THE NATION
NO matter how hard they try, both the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party will be unable to reverse the All Progressives Congress (APC) victory at the February 25 presidential poll. History and the incontestable statistics of the poll weigh heavily against them. They may have resorted to massive display of emotions and street activism, and are inundating the social media with bitter, tendentious and deceptive campaigns to undermine the integrity of the poll, but these too will miscarry. Little by little, as the weeks roll by, they will discover how truly herculean it is to undo a presidential poll result in these parts. In their separate press conferences, the PDP and LP presidential candidates spoke determinedly of their victories at the poll. But surely both can’t be right.
The winner, APC’s Bola Ahmed Tinubu, an ideologue himself, will find it far easier to manage his victory and his party. He is fortunate that most of the governors who worked with him to deliver their states to the ruling party in the presidential poll are fairly ideological and centre-left politicians. The problem the party has had since assuming office in 2015 has been precisely coping with the extreme and countervailing conservatism of President Muhammadu Buhari. With the president’s exit in May, the APC will attempt to reposition itself and produce a tight and ideological party, regardless of the attenuating power of its diluted national spread and pan-Nigerian mandate. On the contrary, both the PDP and LP will probably enter a period of instability occasioned by the lack of ideological purity of their presidential candidates.
Despite his long years in politics, the PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has no proven record of managing or leading a party. He is neither ideological nor patient when his goals are truncated. He prides himself a committed democrat, but he is averse to losing any contest within or outside his party. He has a history of defecting to other parties to further his goals. Since 1999, he has contested the presidency five times, thrice on PDP platform, once on Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) platform, and once on APC platform. He can’t bear defeat. At 76, he probably senses that he has run his last presidential race. Whenever he failed to clinch the presidential ticket, he easily lost interest in staying put in the party or contributing to its management and funding.
