Sunday Musings: On Pa Adebanjo and 2023 - by Mobolaji Aluko

[Mobolaji Aluko]

Sunday Musings:  On Pa Adebanjo and 2023

August 28, 2022

Powerful points by Afenifere Chieftain Ayo Adebanjo were made recently  in a trending video, essentially a socio-political harangue on the choices for the presidency  before the Nigerian People in 2023.  Powerful but flawed in many ways.

Please come with me...

1.  What political party does Chief Ayo Adebanjo actually belong to?   It is that party that he should be speaking WITHIN, not BROADLY to  specify to just any party HOW to select its own presidential flag bearer,  strictly a party affair. 

2. After all, Afenifere is NOT  a political party, for if it was, with its UNBENDING principles, it could choose whoever it thinks rotationally fit, and sell him or her to the Nigerian electorate.

3.  There have only been five democratically elected Presidents in Nigeria since 1979, in order: Shagari (NPN, Fulani), Obasanjo (PDP, Yoruba), Yaradua (PDP, Fulani),  Jonathan (PDP, Ijaw) and Buhari (APC, Fulani).  Presidential candidates are chosen by political parties, and presidents by popular mandate of the People.  The rotational principle between North and South presidential  candidacies is a fair one to expect. In that case, Pa Adebanjo has no basis to harangue PDP for its choice of a Northern candidate (Atiku), nor APC that has chosen a Southern one (Tinubu). Any other political party - having not offered the country a president before - should be able to choose from any of the two regions without harangue, eg Obi for Labor, Kwakwanso for NNNP and Sowore for AAC, to name just three more.

4. At another level of rotational principle is the geo-zonal, and if he must, arising from Point #3 above, Chief Adebanjo could have harangued PDP if it did chose its candidate from the NE and NC geo-political zones, or APC for not choosing its candidate from the SW or SE.  Any other harangue is unfair. However, the PDP, having rightly chosen from the NE (Atiku is from Adamawa)  now chooses a Fulani again - like its previous candidate President Yar'adua.  So in this situation, Adebanjo  could have a case with the PDP for settling for a Fulani again, but  no case whatsoever against the APC for settling on a Yoruba candidate Tinubu (from SW) for itself. However, it must be noted that NONE  of these five previous/present presidents was actually elected strictly on their geo-political zone of origin or on ethnicity, but purely on extant political situations, so even a harangue along geo-zonal or ethnic lines has its limitations. (The exceptional case of Obasanjo will be considered below.)

5.  Chief Adebanjo must recognize that Nigeria is not composed only of Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Ijaw, Bini, Tiv, Efik ethnic groups but rather maybe three hundred plus other ethnic groups.  Therefore to harangue based on the issue that it is the turn of a particular ethnic group no matter how "major" to the Presidency is absurd. Even Tinubu has not argued that:  Emilokan is not Awalokan.

The peculiar case of Yoruba Obasanjo - contesting against Yoruba Falae in 1999 - gaining from the abortion of Yoruba MKO Abiola's putative presidency - is a queer one:  Obasanjo was not Yoruba's choice then,  rather an imposed choice for the Yoruba, but  the People decided, and he was respected. 

6. Every political party chooses candidates from its membership, and hopes that that candidate is in a best position to win.  To require a party to choose its flag bearer based on national rotational principles - irrespective of whether a particular ethnic group is adequately represented in the party or not - is absurd.  For example, to be more specific,  Igbo profile is highest in APGA political party, next in PDP, and to a far less extent in APC, although it has been rising in APC recently.  Adebanjo, if he must, can harangue APGA and PDP more about Igbo candidacy before doing so on the APC.  Delegate votes in primaries should also reflect those aspirations clearly, despite real and imagined financial inducements.

 7.  Finally, there is the odd harangue by Pa Adebanjo that APC should (in effect) voluntarily withdraw from the next presidential election because it has "failed woefully" since 2015.  With all due respect, that is jejune, and every political party, including an incumbent in power,  will present its balance sheet, mea culpas and all, and let the People decide in a weighted balance of Past Party Performance, Current Candidate Credentials/Promises, and Alternative Canddates in the Field.

