Campaign playbook, 2027
Just as well the Supreme Court — status quo ante bellum! — just handed the David Mark-chaired ADC a lifeline. But that hardly makes it less fractious, or more focused.
Just as well the Supreme Court -- status quo ante bellum! -- just handed the David Mark-chaired ADC a lifeline. But that hardly makes it less fractious, or more focused.
The case is back at the high court for pacy adjudication. But it’s not unlike the ADC gaining a serene library, yet is bottled in the bedlam outside!
The latest of ADC troubles is Peter Obi-Rabiu Kwankwaso. They just moved their presidential hustle to the newly registered Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC)!
Still, ADC is only a rich metaphor for the troubled opposition: it’s PDP Amalgamated fissuring, fissuring and fissuring all over again!
First its prime flowers -- 2023 elected governors -- nestle in the ruling APC: Sheriff Oborevwori (Delta), Umo Eno (Akwa Ibom), Peter Mba (Enugu), Duoye Diri (Bayelsa), Siminalayi Fubara (Rivers), Caleb Mutfwang (Plateau), Ahmadu Fintiri (Adamawa), Agbu Kefas (Taraba) and Dauda Lawal (Zamfara) -- nine governors!
The remaining two -- worsted by the Nyesom Wike PDP bloc -- are also in disarray.
Bauchi’s Bala Mohammed -- to ADC’s chagrin -- just scrammed to the Allied People’s Movement (APM). The APM is quite thrilled to gain a new ATM in the ex-PDP! But the governor snubbed the ruling APC too.
Oyo’s Seyi Makinde, he of the “Wet-ie” explosive bluff, hovers between his dying PDP faction and the ADC netherworld -- at least until the ADC settles its case with Bala Gombe and the aboriginal ADC state chairmen factions!
Delta’s Oborevwori was the sheriff of that virulent “Japa” syndrome that has blighted the PDP -- not only pulling out but doing so with his near-entire political structure!
But the one that saw tomorrow -- and the present PDP-ADC bind -- was Akwa Ibom’s Umo Eno. He claimed he could win re-election in any party. But he wouldn’t tie his fate to a leaderless platform. That’s Makinde’s PDP and ADC -- in harsh Technicolor!
Besides, Wike’s PDP, the legally recognized faction, also roots for the sitting president, though it reserves its right to field candidates at other electoral levels.
The long-and-short of this brief foray? In terms of “structure”, the opposition is near-cooked, despite its cold threats and dark rumblings that no election is valid without it.
While the ruling APC consolidates its reach in 31 states where it has governors -- and is not exactly inactive in the remaining five and the FCT -- the ADC, which crows at its elevation as the leading opposition party in parliament, hardly boasts anywhere it can claim supremacy. It might even lose that parliamentary veneer to the NDC!
Even in Adamawa -- Atiku’s home state -- it’s cracked along factional lines. Thus, the NDC has claimed the Aishatu Binani faction, telling it to go and conquer on all fronts!
But the NDC itself is another Bayelsa PDP fissure -- Siriake Dickson, sitting senator and former governor, who watching his successor Diri defect to APC, went registering the NDC in a huff!
So, what ails Atiku’s ADC in Adamawa, ails Dickson’s NDC in Bayelsa, despite all the senator’s “national” grandstanding! His Bayelsa structure is, at best, split. Between the senator and the governor, who knows who bosses the dominant faction?
Then, the opposition that on April 25 in Ibadan, preached the gospel of a sole presidential candidate to “save democracy”, has further split! Obi and Kwankwaso are following their ticket hunt into NDC.
Both think ADC is no longer a safe and secure platform -- and fairly so. But the real reason is they think any “sole opposition” candidate, without them on the ticket, is a dud! Without Atiku on the ticket, he thinks so too!
But O-K (Obi-Kwankwaso) are at their rank opportunistic worst again! Kwankwaso gate-crashed the NNPP for personal glory in 2023. So did Obi his “Elupee”, for Igbo clannish vote; and a “Christian” goading against the so-called “Muslim-Muslim” ticket.
Still, it’s rather instructive how Obi’s past lies are back haunting him. Beside inciting Christians to “take back your country”, he -- open sesame! -- remade himself a newly minted “youth”, to clobber the ancient (dis)order! Now he’s realizing that gangling “youth” of 2023, is the old man well past his political prime after 2027!
That now-or-never desperation fires his NDC Japa -- how sweet! It’s Obi’s well-tested political nomadism, stuffed with his empty cant! But back to systems and structure.
In 2023, the PDP split into PDP, LP and NNPP. For 2027, it’s splitting into APC, PDP, ADC, NDC and LP!
LP? Yes! By his body language, isn’t Gbenga Hashim, another ex-PDP, making a dash for the LP presidential ticket, brandishing old “ideological” schmoozing?
So how can this ever-splitting phantom compete against a regnant order that sits firm; and appears ready to ruthlessly push its advantages, against this rag-tag opposition, that mouths the bogey of a looming one-party state?
Besides, save a visceral hatred for the president, and a near-comical despair to take his place (no democracy crime!), what are the opposition’s policies and programmes -- beyond raw one-liners: hunger in the land! No light! Useless economy! Massive insecurity! And the bogey-in-chief: a one-party democracy, run, run, run!
It’s all dramatized scarecrow, sans any rigorous solution! Yet, it faces an incumbent government that, despite its far doughtier and far more diversified structure, points to specific feats; and campaigns on many layers, across many demographics.
During Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s long and winding junta rule, Aderoju Adepoju, the famed Yoruba poet, huffed in one of his Ewi numbers, with a censorious pun: “Babangida, Mamangida, Omo na ngida”!
In other words, IBB and family dominated the public space!
There’s a present parallel in the Tinubu order -- not so censorious, in Ripples’ view -- though not a few have flayed such overt presidential family activism.
The thing is: President Bola Tinubu drives his audacious policies and programmes. First Lady Oluremi Tinubu supports with structured anti-hunger and pro-gender/youth special interventions. As her 65th birthday gift, she raised N25.52 billion to complete the stalled National Library of Nigeria project. So, it’s not just stomach infrastructure!
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Seyi Tinubu has also inspired the City Boy Movement, a youth-target whoop that could well segue into the campaign season. That adds another layer to Tinubu ‘27 -- hardly a crime.
But does that mean 2027 is all wrapped up for the APC? Hardly.
The PDP governors drifted to the APC, claiming a mutual booty: gushing cash from the central till. That’s removed fuel subsidy shovelling far more money into the sub-national purse. But states flush with cash isn’t exactly household boom all round.
Besides, Donald Trump’s war on Iran has jacked up fuel pump prices, sky-high. That’s explosive, premium-grade election-season toxins, handed to a cynical opposition, yoked to wild emotional blackmail. In truth, vanished electricity, of these past weeks, is legitimate campaign query! Such could hurt the government -- and badly too!
Still, how a progressively splitting opposition can make electoral hay remains a huge doubt.
