The governing party has taken a hit in the National Assembly but Goodluck Jonathan remains favourite to win the presidential vote
Parliamentary elections on 9 April showed that Nigerians are no longer willing to be taken for granted by the People’s Democratic Party, which has towered over the political scene for twelve years. Indeed, the PDP’s dominance of the National Assembly was the main casualty. Most observers think this a good start in moving towards greater accountability. The PDP could well lose its overall majority in the Assembly but many results will be disputed. In the 2007 polls, the PDP had won 87 of the 109 Senate seats and 263 of 360 in the House of Representatives: that will be sharply cut.
Logistical problems meant the polls had to move from 2 April; in 15 senatorial districts and 48 federal constituencies, the vote will be on 26 April. Yet the Independent National Electoral Commission emerged with credit. The European Union’s Chief Observer, Alojz Peterle, commended INEC for a job well done, as did Johnnie Carson, the United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.
The presidential poll is on 16 April but many who voted against the PDP in the legislative elections may still vote for PDP candidate Goodluck Jonathan, according to independent opinion polls, which forecast that the President should get about 60% of the national vote. Certainly, Jonathan will top the poll but, after a lacklustre campaign, he may not win the minimum 25% in two-thirds of the electoral districts needed to avoid a second round.
Jonathan will be strongly challenged by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Labour Party (LP) and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the south, and by the All-Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) and Congress for Progressive Change in the north. His probable second-round opponent would be the CPC’s candidate, the former military leader Major General Muhammadu Buhari, with strong support from the ACN. Unlike his predecessors, Jonathan has so far proved willing to give INEC’s Chairman (the democracy activist Professor Attahiru Jega) the independence to do his job thoroughly.
There were last-minute talks about an ACN-CPC alliance this week, and there was some basis for agreement between Buhari and ACN candidate Nuhu Ribadu but the negotiations may prove too late in the day. The anti-corruption enthusiasm of both Ribadu and Buhari worry the northern elite such as the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, and former President Shehu Shagari, who was ousted by Buhari in a military coup in 1983.
Kaduna problems for the PDP
The PDP did well in some northern states, such as Sokoto and ANPP-governed Kano, which has long been a flashpoint for election disputes and political violence. Yet in Kaduna, from where Vice-President Namadi Sambo hails, the CPC appears to have trounced the PDP, a worrying sign for Jonathan’s support-base before the presidential vote.
President Jonathan is the frontrunner and Nigeria’s first Ijaw and Niger Delta leader. High oil prices are helping him and he has plenty of money with which to bolster support. Business magnates, keen to profit from the sale of oil blocks, are backing him, as are some foreign investors. They like power supply reform and the sovereign wealth fund, both recently passed into law. Passing the long-delayed Petroleum Industry Bill will be harder, however, given the PDP’s weakness in the Assembly. Strong US and British endorsement of Jonathan in May 2010 has weakened over the past year, as progress on greater accountability and economic reform has faltered.
The power behind the throne was another ex-President, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo. He hails from Ota in Ogun State in the Yoruba-dominated south-west, where economic and demographic power will concentrate in coming decades. In the 18 districts of the six south-western states, the PDP held on to just one senatorial seat. Indeed, Obasanjo’s daughter, Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, failed in her bid in Ogun State to get into the Senate in PDP colours amid bitterness from the party’s Gbenga Daniel faction there. The sweeping defeat of the PDP in the south-west could weaken Obasanjo’s influence over the party, yet he will still keep his authority as a trusted advisor to Jonathan on foreign policy and military matters.
For the south-west, the new king-maker is Obasanjo’s sworn enemy, Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ACN. Tinubu, who had a chequered career as a businessman in the US, is a sworn enemy of Obasanjo and inspires loathing and respect in almost equal measure. Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola of Lagos State is highly rated for his work there but has also had differences with Tinubu. Sweeping victories for the ACN in the south-west challenge the PDP seriously but it will struggle to present itself as a national party. That seemed to be the logic behind selecting Ribadu, from the north-west, as ACN presidential candidate, with his running mate from Lagos, tycoon and democracy campaigner Tajudeen Afolabi (‘Fola’) Adeola.
Even after a year in office, Jonathan is yet to acquire the presidential gravitas that would make it easier to deal with Nigeria’s insistent and well resourced vested interests. His emergence as presidential candidate for the PDP juggernaut and his defeat en route of four rich and powerful northern contenders suggested that many had underestimated him. Nevertheless, he is one of the least experienced politicians to have held the presidency: for some, his lack of status as a professional politician may be part of his attraction, for others it may conjure a vision of a naive or malleable figure who won’t be able to stand up to powerful political and business lobbyists.Whoever wins the presidential vote will face strong lobbying by groups such as the Arewa Consultative Forum in the north and the South-South political organisations under the tutelage of veteran campaigner Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, from the Niger Delta, whose access to some of the militants has helped Jonathan to subdue some of the festering unrest in Nigeria’s main oil-producing region.
A big question is whether the winner will follow the example of Gen. Yakubu Gowon, the former military head of state who presided over the enlightened ‘no victor, no vanquished’ policy after the civil war in 1967-70 and appointed a cabinet of the most able, possibly future presidential, politicians, alongside technocrats. On all sides, that would mean a president who was prepared to break with precedent and not allocate the key ministerial portfolios such as petroleum, works and housing, water resources and internal affairs to close political and business associates.
