How did PDP expect win?

The only real surprise from last Saturday’s presidential election was Labour Party (LP)’s Peter Obi’s magical win in Lagos and other parts of the country.

Obi was definitely bound to make some statement on Nigeria’s political landscape. However, he ended up evoking a pocket of tsunamis, the most significant of which is upsetting the 24-year-old “overlord-ship” of Lagos. 

This feat ended over two decades political domination of the state of excellence by All Progressives Congress (APC)’s candidate and now, President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. It was something the almighty People’s Democratic Party (PDP), in its glory days of holding Nigeria’s presidency failed to achieve.

 Realists judged that Obi was far from winning the presidency under the current circumstances. Yet, the wind of change blowing over the country through his candidacy was palpable. So, he was expected to make some impact in the South-East and a splinter of places across the country. He, however, surpassed all expectations, to the credit of the good people of Nigeria, especially the youth and working class.

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) data says that people between the ages of 18 and 45 constitute about 75% of currently registered voters. Obi and his party relied on this demography and the multitude of poor Nigerians to win the presidency.

And this could be a persuasive consideration except for the fact that neither the youth nor the working class has a homogenous philosophy about Nigeria. In other words, all candidates in the election had youthful and working-class supporters who would not buy the Obi gospel for any reason in the world. To assume that every youth, worker, Christian, Muslim, or group for that matter would accept any candidate because some “transformist” members of his demography said so, is therefore presumptuous and unproductive.

 But then, there is something everyone can learn from this election. 

One is that over the past 23 years, Nigerians have come to a better understanding of the power to determine their future. From the widespread impact the LP made, to the clipping of the wings of many state governors who hitherto saw themselves as tin gods, Nigerians have shown that they are ready to take their country. The people eloquently challenged and punctured the overblown ego of the power elite and their penchant for abandoning the people upon attaining political office. It can no longer be business as usual.

Also, despite the flaws that attended this election, INEC gave a fairly good account of itself. The commission must however have learnt that it cannot continue to take citizens for granted. The election management body must take logistics more seriously and ensure that its staff, ad hoc or otherwise, passes the integrity test. This would save the country from the myriad of infractions allegedly recorded on Saturday.

 The jury is still out on whether the failure to deliver on the promises that the Biometric Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and Results Viewing Portal (IREV) hold for electoral integrity in Nigeria, is sabotage or technical failure. But whatever it is, INEC’s most grievous failing in this election is lack of communication.  The commission now attributes the lack of performance to a system failure. While that probable in the circumstance, the question is when did INEC discover the situation? And when it did, why did it fail to take the proactive measure of informing the public about the malfunction? 

By the evening of election day, complaints from the electorate across Nigeria filled the air. At about 7 p.m., Yiaga Africa issued a statement expressing worry about the non-upload of results. Later that evening, the candidate of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, issued a statement asking INEC officials to upload results from the pooling units on IREV. Chairman of the Labour Party, Julius Abure, also asked for the same in Delta and Lagos states. Why did INEC have to wait for that to happen?

In addition to dropping the ball by being improvident, INEC failed to swiftly respond to any of these complaints until one day after the elections. The statement issued by Festus Okoye, its commissioner, and chairman Information and Voter Education on Sunday fell short of known crisis management standards. And this refusal to pre-emptively communicate with, and seek the understanding of stakeholders, already created a crisis of confidence and trust deficit, which will continue to haunt INEC.

The PDP is however the greatest joke of this election season. A shameless party, which has the temerity to attempt to whip up sentiment post-election. How does this party, which learned no lessons from its 2014 history, hope to win with its leaking roof? The first thing a party does is to energise its membership. But this is something the part which rule Nigeria for 16 years is awful at.

The altercation between the party and Governors Nyesom Wike, Samuel Ortom, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, Seyi Makinde, and Okezie Ikpeazu was reminiscent of the defection of Atiku and five governors from the PDP to the APC in February 2014. That defection led to the defeat of former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. Abubakar was part of the 2014 emigration interestingly because he couldn’t realise his presidential ambition in the PDP that year.

 Rather than draw lessons from this antecedent, he and his spokesperson carried on like nothing was at stake. And as the elections drew closer, PDP spokespersons talked like they had the election in the bag. You had to wonder where the confidence came from.

I said this much in: Atiku, not Wike, is the problem, published on August 18, 2020. In the piece, I wrote: “… For anyone who is contesting elections against formidable oppositions like Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and the meteorically rising Obi, the expectation is that no one is too insignificant for a rapprochement. This is more so about the governor of a state, which has presented the highest votes (in the southern part of the country over the past few elections), for your party.

“…But all of this tells more about what Atiku may look like as president than Wike’s relevance to his election. So, leadership is not just about knowing what to do, it is also about the capacity to focus on the most important goals. Leadership is a place of humility, a place of service where, rather than lord it on people, you empathise with them and sacrifice for the good of all. It is a place where you suppress your ego and increase your capacity to forgive, forget and move on. Leadership places responsibility for ensuring unity.

Atiku’s handling of this PDP debacle is a referendum on his capacity to bring Nigeria back on track. If this man cannot stop a raging fire in his minuscule political party until it becomes a national eyesore, how does he hope to bring peace and unity to Nigeria?” 

Well, the party went into the elections without five of its fourteen governors. It lost in all the five states. Of course, the governors are also losing out. It is all about personal interests for them all.

The second mistake the PDP made is to have frustrated Obi out of the party. From the result of this presidential election, Obi is PDP’s main rival. But the arrogance and selfish interests of major elements in the PDP blinded them!

The sweetest part of it all is that the people of Nigeria have won their pride back.  The election reshaped Nigeria’s political map, creating upsets and changing entrenched political believes. In addition to the upset in Lagos, for the first time in our contemporary political history, a candidate loses the pivotal Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, Kebbi and Lagos but goes on to win the Presidency. Yobe state loses its political virginity and unchanging alliances to opposition party. 

The election serves notice on the APC with its arrogance and over-confidence. At least seven of the governors lost their states to opposition parties, while some lost their bid to retire into the senate! It is a notice that the people are now arouse, who voted for Obi in the presidency election but chose two candidates of the Social Democratic Party and one of the PDP for the senate.

This election gives confidence to Nigerians that they own their country and can decide who rules them. Politicians who imagine they can continue to take Nigerians for granted do so at their own risk. 

Adedokun can be reached via Twitter@niranadedokun