumbency is a more complex one. Certainly as a matter of equity, one must acknowledge this southern skew and thus the legitimacy of northern claim. But this view holds only if one upholds Atiku’s monolithic North/South construction. The argument collapses once we deconstruct that formula. Let’s look again at the facts.

In the 1999 and 2003 presidential elections, PDP fielded a flag-bearer from the South West (Olusegun Obasanjo). In the 2007 election, a candidate from the North West led PDP’s ticket (Umaru Yar’Adua). In the 2011 and 2015 elections, PDP fielded a South South candidate (Goodluck Jonathan). And in the 2019 election, PDP fielded a North East candidate (Atiku Abubakar), as it is also doing in the coming election.

The above indicates that so far PDP has not favored either the South East or the North Central geopolitical zones in its presidential lineups. Between these two, the South East is arguably the more sensitive omission. We can dispense with the issue of the North Central for now. Although the zone has not produced a major-party flag-bearer or running mate in the Fourth Republic dispensation, it has fared quite well if we consider the broader distribution of head-of-government tenures in the post-colonial period. In the ~62 years since Nigeria gained independence, a person from the North Central zone has headed the Nigerian government 29% of the time, surely an overwhelming share in Nigeria’s six-part geopolitical construct. The zone gave Nigeria three military heads of government who had long tenures and/or were very influential: Gen. Yakubu Gowon (1966-75), Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (1985-93) and Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar (1998-99). This zone and indeed all others have done far better than the South East which has only produced a ceremonial head of state (Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, in 1960-66); a military head of government assassinated after only six months in office (Maj. Gen. Aguiyi-Ironsi, Jan-July 1966); and a vice-president who served in an administration overthrown merely months into its second term (Dr. Alex Ekwueme, 1979-83).

The question then is whether we should confine our logic to the narrow technicality of PDP’s presidential incumbencies since 1999, which certainly favors a reversion to the North as Atiku implied. Or whether, in the face a strident South East agitation for the presidency as well as a searing secessionist agitation, PDP should have invoked a broader historical logic which compels a concession to the South East. One is inclined to argue the latter.

Atiku himself, even whilst floating the narrow logic of PDP tenures, did appear in the Arise TV interview to acknowledge the historical compulsion of a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction. He adverted to his own effort toward this end as seen in his consistent choice of a running mate of Igbo extraction every time he secured a presidential ticket:

“If you can go through history, I was given a ticket in 2007, I picked a South-easterner, an Igbo. I was given a ticket in 2019 , I picked an Igbo. And in 2022, I [have been] given a ticket, and I [have] picked an Igbo man again. Consecutively. This is just to show you my desire to unify the country.”

One could question the mindset of a politician who usurps Igbo opportunity at the top of the presidential ticket but quite happily nominates Igbos as subalterns – his running mats, sorry running mates. But that may be uncharitable. Instead, let us consider why PDP may have found it inexpedient to field a candidate of South East extraction as its flag-bearer.

The first thing is to recognize that PDP had lost the presidential contest in the last two election cycles, and as such, for the upcoming election the party would prefer an aspirant whom it considers its surest bet to regain power. In this regard, one wonders if the party felt jittery about Igbo vicissitudes in recent presidential elections. In the annulled election of 1993, Bashir Tofa ran on the platform of the National Republican Convention with Sylvester Ugoh as his vice-presidential candidate. He lost. In 2003 Buhari ran on the platform of All Nigeria Peoples Party with Chuba Okadigbo as his running mate. He lost. In 2007 Buhari tried again, this time with Edwin Ume-Ezeoke as running mate. He still lost. And of course Atiku himself lost in 2019 with Peter Obi as his vice-presidential pick. All running mates in these elections were Igbo.

It is not an edifying history. And it mightn’t have seemed auspicious to a party seeking a most propitious path back to power. So presumably it decided to look elsewhere.

The above attempts to put a rational spin on PDP’s ticket choice for 2023, proposing an electoral efficacy argument for the party’s decision. But the argument collapses on collision with an alternative history. For one thing, it ignores the repeated failures of Atiku Abubakar himself who has been running for president, without success, since 1993. If you are seeking the most promising candidate to reclaim the presidency, why entrust your ticket to someone who has been running for that office for 29 years without success, someone who failed in the very last cycle?

The electoral efficacy argument also ignores the successful alliance of Nnamdi Azikiwe’s National Convention of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) and Tafawa Balewa’s Northern People’s Congress (NPC) in the First Republic, and the successful ticket of Shehu Shagari and Alex Ekwueme in the Second Republic. Any jitteriness about Igbo political marketability should have been dispelled by the fact of these successful collaborations, which occurred, by the way, either side of the Nigerian civil war.

In the contemporary setting, who can ignore Peter Obi’s monumental political surge, which is the more striking since he’s pushing from the platform of an inconsequential party. Of course that popularity is yet to be tested. But even if Obi ends up losing the 2023 contest, it might be less that he was a flawed candidate than that he ran on the platform of a fringe party. One wonders what might have been had PDP the foresight to have nominated Peter Obi, instead of its flawed preference, Atiku Abubakar.

PDP may have made poor choices in the composition of its 2023 presidential election ticket. The mistake could cost it the election. Or, the party might just squeak through, denied a resounding victory because of the South East problem which it brought upon itself.

⁕ PS: In the third installment of this essay, I will look at the import of the Labor Party flag-bearer’s frequent comment rejecting any support based on primordial sentiment.