For about 150 days after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) blew the whistle for the commencement of electioneering for the 2023 polls, gladiators of the 18 registered political parties embarked on what could be described in the sports parlance as a cross country race, campaigning for votes at all levels.
Primaries were conducted at the state and national levels for the registered parties to choose their flagbearers. Some of the primaries were fought hammer and tongs, especially in the two leading parties, namely the (ruling) All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
As for the other two parties, the Labour Party (LP) and the latter-day New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), their candidates, Peter Obi and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, respectively, were offered the tickets on a platter of gold. While Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso was the founder of the party and automatically became its flagbearer, Peter Obi’s capture of the ticket was also like a stroll in the park. In fact, the Labour Party was in a state of despair when Peter Obi, having fallen out of favour with the PDP where he was Atiku’s Vice Presidential candidate in the 2019 polls, was offered the flag about 10 or so months ago without any labour.
Obi later raised the party from its deathbed and transmogrified it into a Tsunami of a movement never before witnessed in the country. And the fever, powered by the fiery Obidient followers who were dying for fresh air, afflicted the established political parties, forcing them to go in search of the right medications ahead of the polls… or be consumed by the ailment.
It was no surprise that by February 25, 2023 when the presidential race was billed to commence, four giant parties had positioned themselves as the front runners. They were the APC led by the veteran Jagaban of Borgu and erstwhile Governor of Lagos state, Sen. Ahmed Bola Tinubu, his former ally and ex-Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, the leader of the Obidients and ex-Governor of Anambra state, Peter Obi, and former Governor of Kano state, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.
Unlike the cross country that covers a maximum distance of 12 kilometres, the grand finale of February 25, 2023 was more of a middle distance race. Upon the commencement of the race, APC’s Jagaban raced to the top of the medals table with a massive victory from Ekiti state, one of his strongholds in the South-west. Then came the greatest upset of the event that made the Ekiti victory pale into insignificance: the overrun of his fortress, Lagos, by the Obi Tsunami which had the audacity to floor the City Boy, scoring 582,454, while 570,606 went to the Lagos Landlord!
As if that was not devastating enough, Atiku’s PDP torpedoed his party in his ancestral home, Osun. Obi’s stunning triumph in Lagos was the beginning of his meteoric rise in the race. He went on to cause more upsets in nine other states that included Plateau and Nasarawa. The LP candidate also showed no respect for PDP’s Vice-Presidential flagbearer, Sen. Ifeanyi Okowa. He swept him aside in Delta state despite his heavy presence as the sitting governor. Obi even snaffled up the winning votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
As for Atiku Abubakar, he too had the muscles to secure victories in the APC’s strongholds of Katsina, Kaduna, Kebbi and Yobe states.
The results came in from Sunday through to the early hours of Wednesday; it was a clinical finish going by the state by state capture. Tinubu finished with 12 states under his belt; same for Atiku and Obi who had the FCT to boot. But the Jagaban had superior votes to his advantage. At the end of the race, Tinubu had amassed 8,794,726; Atiku polled 6,984,520 votes; Obi garnered 6,101,533 to place third, while Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso raked in 1,496,589 to finish a distant fourth.
However, the exercise began to manifest the usual drama that the Nigerian elections come along with. With results from just a handful of states released by the INEC at the National Collation Centre at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, that included the defeat of Jagaban in Lagos, allegations of compromise by INEC began to fly all over the place, culminating in the walkout by a member of the PDP Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), Sen. Dino Melaye, followed by an official of the LP.
Claiming to be speaking for the party representatives at the venue, they called for the cancellation of the exercise and a re-do of the process. However, when the collation resumed after the break that followed the drama, the other 16 party representatives reaffirmed their faith in the exercise. The National Chairman of the Inter Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Engr. Yabagi Sani, speaking on behalf of his members, also thumbed up the process and urged the INEC to carry on.
The bone of contention was the non-uploading of the results from the polling units to the INEC server using the iREV as assured by the Commission’s Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu. The protesters never showed up at the National Collation Centre again until the exercise was concluded and the winner announced.
Although the electoral guidelines stipulated that the results of the presidential poll would be electronically transferred to the INEC server, the commission has the latitude to do otherwise if it is absolutely necessary. A couple of hours after the election was concluded, cyber hawks were said to have launched a massive attack on the INEC server. A total number of 162 coordinated attacks were reportedly launched within 72 hours by the hawks in Nigeria and their collaborators domiciled in Asia, Europe and America in an attempt to precipitate a crisis that would have been worse than what is presently trailing the announcement of the final results. In fact, there would have been no credible results for INEC to come up with, consequently creating an electoral crisis never before witnessed in our democratic peregrinations.
The safest thing for INEC to do in that circumstance and in the overall interest of the nation was to recourse to the manual collation and that appeared to have pulled the rugs from under the feet of the hawks and their sponsors. It was the decision that gave all the three major parties a level playing ground, enabling them to share the 36 states among themselves almost equally.
However, the PDP would have effortlessly regained the power it lost in 2015 to the APC which was an amalgamation of three major political parties, a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and a handful of renegades from the PDP if it had remained united. The fibre of unity that enabled the APC to chase the ruling PDP away from the Aso Rock Villa in 2015 was lacking in the main opposition party in 2023.
First, Obi the Tsunami broke away to join the LP and that turned out to be a huge setback for the party. Then, another torpedo created by Governor Wike and four other governors known as the G5 surfaced. Their grouse was the failure of the party to zone the presidential ticket to the south of the country in the interest of equity and fairness since the outgoing two-term President, Muhammadu Buhari, is not only from the North but also of Fulani stock like Atiku.
But the APC remained relatively united and was able to plough its way through the punishing crises, exemplified by the naira redesigned and the fuel scarcity. All that is history now.
The 2023 presidential poll is done and dusted but not without the usual controversy. The APC presidential flagbearer, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was declared as the man who WON the race and Certificates of Return have been presented to him and his Vice President-Elect, Sen. Kashim Shettima. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the PDP is also claiming to have WON the race. Peter Obi of the LP is insisting that he WON the contest as well. No contest can be more WONderful than the exercise of last weekend!
The battleground has now shifted to the Judiciary. That is the beauty of democracy. Those who want to whip up sentiments and instigate the youths to revolt against the outcome of the poll are the enemies of our fledgling democratic experiment. My advice to the youths is that they should not allow some aggrieved elder statesmen to use their fragile heads to crack coconuts. They may not be alive to partake in the eating of the fruits.
