•Why He Lost Out To TINUBU
The presidential elections may have come and gone but it has remained the most talked about sublect in the country right now. The winning party and the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, are still basking in the euphoria of their hard fought victory. The losers, on the other hand, are still sulking and threatening to go to court to contest the results. Obviously the most visibly shaken by the results is the PDP and it’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar. He had high hopes of winning the election. He was confident he was capable of defeating the APC candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, but in the end, things did not work out for him as planned.
What went wrong? How did Atiku, an experienced politician who had been taken shots at the presidency for decades running, lose to Tinubu, who was taking his first shot? Many political analysts have given several reasons for the inability of Atiku to win the presidential election. The most obvious reason will surely be his fall out with the G-5 Integrity group led by Governor Nyesom Wike. The group had insisted the national Chairman, Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, had to resign because the party’s presidential flagbearer, Atiku Abubakar, was from the northern region of the country just like Ayu. And the party’s constitution states clearly that such arrangement is unacceptable. But Atiku called the bluff of the G-5 and insisted he would go ahead with the elections without their support. In the end, the PDP lost several states such as Rivers, a PDP state to APC. It also lost Oyo to APC, lost Benue to LP, etc. And these were states PDP expected it would put in the bag.
The Peter Obi factor was also a major set back for the PDP. In 2018, Atiku, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party for the 2019 election named former Anambra state governor, Peter Obi, his running mate. In 2022, Peter Obi resigned from the PDP when he discovered that he won’t be given the 2023 presidential ticket. Obi who eventually joined the Labour Party became the darling of youths who call themselves Obedients. With the Obedients, Obi was able to capture the southeast, his home region alongside millions of youths who are tired of the old order of politicians. Traditionally, the southeast has been the stronghold of the PDP. However, it fell to Obi with a wide margin. Even in Lagos State where the PDP traditionally gives the APC a run for its money, the party did so poorly leaving the APC and the Labour Party to share the spoils between them and Peter Obi won the state with a slim margin, beating APC to it.
Many also believe one of the reasons Atiku lost the presidential election was because he was up against arguably the biggest political strategist in the land in the person of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC. Tinubu has consistently shown that he is the Master strategist when it comes to the game of politics. He never lost any election before and he showed the desire and hunger to win this one more than any of the other presidential candidates. He had a gruelling campaign tour that took him round 35 out of the 36 states of the federation. Asiwaju was cleartly the most prepared for the election. He had a better structured campaign tour and worked with some of the best hands you can possibly find in the country. Most of them are veterans when it comes to electioneering canmpaigns. These are men who breathe, sleep, think politics and campaign strategies. Call them the most prolific campaign strategists in the land and you wont be wrong. A few of them are Mr. Dele Alake, Femi Fani Kayode, Bayo Onanuga, Festus Keyamo and a few others.
Another reason political observers gave for the inability of Atiku tro win the just concluded presidential election, which many already believe will be his last shot at the presiderncy, is his arrogance and failure to listen to superior arguments. Some say it is a Fulani attitudinal problem. They feel they know it all so they barely listen when you try to make them see things from a different perspective. It has been said that those around Atiku Abubakar are often careful when dealing with him. His mood swings puts them on the edge all the time. You have to be sure when to offer a word of advice because he could snap at you and embarrass you with a scathing remark. The arrogance is somethiong many of his aides still can’t deal with.
For instance, when the brouhaha with the G-5 reached a point where it looked pretty clear the group was not ready to bulge, there were calls from within the party on Atiku to accede to their demand and ask Ayu to step down but Atiku ignored them, calling the five governors boys who had little erxperience in politics. He said they were in the secondary school or in the university when he and a few others were building the party from the scratch. He called their bluff and paid dearly for it. Atiku certainly must be licking his wounds now.
One major issue the PDP presidential candidate also had to deal with is the fact that many just couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that being a northerner, a core Fulani ;like President Buhari, it just didn’t make sense to them that after Buhari’s tenure, one which hasn’t been exactly remarkable to say the least, another Fulani man would now be taking over. Many just couldn’t process that and resented the very thought of it. So, votes that ordinarily should’ve gone to the PDP went to other parties simply because many were angry with Atiku for not keeping to the zoning constitution of his party, the PDP.
The 2023 presidential election has come and gone and a winner has emerged. There are indications that aggrieved parties may soon head to the courts. They claim the election was fraught with irregularities and massive rigging as well as INEC’s refusal to upload results in real time. It remains to be seen how much dividends this move will yield, but one thing can be certain, it is going to be one long and headless case.
-WALE LAWAL
(08037209290)
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