The leading candidates in the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria achieved a regional ballot sweep that their illustrious predecessors only dreamed of – an outcome that may signify the changing sociology of Nigerian politics.
By Chudi Okoye
This certainly isn’t Zik’s and Awo’s Nigeria. No, it’s not. The country over which these political colossi and their contemporaries bestrode seems to have gone, or at least to be rapidly disappearing. And this may be the reason – the fundamental reason – why their formidable but comparatively less accomplished latter-day incarnations have achieved what they could not bring off in their penultimate political outing, or even at the height of their illustrious political careers: win significant votes across the rigid walls of regional constituencies in Nigeria.
One interesting aspect of the 2023 presidential contest in Nigeria is that its frontline reflected to some extent the geopolitical constellation that participated in the Second Republic presidential elections. For instance, for the South East geopolitical zone we might pose the great Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe of the Nigerian People’s Party (NPP) against Mr. Peter Obi of the Labor Party (LP); for the South West there’s the revered Chief Obafemi Awolowo of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) against Mr. Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC); for the North East we could put up Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim of the Great Nigeria People’s Party (GNPP) against Waziri Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP); and for the North West there’s hallowed Mallam Aminu Kano of the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) against Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP).
Notwithstanding these semblant overlaps, the results achieved by the flag-bearers in the 2023 presidential election were far different – for the most part – from those achieved by their arguably more illustrious geopolitical predecessors. Let’s take Zik versus Obi. In the 1979 election, Nigeria’s foremost statesman secured 16.8% of the national votes, placing third in the national ranking. He secured 82.9% of the votes in Anambra and 84.7% of those in Imo, the two states that made up what we now call the South East geopolitical zone. But, except for Plateau State where NPP co-founder, Solomon Lar, held sway, the political colossus Zik did not get near the 25% mark (originally established by Section 34 A(i)(c)(ii) of the Electoral Decree No 73 of 1977) in any other state of the country. The closest Zik came to that was in Rivers State where he notched up 14.4%. He barely scratched up a vote in Niger State where he had been born (1.1%); and he came nowhere near the mark in Lagos State where he had lived and spent a significant part of his illustrious career (9.6%).
Compare that to Peter Obi’s performance in 2023. Like Zik, Obi also placed third in the national ranking but with a much higher share, 25.4%, according to the currently contested results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Obi achieved a similar sweep of the South East as Zik had done in 1979, nabbing a whopping 87.8% of the pan-zonal votes. But Obi went way further in other constituencies than Zik had managed. Obi won a commanding vote in Abuja, the federal capital (61.2%). He secured a winning vote in Plateau State, just as Zik had done in what constituted the same state in 1979: 42.9% to Zik’s 49.7%; and he either carried or won significant votes in various other surrounding states: Benue (40%); Nasarawa (35.4%); and Taraba (29.3%). Overall, Obi attained the 25% threshold in 16 states and also in Abuja, carrying 11 of those states plus Abuja. At the zonal level, outside of the South East Peter Obi won 42.4% in South South; 31% in North Central; and 19.9% in South West, even carrying Lagos State, a supposed stronghold of APC’s Bola Tinubu. It was only in the North West and North East that Obi underperformed, scoring 5.2% and 9.2% respectively in those zones.
I should perhaps mention in passing that Obi’s performance simply eclipses that of the other giant of the South East, Ikemba Odumegwu Ojukwu, who only managed an embarrassing 3.3% national share when he contested the presidency in 2003 under the banner of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). Ojukwu fared even worse, with a 0.44% share, when he contested again in 2007. In both elections, the great Ikemba was trounced even in the core Igbo states, a zone he had led to war.
Turning to another giant of Nigerian history, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, we see a similar pattern as the great sage is also outperformed by his 2023 incarnation in Bola Tinubu in the South West. Where Obi was able to duplicate Zik’s sweep of the South East, Tinubu could not quite match Awo’s command of the South West, with the latter ranging from 82.3% to 94.5% across the four states that made up the zone in his day: Lagos, Oyo, Ogun and Ondo States. In the 2023 election, Tinubu did carry the South West, but with a comparatively smaller share of 53.6%. Whereas other parties were unable to make an inroad in the South West zone in 1979, 2023 saw some notable incursions, with PDP nabbing 22.2% share and LP, as we saw, picking up 19.9%.