So, yes Pa Adebanjo has every right to express his views, but in a democracy, it is the Parties that decide candidates first, then the People the winner(s) later.

There you have it.

Bolaji Aluko

August 28, 2022

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[Okey Iheduru]

Buhari’s Legacy and Tinubu’s Albatross

Backpage | August 26, 2022

THIS REPUBLIC BY Shaka Momodu

Fellow Nigerians, it is the season of politics and another election cycle is upon us. Candidates are presenting themselves to the electorate to be considered for various positions. But this cycle is looking more and more like 2015 when men and women, young and old, reasoned in reverse order. All efforts to make them see the danger and demagoguery that then-candidate Muhammadu Buhari represented proved futile. They were deaf to reason and blind to the red flags.  

Today, we are all experiencing the consequences of electing incompetence dressed in borrowed robes as president. See the mess that Nigeria has become – a tragedy of monumental proportions. In just eight years, Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC) have turned Nigeria upside down, a land flowing with milk and honey, has been turned into a famished land. They say once bitten, twice shy, but strangely, many are at it again, eager to repeat their foolery.  

As I have consistently stated, Nigerians are incredibly smart people, with a history of foolish choices.  Is it not baffling that despite the   damage done to this country by the APC in nearly eight years of staggering misrule that is palpable even to the blind,  that some people still support it to remain in power, from top to the bottom of the social class?  

Really, I don’t know what to make of such people. I have argued in many private discussions that a lot more people need psychiatric examinations than I had previously thought. Because I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone in their right senses is promoting APC to retain power, how much more campaigning for someone with a reputation for dirty dealing like Bola Ahmed Tinubu as a candidate for president. How? Is this what our country has become?

On what basis is the party even presenting candidates for various positions in the forthcoming general election? Shouldn’t it rather be apologising every day for the escalating insecurity in the land? Why are Nigerians not holding the APC to account for the nation’s worsening insecurity?

Read more:   https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2022/08/26/buharis-legacy-and-tinubus-albatross/

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Okey C. Iheduru

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

How is APC different from PDP?

Is it not the same carpet crossing characters?

Thanks

Toyin

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[Mobolaji Aluko]

TF:

1.  PDP was formed in 1998, APC in 2013.

2. The PDP was in power at the federal level and in most states from 1999 to 2015; APC has taken over since then.

3.  The churn rate of carpet crossers have been more in PDP, I believe, than in APC. Many PDP have crossed, re-crossed, un-crossed and re-re-crossed.   Atiku is an example, Shekarau is another.  Segun Oni is our Yoruba example, and Okey Iheduru can give us others. 

I yield.

Bolaji Aluko 

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[Mobolaji Aluko]

Okey:

Haba, this is too long a diatribe from Shaka Momodu...I thought that every paragraph was going to be the last - until a new topic was raised, and ten more paragraphs followed.

It was tedious to read.

Bolaji Aluko 

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[Toyin Falola]

My people:

You are confusing Adepoju with me. This has become so common that people confuse his opinions with mine because we bear the same name.

TF

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[Assensoh, Akwasi B.]

Dear VC Aluko (You're always my VC, no matter what!):

Thank you very much for your very supreme statistical knowledge. What you often offer us statistically, as fellow scholars, is priceless.

Please, continue the great public service!

Hopefully, African nations -- particularly Nigeria and its twin cousin, Ghana -- will start to enshrine the following in their constitutions about parliamentary (or political) carpet-crossers, re-crossers, and re-re-crossers: if you are in Parliament, and you cross-carpet, then resign your seat and re-contest in a by-election to get re-elected into Parliament!

In that way, many politicians will think twice or more before they even dream about crossing carpets. Simply resigning from a political party and moving to the opposing side to sit down, in a business-as-usual manner, makes it too easy for those that Baba Ijebu would have described as "gyau gyau" politicians). 

In the famous words of VC Aluko: There you have it!!

A.B. Assensoh.

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