IBB and OBJ fear revenge
Former leaders such as Ibrahim Babangida and Obasanjo will seek to win over the successful candidate to ensure they are not called to account. Of the two leading candidates, Buhari looks more likely than Jonathan to delve into allegations of impropriety. Babangida overthrew Buhari in a coup in 1985 and Buhari believed Obasanjo had cheated him of victory in successive elections.
The new president will have to balance such imperatives as dealing with demands for justice and accountability along with pressure for economic reform. After the election, there will be growing pressure for the presidency to cut state patronage and to push ahead with critical reforms in the oil industry and financial services. A key partner here will be the radical Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi, with whom all the candidates say they want to work. Already Mallam Sanusi is speaking of a second round of sweeping reform in the banking system; the last round in August 2009 resulted in the sacking of six bank chief executives.
Cleaning up the political system may prove tougher still. The habits of rigging, vote-buying and intimidation still abound but pressure from the ballot box should make the PDP more amenable to change. Nigerians are generally fed up with the party and a more aware and vocal civil society, aided by technology, could keep the excesses of the politicians in check.
All the same, says a leading politician, ‘blood will flow’. In the south-east, Akwa Ibom and Delta states are vulnerable, with police clamping down hard on activists. The heated election competition has thrown up dangerous operators such as Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State. During the governorship electoral rerun in Delta State, Chief Great Ogboru was leading until polling officers in Koko, near Warri, were forced at gunpoint to thumbprint extra ballots.
There were disturbances and ballot-snatching in the Delta, bombings in the outskirts of the federal capital, which left 13 people dead in Suleja, Niger State, and two bombings in Maiduguri, Borno State, home of the Boko Haram sect of Islamist radicals. Yet even after the initial problems that caused the postponement of the poll, INEC Chairman Jega looked heroic for organising what many believe to be credible National Assembly elections. The comparison starts with a low base with the 2007 elections, when only 20% of votes are believed to have been counted and less than a fifth of the names on the electoral register were genuine.
A big loss for the PDP was that of Dimeji Bankole, the Speaker of the House, in Abeokuta, Ogun State. Governor of Abia (and publisher of The Sun newspaper) Orji Uzor Kalu lost the Abia North senatorial constituency to the incumbent, Uche Chukwumerije. Maryam Yar’Adua, daughter of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, lost her House of Representatives contest for Katsina to the CPC candidate, Mohammed Tukur.
For political insiders in Abuja, developments after the elections could see a trade-off between political reform and democratic freedom on one hand and the sense of a strong, national, political direction from the centre. The devolution of power, helped by four years of a relatively weak presidency and more strident national legislators and state governors, has been happening for much of the past decade. This means a more pluralistic and less predictable polity: it will also accelerate the weakening of the PDP’s national muscle. For those business people who have attached their banners to the PDP, there may be efforts to build new relations with other parties. Foreign companies which had lobbied the PDP will have to handle the new government with more sophistication.
The growth of the ACN in the south-west, the CPC and ANPP in the north, the LP in the south-centre and the APGA in the south-east will weaken the PDP nationally but open up new avenues into politics for the non-PDP elites. Under the evolving electoral picture, the south-west will become once more an enclave of regional opposition, since the ACN and LP swept the board there, far into mid-Delta. The region had previously voted PDP because Obasanjo was one of its own. That might reduce the region’s muscle at the federal centre but some argue that Lagos and Ondo State are rich and can carry the other south-western states along. The revenue base of Lagos alone is bigger than that of ten northern states put together.
Bombings and political instability continue in the Middle Belt and the north-east, as well as the Delta. None of the bombers has been caught since Jonathan became President and he may not be able to rectify that. The President visited the hospitals for photo-opportunities with Suleja bombing victims but there are worries about the police’s lack of capacity to make progress with the investigations.
In Maiduguri, two bombings on the same day targeted INEC collation centres and Boko Haram is believed to have links with local politicians. The bombings in the north could continue over the next two weeks of elections and even after the presidential inauguration. A raft of issues infuriate the militants: the conservative elite feels cheated by the unresolved north-south issues in the PDP and the talakawa (working people) face higher prices, lower wages and rising unemployment, amid often bitter disputes over land.
Those grievances are repeated in the Middle Belt in confrontations in states such as Plateau and Benue, with added polarisation between Christian and Islamic fundamentalist sects and opportunist politicians seeking to exploit the divides.
Other parties and their candidates are manoeuvring for position. Ndutimi Alaibe, formerly of the PDP and former Special Advisor on the Niger Delta, is now in the LP and running for the governorship of Bayelsa State, Jonathan’s home ground. He joined the LP less than seven months ago, when the PDP found it awkward to dump Governor Timipre Sylva. Some believe that if Jonathan is elected, he will welcome Alaibe back into the PDP family. Such scenarios may unfold in many areas where the PDP has lost ground. If Jonathan wins, politicians in smaller parties will defect to his PDP. No fewer than 45 parties have endorsed him for president.
The holding of this election is the first step towards reintegrating the people of the oil-rich Delta into mainstream politics since the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995 and the start of militant insurgency there. Now Jonathan, one of their own, is set to win a presidential election.
Nigerians have a new bounce in their step as they realise that their votes actually count, giving credibility to the democratic process – and keeping the military in their barracks for now. However, Nigeria’s complexities and deep social inequities mean that no one, least of all the victors after the current round of elections, can afford to be complacent.
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