However, while Tinubu could not repeat Awo’s command of the South West in 1979, he was able to forge cross-cutting regional alliances which enabled him to outperform Awo in other territories. Other than then Kwara State where Awo had scored 37.5% and erstwhile Bendel State where he secured a winning 53.2%, Awo did not attain the required 25% in any other state (he came close in Gongola with 21.7%), though he ended the race in second place nationally with 29.2%. It seems Bola Tinubu has achieved what the incomparable Awo could not, which is the Nigerian presidency, if INEC’s results are ultimately affirmed by the courts. He did that by winning 36.6% of the national votes and scoring the requisite 25% in 29 states, 12 of which he carried. Across the geopolitical zones, Tinubu took sizeable shares everywhere outside the South West: 39.6% in the North West; 38.6% in North Central; 34.5% in the North East and 28% in South South. It was only in the South East that Tinubu’s sun failed to rise, with a pitiful 5.7% share.
As to the ‘face-off’ between North East’s Waziri Ibrahim and Atiku Abubakar, on the one hand, and North West’s Aminu Kano and Rabiu Kwankwaso, on the other, we see the exact same pattern we found earlier – of the newbie achieving a better spread than the grandees of the earlier generation. Where Waziri Ibrahim with his GNPP placed bottom rank with 10% overall in the 1979 election, attaining 25% or higher in just three states (Borno 54%; Gongola 34.1%; and Sokoto 26.6%), Atiku Abubakar, on the platform of PDP, came away in 2023 second-placed with 29.1%, achieving the required 25% in 21 states, 12 of which he carried. Also, while in 1979 Waziri Ibrahim did perform strongly in the North East and did a little well in the North West, he was virtually inconspicuous in any other geopolitical zone. In contrast, Abubakar made substantial inroads in most every zone: 50.6% in the North East; 34.8% in the North West; 25.5% in North Central; 25.1% in South South; and 22.2% (as we saw) in the South West. Once again, it was only in the South East that Abubakar tanked, with just 4.1% share – a humiliating reversal from his party’s previous track record in the zone.
We need not detain ourselves with Aminu Kano versus Rabiu Kwankwaso. With these two, 2023 was basically a repeat of 1979: each carried only Kano State, Mallam Kano with 76.4% and Kwankwaso with 58.6%. Aminu Kano secured 10.3% of the national vote in 1979; Kwankwaso got 6.2% in 2023.
This foregoing analysis raises a question as to why the 2023 presidential frontliners, though arguably far less politically accomplished, nonetheless for the most part far outperformed the more illustrious earlier generation. Obi may have grown in political stature, as I argued in a recent Awka Times piece, but he is no ‘Zik of Africa’. Tinubu is perhaps deservingly acclaimed as a formidable political tactician, but he has nothing of Awo’s personal charm or political magnetism, or Awo’s famed intellectualism. Kwankwaso may be a formidable grass roots politician and may have achieved a comparable result to Aminu Kano’s, but he lacks the latter’s ideological clarity and perhaps his social influence.
What these results show is not necessarily that the newbies are more effective political operators than had been the grandees of the earlier generation. Rather they point to what might be a natural attenuation of primordial politics in Nigeria, arising from factors such as increased urbanization and social integration; improved communication and transportation, enabling greater social migrations; demographic changes, especially with a youth bulge in the population; rising educational levels, as well as other indices of modernization. These factors engender an increasing shift in the Nigerian zeitgeist from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft: from a mindset or mental model that focuses on tribal ties and an affectual ‘natural will’ to one increasingly motivated by an effectual ‘rational will’ which stresses ‘society’ and associational relationships. Such a shift avoids the ‘atavistic regression’ – a tendency to revert to ancestral impulses – that likely encumbered the old warriors of Nigerian politics in the Second Republic election. The underlying sociology of the Nigerian political system is changing, and the political newbies are clearly benefiting from it.
I hasten to stress, in conclusion, that this isn’t a claim that primordial sentiments are on irreversible retreat in Nigeria. Politicians will always seek what they consider the least costly and most efficacious path to power, and this may include, when they’re in trouble, whipping up primordial sentiments. We did see something of that even in the 2023 election. But we cannot ignore the fundamental changes that are taking place in Nigerian society, and how these societal changes seem to be scrambling the ancient logics of Nigerian politics.
In a forthcoming article, I hope to examine the case of a particular geopolitical zone (one yet again seemingly short-changed in the 2023 presidential election) and how it might adapt its politics and political strategy in light of this changing social milieu.
