The emergence of former President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), former Senate President in the ill-fated Third Republic and former minister in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s cabinet, Benue-born Professor Iyorchia Ayu as northern consensus candidate for the position of national chairman remains the clearest political gambit yet by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the intricate contest for the soul of Nigeria in 2023.
It was obvious from the outset of the PDP’s consensus arrangement that the opposition party was working on an unusual menu with which it plans to feed Nigerians and the world in 2023. It seems that the PDP is determined to want to act against popular expectations around predetermined processes and events, anchored on the principles of morality and fairness, to see presidential position move to the southern part of Nigeria.
The movement would be consequent upon the conclusion of an eight-year presidential tenure of a northerner, President Muhammadu Buhari, and rotation of presidential power to the southern part of the country-an arrangement that is settled within the governing All Progressives Congress (APC). It is morally-binding on the APC to allow presidential power to rotate to the southern part of Nigeria, regardless of the questionable notions that the north is more than the south in terms of voter population and that the vast majority of core northerners want presidential power to remain in their part of the country.
It is the expected emergence of a president of southern Nigeria extraction that some very powerful elements in the PDP, leveraging on those questionable notions, appear desperate to upstage in 2023 to hold down presidential power in the north, in the belief that it is the only way to defeat the APC in the next poll. Besides, the pretext that zoning arrangement is fluid, not constitutional, and that it is subject to the decision and determination of the majority members of the party on how it is complied with or exercisable at any time in the exercise of the power of democratic choice(s), is feeding their political and electoral calculations and moves.
The moves both overt and covert by the PDP leaders point to the emergence of former Vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, as the party’s presidential candidate in 2023. In 2019, when Atiku Abubakar ran against President Muhammadu Buhari, the contest was keen. If it was not for the alleged deployment of the instrumentality of sundry government agencies and other moves made by the powers-that-be, the outcome of the election could have been different. Perhaps, the nation could have had an Atiku Abubakar presidency in place since 2019.
In 2023, Buhari will not be on the ballot for the APC. A presidential candidate is expected to emerge from the South of Nigeria. The PDP’s calculations are that Atiku Abubakar, with a voter support base of over ten million as shown in the outcome of the 2019 presidential election, is guaranteed to retain about that number. And, as it is, Atiku is the only politician with the nationwide network that guarantees a formidable opposition that can stymie APC’s presidential victory in 2023. This is the reason, the opposition party is desperate to chart that trajectory, regardless of the possible political cum electoral risks, that is if there is any that is potent.
It is further calculated that once the APC settles for a southern candidate, it will become easier to play up regional politics to get the vast majority of uneducated northern voters to cast their votes for their own-Atiku Abubakar. It is also very possible that many educated northerners will embrace this regional consideration.
Atiku Abubakar, pitched against any southern candidate, will get the overwhelming support of the Northwest, Northeast and North Central. With the support of the party machinery in the South-south and Southeast zones (his running mate is calculated to come from either of these zones), the PDP ticket is expected to be home and dry in 2023.
These are the initial calculations, which would be worked and reworked as time goes on, upon which the decision to cede the National chair, for now, was taken: to create a facade that the party would likely pick its presidential candidate from the southern region. This could be the party’s Plan B and if it is, every indication points to the fact that the plan is very weak and exists for the sake of it.
Feelers from circles conversant with the PDP 2023 presidential gambit point to the desperation by the opposition party to ambush the presidency from the South. And given the not-too-impressive rating that the APC Federal Government suffers in the areas of worsening insecurity and economic crises, the PDP’s further calculations are that unsafe, insecure, angry and hungry Nigerians will not bother about political correctness of zoning or will not chuckle at its immorality or injustice not to support APC’s Southern presidential candidate who would be largely seen through the lenses of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari’s “uninspiring” performance to continue with the seeming era of “gloom and pains” that the administration has purportedly exemplified especially in its second term.
When the time comes for the presidential primary election, there will be noises, concerns and all manner of arguments; but once Atiku Abubakar, programmed to emerge, does emerge, it will not be difficult for his political ally, Iyorchia Ayu, to accede to any process -whether a special convention or appointment or announcement- emplaced by the PDP NEC to replace him to strike a regional balance: President from the North and National Chairman from the South. This is the scenario that is crystallising from the initial analyses by The CONCLAVE BOARD OF EDITORS.
Keep your fingers crossed as the Board keeps a tab on the unfolding 2023 presidential politicking.
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