2019: The jostle for Buhari’s seat
The next presidential election is barely eight months away. INEC’s timetable has slated it for February 16. Nigerians are yet to fully figure out the candidate and the party that will replace President Buhari and his party the All Progressive Congress (APC), which obviously have failed to live up to the expectations of majority of […]
The next presidential election is barely eight months away. INEC’s timetable has slated it for February 16. Nigerians are yet to fully figure out the candidate and the party that will replace President Buhari and his party the All Progressive Congress (APC), which obviously have failed to live up to the expectations of majority of Nigerians.
However, political pundits aver that the North is favoured to produce the next president to replace President Buhari, with both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), showing preference for a northern candidate for that election.
Let’s take a look at the six heavyweight Presidential aspirants, specifically of Northern extraction where most political parties have zoned their candidacy.
Former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, is not new to presidential election contests in the country as he is not alien to Nigeria politics. He has contested for Nigeria’s number one seat four times within the past two decades, but never scale beyond primary elections, an indication something is wrong.
It is on record that it is only Atiku Abubakar that has openly declared his intention to contest the PDP’s ticket in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, while others have kept their intentions close to their chests. This is another indication that, the Turaki Adamawa, as Atiku is fondly called, though might be a veteran, but the emergence of other bigwigs for the PDP slot might pose another threat to his aspiration this time and as usual.
Borrowed from the word of Speaker Yakubu Dogara, that Buhari cannot lay claim to being the only incorruptible personality in the country. It is suffix to concur with the Speaker that there are certain Nigerians who are as unblemished if morality were to be the game. But for those who see good governance beyond moral uprightness will equally agree there exists some Nigerians with undiluted moral status; impeccable political record, including experience that will help salvage a bad situation and restore hope, then Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher is one.
In solving problems, there is a time to seek an experienced player to salvage a bad situation and restore hope, and there is also a time to beckon on technocrats to do something extraordinary, especially in the game of politics. Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher, a leading African Dramatist and Professor of Theatre and Drama have recently joined the race for the Nigerian seat of power.
Though he is joining this Presidential race more or less as a political underdog, one thing this academician has to his advantage is his academic excellence that has exposed him to the outside world. As one of Africa’s best poet and playwrights, he belongs to contemporary school of thought, among those technocrats who over the years have watched from distance, how the Nigerian economy had been badly polarized until the recent clarion calls by many Nigerians youths for Hagher to join in the race for the apex office in the land as President.
This immediate past pro-Chancellor of Afe Babalola University may have lacked the courage to get involved in a highly polluted Nigerian politics, where corruption has been tagged as holiness rather than stealing as postulated by a former President of Nigeria.
But save for the clarion calls for a technocrat presidency to replace Buhari by youths in Nigerian, this may have propelled Prof. Hagher’s courage to venture into the politics of a pluralistic Nigeria, having realized somebody like him cannot stand aloof and watch the Nigerian economy pummeled further beyond the prevailing damage.
As widely reported in the media recently, it was fanfare on May the 5th, 2018, as Gboko, the ancestral capital of Tiv people in Benue state was agog for the endorsement of Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher by his people.
This largest ethnic group in the North central Nigeria was vehement on the injustice against the region over the years. They believe others have enjoyed Tiv’s support politically since independent and it is time to pay back.
It is also incumbent on every society to take such an action as would help to secure and protect its interest, economy, and peace; having suffered wanton killings and series of genocide attacks, including unending destruction of its communities by the herdsmen.
But according to the paramount ruler of this undisputed fourth largest ethnic nationality in Nigeria, the Tor Tiv, HRH, Prof. James OrteseIorzua Ayatse, he noted that Prof. Hagher was anointed on a mission to rescue Nigeria from its present economic predicament not as a Tiv indigene, but as a trusted technocrat globally known for his pan African campaign on leadership and good governance, which he (Hagher) has demonstrated in his book series.
However, not a few Nigeria believes that for the nation to get out of the current economic quagmire, it would need more than just a President in her search for good leadership ahead of 2019. The country certainly needs a new thinking, a new idea, a new perspective and a new leadership approach to solving its problems, and Iyorwuese Hagher is one aspirant to beat.
Besides, Nigerian youth cannot be wrong in their urge for a fresh blood and not recycled politicians. Having this in mind, it is time Nigerians make a choice to give the nation a new hope, and the two prevailing dynamics are the option of a paradigm shift and the option of settling for an experienced hand with verifiable legacy. One of which must be a detribalised Nigerian. This is where Prof. Iyorwuese qualifies as a viable option.
Dr. Ibrahim Dankwambo is a Politician and Current Governor of Gombe State in the North-Eastern region of Nigeria.
As for Dakwanbo, the 2015 gubernatorial polls were a disaster in the North for a party which touted itself as the largest political party in Africa, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as the party collapsed like a pack of cards, no thanks to the APC Change mantra and Buhari’s factor, but one man stand tall as the only sitting Governor who survive the weather of Change, Governor Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo, who was re-elected mostly on the strength of his achievements in infrastructure.
One formidable barrier in Dakwanbo’s road to Aso Rock is the PDP’s fall from grace, a party struggling to get back to political reckoning after losing power to the ruling All Progressives Congress(APC) in 2015. This may impede Dankwambo’s ability to canvass the entire country for a truly national mandate.
However, with Dankwambo throwing his hat into the presidential ring, his entrance will definitely alter certain existing calculations in his own party, the PDP.
Another aspirant being touted is Sule Lamido, former governor of Jigawa State, who also has not formally declared his intention. Alhaji Sule Lamido, a former two-term governor of Jigawa State, has already commenced campaign for the PDP ticket ahead of 2019. In April last year, he reportedly told newsmen in his village, Bamaina in Birnin Kudu Local Government Area of the State, “If my party finds me worthy of the party’s presidential ticket to serve Nigeria, I will thank God and oblige.”
Though the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said it has no evidence to show that the its former Chairman of the National Caretaker Committee (NCC), Senator Ahmed Makarfi, is nursing a presidential ambition. But Markarfi is also been linked with the race but his seriousness is in doubt. He only made a passing comment to dissuade the belief that the party leadership persuaded Atiku to come back and pick the ticket on a platter of gold.
Senator Ahmed Makarfi was governor of Kaduna State from 1999 to 2007. His outstanding performance in the state shot him into national limelight, seeing him clinch a seat at the Senate in 2007, even though he lost the bid to return a third time in 2015. But his profile in the PDP rose significantly that party members appointed him Chairman of the party at a convention which held in Port-Harcourt.
As the PDP has made it clear that its presidential candidate in the 2019 elections would be from the North, there is the possibility that given the trust key members of the party — especially serving governors — have in him, and given his image as an objective leader and acceptability across geopolitical divides, he might be convinced to run for the party’s presidential ticket in 2019. He recently said in an interview in Lagos that he may likely go for the No.1 office.
Senator Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, a former governor of Kano State and now the senator representing Kano Central has been in the news over his presidential ambition in 2019. But he has not officially made it public whether he is contesting for president in 2019.
But not a few Nigerians wonders what keeps the Kano politician mum over his hidden agenda like other potential presidential aspirants, despite Kwankwanso’s endorsement by political jobbers around the country.
Though quietly, he has continued to oil his political machine, starting from his home state of Kano through the other states of the north before berthing down south. He is said to have set up committees of like-minds including strategists, who are currently working on his project.
Shola Akingboye a media practitioner, writes from Abuja