I came across this article and deem it important. I was written by Malcolm Fabiyi through Sahara Reporters.
In 2011, Goodluck Jonathan won the Nigerian
presidential elections. Jonathan’s winning coalition
came from four broad groups of people: His primary
support base was comprised of people who were
fascinated with his “rags to riches” story.
Jonathan’s simple tale of having grown up
“without shoes” was for many people evidence that in a
nation where connections matter – where who you know,
what name you bear and what part of the country you are
from appear to be essential requirements for success -
miracles can still happen, and a man without pedigree or
familial connections, from a minority ethnic group could
become Nigeria’s President.
A second platform of support was from people who had been
appalled by the disgraceful and disrespectful way Jonathan
was treated during Yaradua’s illness. This group believed that
Jonathan’s perseverance in the face of abuse during the
Yaradua transition saga made him deserving of a full term in
office. For this second group of supporters, the fact that
Jonathan had not achieved much in nearly one year in office
since he took over as the de-facto President in February 2010,
did not mean much. They excused Jonathan’s failings and
blamed his lack of policy or administrative success on
saboteurs from the Yaradua cabal. They argued that Jonathan
needed time, as well as his own mandate, to prove himself.
The third group of supporters was comprised of those who
believed that a minority South-South candidate deserved a
full-fledged term in office, and that until that happened,
Nigeria was still principally a nation that worked only for the
benefit of the three major ethnic groups – the Hausa, Igbo
and Yoruba. Finally, there was a group of supporters who saw
all that had happened to Jonathan during the Yaradua
interregnum through the prism of religion. Why was it the
case, they wondered, that the constitutional transition of
power to a democratically elected Christian Vice President had
become contorted and tortuous, when just a little over 10
years before, Abacha’s sudden death had been followed by a
seamless transition of power to another Northern muslim –
General Abdulsalam Abubakar. And so it was, that
circumstances and momentous historical events came
together to provide Goodluck Jonathan with an unlikely but
broad coalition of support that propelled him to victory in the
2011 polls.
While Muhammadu Buhari was not without his own base of
ardent supporters, his one track anti-corruption message did
not catch on. He was also dogged by allegations of religious
fundamentalism that he could not shake off. He was
immensely popular, especially amongst Northern Muslim youth
and southern middle class, intellectual types. Buhari – whom
many of his supporters referred to fondly as “Mai Gaskiya”
which means “the person of truth” - was treated with near
fanatical reverence by many of his supporters in the core
North. However Buhari lacked broad mass appeal and the
clearly lopsided religious basis of his followership became a
cause for concern for most Nigerians. Northern Christians in
particular, who had been victims of the sharia crisis in the
early 2000s and were bearing the brunt of Boko Haram’s
assaults viewed Buhari’s candidacy with some measure of
distrust. Statements that Buhari had made at the height of
the sharia crisis in 2001 had come back to haunt him, and
called to question his dedication to a secular nation and his
commitment to being a leader for all Nigerians.
Buhari’s choice of Pastor Tunde Bakare as his running mate
in 2011 was intended to bolster his ticket’s claims to religious
tolerance. Despite Bakare’s notoriety and immediate name
recognition, he was never able to provide the Buhari ticket
with any strong in-roads into the Christian vote. Bakare is
perhaps the most outspoken Christian cleric in Nigeria, and
has had long running disagreements and issues with the
General Overseers and Senior Pastors of major churches in
Nigeria. For keen observers of the dynamics and
undercurrents of Christian politics in Nigeria, there was a clear
understanding that Bakare’s choice would at best stop the
bleeding for the Buhari ticket – it was unlikely to yield votes
for a Buhari/Bakare candidacy.
Since three of the top four candidates in the 2011 polls were
all muslims (Ribadu/ACN, Buhari/CPC, Shekarau/ANPP), the
greatest beneficiary of a religious vote in 2011 was Goodluck
Jonathan. It is revealing, that of all the Presidential and Vice
Presidential contestants that participated in the 2011 polls,
only one of them – Goodluck Jonathan – was allowed to the
podium of the largest Christian gathering in the world, the
annual Holy Ghost congress at the Redemption Camp, an
event that brings together close to 2 million church goers
from all across Nigeria.
Fast forward to 2014, and much has changed. Goodluck
Jonathan and Buhari are now the only major presidential
contenders. Gone too is the unprecedented goodwill that
brought Jonathan good fortune in the 2011 elections. By
turning his back on the masses by brought him to office; by
insulating himself from the Nigerian people and responding to
well-meaning criticism with the insensitive barks of garrulous
spokesmen; by encouraging corruption at an unprecedented
scale, and playing politics with the most sensitive security
menace that the Nigerian nation has faced in over four
decades, Jonathan has frittered away probably the broadest
coalition ever assembled for a political cause in Nigeria.
With six continuous years as Nigeria’s President, counting
from his elevation to the position of Acting President in
February 2010, Jonathan can no longer blame anyone for his
failures. The Boko Haram insurgency has raged on, unabated.
