If Not Tinubu, Who?
In my immediate previous column, I implored a set of would-be presidential candidates to disavow their desire to seek Nigeria’s highest political office in 2023. I mentioned former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Governors Bola Tinubu, Orji Uzor Kalu and Rochas Okorocha as exemplars of the species of politicians who should abandon their presidential aspirations. Or face electoral humiliation should they decide to run.
Former Senate President Pius Ayim, Former Governors Okorocha and Uzor Kalu
In naming the four politicians, I made it clear that they didn’t represent an exhaustive roster of undesirable candidates. Instead, they’re prototypes of the kind of woeful leaders who have run, and ruined, Nigeria for decades. Judged by their public records, most Nigerian politicians fall within that demographic of disastrous leaders.
The column elicited a variety of passionate responses. A few readers lobbed at me that well-worn accusation of being idealistic. It’s a charge that I’ve never shied away from. For decades, Nigeria has been trapped in an unrelentingly grim reality. A country that boasts some of the best minds and talents in the world has been led by some of the dumbest politicians in the world. It’s about time we permitted ourselves a doze of idealism, if this means – as it must – recruiting men and women of ethical funds and social vision to run our affairs for a change. If stating the bare fact that Nigeria deserves better leaders than the Atikus, Tinubus, Kalus and Okorochas is idealistic, then count me as an unapologetic idealist.
There was a far more cogent and interesting response to my column. Since I had specified the kind of candidates who should get out of the way, or face rejection, some readers demanded that I name those I’d wish to see in the presidential race. That question deserves a thoughtful address.
The best way to do so is via a caveat or two. For the most part, I avoid making political endorsements or even recommendations. In decades of writing on Nigerian politics, I believe I have come close only twice to proposing specific candidates.
The first time was in 1983, when I stipulated that Edwin Onwudiwe, a medical doctor and commissioner of health in Anambra, was the better candidate in a senatorial race with former Biafran leader, Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. In light of Ojukwu’s sheer popularity among the Igbo, my stance might strike some people today as heretical. Yet, everything considered, Onwudiwe was a more compelling choice. He had a sounder grasp of what he intended to do in the Senate, a blueprint he articulated with a coherence and eloquence that his better-known opponent did not match.
Late Senator Edwin Onwudiwe
He also asked Ojukwu to agree to a series of televised debates. That would have provided a forum for civilized exchange of ideas. In addition, it would have elevated the tone of their contest, setting an impressive example that might have endured.
Ojukwu, an Oxford-educated historian, certainly had the capacity to run an ennobled campaign, but he was too ego-driven to bother. Rather regrettably, the former military officer balked at the idea of debating a man he considered politically beneath his attention. In the end, whilst Ojukwu might have been my emotional favorite, his refusal to rise to his opponent’s decorous standard struck me as a monumental disappointment.
Emeka Ojukwu
In 2019, I raised a toast to Kingsley Moghalu, then of the Young Progressives Party (YPP), as the most attractive candidate in a crowded field of presidential aspirants. I argued: “By any rational measure, [Moghalu] towers above the two men touted as frontrunners in the presidential race – incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Moghalu is so superior to the two men that – in a political universe that wasn’t absurd – both Buhari and Atiku would not be in the running at all. Instead, they would cast their votes for the YPP’s candidate.”
I stand by that assessment. But let’s be clear. In addition to Moghalu, there were other stellar candidates in 2019. Fela Durotoye and Oby Ezekwesili come readily to mind. They spoke with uncommon insight about Nigeria’s multi-pronged crises. Better still, they demonstrated acumen in proffering solutions for the country’s deep-rooted problems.
It was a poor reflection on Nigerian politics, and on voters’ habitual embrace of incompetence, that such inspiring candidates hardly registered as blips on the electoral map whilst the two worst runners garnered millions of votes. The same anomaly played out in 2015. Voters sidelined Remi Sonaiya, the most brilliant candidate and sole female in the presidential race.
Remi Sonaiya
For me, then, the question of who I’d like to see in next year’s presidential race is best answered by substituting what for who. The best sign of mettle in a candidate is to be found in her or his platform. Superb candidates can discuss Nigeria’s constitutional and structural defects. They have a mastery of the internal and external factors that have militated against Nigeria’s development. They also have a command of the roadmap to the developmental goals that Nigeria must attain fast – if we’re to avert the long-looming doom.
By their posture, ye shall know them. Nigeria’s population is skewed quite heavily in favor of youth. The youth are the ones, in the final analysis, who bear the brunt of a country that continues to deceive itself that it’s headed forward when the gear is in reverse. They ought to realize that Nigeria cannot “Atikulate” or “Tinubulate” its way out of its morass. Instead, they must muster the discipline to transcend short-term impulses in order to make informed electoral choices in 2023. If all that a political candidate can offer are such hackneyed phrases as “moving the nation forward,” “delivering the dividends of democracy” and “carrying everybody along”, it’s a sign that he or she is a pompous nonentity with an insatiable appetite for primitive accumulation.
Don’t buy the canard that such a candidate is a frontrunner. With the fervor you brought to the #EndSARS movement, shove such inflated mediocrities aside. Have the courage to choose from the ranks of those who inspire you with their knowledge of what it takes to tackle Nigeria’s manifold crises.