2023 presidential election: Do the odds favour Tinubu?

By Joseph Y. Chibok   As things stand today in the political manoeuvres among the political aspirants in our country, who of the three leading presidential candidates stands the best chance of winning next year’s presidential elections in our country? Is it Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress party or is it […]

By Joseph Y. Chibok  

As things stand today in the political manoeuvres among the political aspirants in our country, who of the three leading presidential candidates stands the best chance of winning next year’s presidential elections in our country? Is it Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress party or is it the new entrant to the presidential contest, Peter Obi, of the Labour Party or is it the perennial presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party? 

Recently a leading newspaper carried an analysis on how the leading candidates- Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi – stand ahead of the 2023 election. The conclusion from my analysis of the report is that the odds are much in favour of the APC candidate. 

Even when political pundits point to the fact that the APC lost the recent governorship election in Osun my bet is that it is unlikely to have much impact on the fortunes of the its presidential candidate.  

What are the evidences on the ground to warrant this assertion? Of the three men, it is only Tinubu who has his immediate geo-political zone (the South-West states of Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Ekiti and Oyo) firmly in his grip.   

On this issue Atiku fares particularly disastrously when compared to Tinubu. In spite of Atiku’s long years in politics in general and presidential political contest in particular, he has not been able to carve the North East (Adamawa, Taraba, Borno, Yobe, Bauchi, and Gombe) where he comes from, as a zone solidly in his firm political grips. There is no single state of the North East you can bank on that is exclusively Atiku’s if he is in a presidential contest against any other candidate whether the candidate is northern or southern. Not even Adamawa his home state nor Taraba his most neighbourly state!   

How does Obi of the Labour Party fare in this particular criterion? Obi does not do any better than Atiku in this regard and is not in any way near Bola Tinubu at all. Is spite of the waves I and many other observers acknowledge he is making on social media, one cannot be sure that the South-East is his firm zone. 

The test for that is going to come in 2023 and given the prospects on the ground, the South East is going to be evenly divided between the Labour Party and the PDP with the APC even having a big chunk of the share. Many bigwigs of the PDP and the APC who have a foothold in the South East region have been openly saying that they and their parties have something to fight for in the region and they will not just let that go because an Obi is from their territory. 

Let us leave the political zone of origins of the leading candidates and consider the immediate contiguous zone to their own. In the North Central Zone (comprising Kwara, Kogi, Niger, Nasarawa, Plateau and Benue) which is contiguous to Tinubu’s South West, the first five states are at present solid APC states which are undeniably going to vote for Tinubu. Remember that much of Kwara and Kogi are culturally and geographically South Western and only geo-politically North.  

In Niger and Plateau, Tinubu will also reap the benefit of his party’s hold on those states while in Benue which is the only state of the zone that is PDP, the fall-out between Atiku and Governor Wike and Governor Samuel Ortom’s sympathy and solidarity with Wike will tilt the balance of decision in favour of the Asiwaju. 

South-South Zone (comprising Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Delta, Bayelsa and Edo) is the contiguous zone to Peter Obi’s South East. All the states of this zone are almost solidly PDP but given the current wrangling between Atiku and the hierarchy of the PDP and Rivers State Governor Wike, the future of the presidential contest in these states cannot now be correctly predicted. 

Atiku’s immediate contiguous zone is the North West (comprising Kaduna, Kano, Kebbi, Katsina, Sokoto, Jigawa and Zamfara. Here, Atiku’s selling points are his religious affinity and kinship with many of the voters of the region. Unfortunately for him, however, this is one of the strongholds of Tinubu’s All Progressives Congress  Those who owe Atiku votes on the basis of religious affinity also owe Tinubu their votes on the same consideration but will consider the higher point of party loyalty to which they can also derive their well-being.  

In addition to his political clout and spread, Tinubu is being complemented by a capable, competent and suave vice-presidential candidate in the person of Senator Kashim Shettima.  

Because Shettima is on the ticket, it’s taken for granted that 99.9% of the voters in Borno and Yobe States will vote for the APC ditto Gombe because of its affinity to the people of Yobe and Gombe is also under the firm grips of the APC. 

On the other hand, the vice-presidential candidate of the PDP, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa has to contend with powerful forces in APC in Delta State such as Senator Ovie Omo-Agege.  

 

Chiboks wrote from Abuja