Jonathan himself claimed that there were people in his
government that supported Boko Haram – yet almost three
years on, there have been no arrests or prosecutions of the
sponsors and supporters of the sect. The Nigerian economy
has languished, and for all the macroeconomic growth that
the government has touted, the Nigerian economy might have
to undergo austerity measures in 2015. The callous removal
of fuel subsidies in 2012 and the obscene levels of corruption
within the Jonathan administration have eroded the image of
the president as someone who understands the challenges of
the masses. The breath of fresh air that Jonathan and the
PDP famously promised in the 2011 elections has become an
odious and putrid stench of corruption and ineptitude that
now threatens to drive him from office.
In addition to the loss of confidence that Jonathan and the
PDP are faced with, the leading opposition parties – the CPC,
ACN, sections of APGA and the ANPP - have coalesced into
the APC. Jonathan’s and the PDP’s considerable electoral and
political advantages have been severely diminished. One area
in which the opposition APC and its candidate for President
continued to lag was in the perception of their platform as
one which has an Islamic bias. Buhari’s prior statements and
unguarded utterances on the issue of religion; the APCs poor
history of religious diversity for elected officials on their party
platform and their failure to quickly quash talk of a possible
Muslim-Muslim combination at the top of the party ticket did
not help matters. Buhari’s naïve talk, as recently as four
weeks ago, of the irrelevance of religion in politics by
reference to the Abiola – Kingibe ticket of 1992 showed that
the General had some learning to do about the nation he
seeks to rule. While it is true that it was only 20 years ago,
that Nigerians took to the polls to elect the all muslim Abiola
– Kingibe ticket, the reality is that this occurred in an age of
innocence. The political climate of 1992 had not been
polluted by the politically motivated sharia crises of the early
2000s, and the sectarian Boko Haram insurgency of the last
decade. It is likely that no prior Vice Presidential pick has
been as important in Nigerian Presidential politics as
Professor Osinbajo’s selection to the APC ticket. The choice
has effectively blunted the claims that the APC has a
sectarian bias. The choice of Professor Osinbajo is a deft
strategic move in other regards. No platform in Christianity in
Nigeria has as much political visibility as the podium of the
redemption camp of the Redeemed Christian Church of God
(RCCG). Few religious leaders in Nigeria command as much
attention and respect as Pastor Enoch Adeboye of the RCCG.
Osinbajo is a respected Pastor of the Redeemed Christian
Church of God, and a very well-known figure in National
Christian circles. Osinbajo has also established strong
relationships across the length and breadth of the country
through his unrelenting efforts towards enhancing the quality
of governance and restoring integrity to public service. Since
Osinbajo’s candidacy was announced, he has already received
public announcements of support from some prominent
Northern Christian leaders, helping to shore up support within
a constituency that Buhari lost by huge margins in the 2011
elections. Osinbajo also brings to the table a strong
understanding of politics, law and the economy.
With the shambolic state of Nigeria’s economy and the open
looting of the national treasury, Buhari’s anti-corruption
message and reputation for probity is starting to take on a
new appeal. His message, which was ahead of its time in
previous elections, is finding resonance now. Buhari has also
grown to understand the expectations of a political leader
better. He seems to have come to a realization that
everything that a leader says and does, matters. Buhari has
become more mindful of his language and more forceful in his
denunciations of Boko Haram. While the Boko Haram crisis is
a complicated issue, one fact is clear – A Buhari/Osinbajo
government should be more decisive in dealing with the crisis.
For Buhari, the crisis has taken on a personal dimension – his
statements on the sect have made him a target. For Osinbajo,
there could be a self-interested angle as well - the Redeemed
Christian Church has suffered more than most other religious
institutions from the Boko Haram crisis. The RCCG has a
presence in every Nigerian State, and in many, if not all, of
Nigeria’s 774 local government areas. A number of their
pastors and churchgoers in the insurgency riddled North
Eastern axis of the country have lost their lives to the crisis.
In Buhari, Nigerians will have an experienced military General,
who understands the importance of being decisive in the face
of an enemy, having a well-equipped and motivated army, and
excising politics from security matters. The APC’s well-
deserved reputation as a party of action, with accomplished
administrators like Babatunde Fashola and Adams Oshiomole
is also adding to its appeal. Nigeria can do with tested and
tried performers and achievers for a change.
The APC still has a lot of work to do in winning over
Nigerians. For all its faults, the PDP has managed to present
itself as a party that offers a broad platform on which all
Nigerians – regardless of their religious and ethnic
backgrounds have been able to find a place. The APC is
starting to demonstrate that it is ready to lead at the center.
Its poor history of religious and gender balance, facts which
the PDP has duly exploited, are being addressed. In Lagos
state, the choice of Akinwunmi Ambode, a highly competent
recently retired Christian civil servant as the APC’s
gubernatorial candidate, over long term party stalwarts
indicates that the party is aware that an albatross of religious
bias still lies around its neck. Interestingly, Ambode the APC’s
Lagos Gubernatorial candidate, is also a member of the
RCCG. As the APC must have hoped, Osinbajo’s choice has
silenced most of the religiously based criticism of the party,
and refocused the 2015 elections on weighty issues and
matters of consequence.
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