BusinessDay 07 Jan 2019

BUSINESS DAY
Insight
NEWS YOU CAN TRUST I MONDAY 07 JANUARY 2019
2019 polls: Atiku has the vision but lacks momentum. Why?
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
OLU FASAN
Dr. Fasan, a London-based
lawyer and political economist,
is a Visiting Fellow at the London
School of Economics.
e-mail: o.fasan@lse.ac.uk,
twitter account: @olu_fasan
At every election,
newspapers and
commentators advocate
“issue-based
campaign”. They call
for messages containing ideas
that the candidates want the
voters to support. Yet, just about
40 days before Nigeria’s presidential
election, the ideas of the
two main candidates, President
Muhammadu Buhari and former
Vice President Atiku Abubakar,
are hardly the subject of media
analysis or public discussion,
despite sharp differences in their
messages. For instance, while
Buhari focuses his campaign on
the narrow issues of corruption,
security and the economy, Atiku
sets out wide-ranging talking
points about political, economic
and institutional reforms. Yet,
Buhari is getting most of the
attention, while Atiku appears
to be lacking momentum in the
campaign. Why?
Let’s start with the contrasts
between their ideas. Buhari’s
manifesto is essentially
promising more of the same.
If re-elected, President Buhari
would do nothing differently,
but instead intensify his current
policies, including throwing more
government money at tackling
poverty and unemployment
through the social intervention
programmes. To be honest,
Buhari’smanifesto simply lacks
intellectual depth or “the vision
thing”. But not so Atiku’s plan.
His economic visionis truly
radical, underpinned by extensive
programme of deregulation and
liberalisation. Equally radical are
his proposed political reforms
and anti-corruption strategy.
Take political reforms. Along
standing advocate of political
restructuring, Atiku recalls in his
manifesto that: “At independence,
the various regions were
growing at their own pace with
the political and economic strategies
that suited their individual
peculiarities”. But now, he says,
“the centre has a pervasive
and over-bearing presence and
influence on the other tiers of
government”, adding that “Nigerian
states have been reduced
to parastatals of the federal
government”. So, what would
he do if elected? Well, he would,
among other things, “decongest
the exclusive and concurrent list
in the Constitution”, to devolve
powers, responsibilities and
resources to Nigeria’s sub-units.
What about Atiku’s anticorruption
strategy? Well, this
is far-reaching too. He outlines
an elaborate set of “immediate
actions”that he would take,
if elected. For instance, Atiku
promises that, within his administration’s
“first 100 days in
office”, he would: expeditiously
pass critical legislation “relating
to whistle-blowing, cybercrime,
witness protection, electronic
evidence, and asset forfeiture”;
set up Major Corruption Case
Monitoring and Review Committee
that would include “NGOs,
civil society organisations and
media as observers”; and review
and expedite action on the passage
of all existing and pending
new laws or amendments to all
anti-corruption laws currently in
the National Assembly. Theseare
in addition to medium-term
commitments on detection of
corruption, sanctioning corrupt
practices, institutional strengthening
and reward system.
Which brings me back to my
questions. If everyone wants an
issue-based campaign, why is the
ongoing presidential campaign
not about issues? Why are Atiku’s
elaborate programmes of economic,
political and governance
reforms not being discussed and
scrutinised? Why are comparisons
not being made between
Atiku’s and Buhari’s campaign
promises? And why does Atiku
seem to be struggling in this
campaign, lacking momentum,
despite the intellectual depth and
radical nature of his plans?
Last week, one of Buhari’s
strong supporters mockingly
asked Atiku to throw in the
towel now as his campaign was
going nowhere. Another tweeted
that “Right now @atiku and his
running mate @PeterObi are
more of a liability 43 days to
Presidential election in Nigeria”.
But how could a challenger
who promises to transform
Nigeria politically, economically
and institutionally be more of a
liability than an incumbent who is
focusing his campaign on narrow
issues of corruption, security and
the economy, in spite of his poor
recordon these issues?
Well, there are several reasons
why Atiku appears to be
struggling. The first is that next
month’s presidential election
will not be about issues. It’s
about who has and can inspire
a passionately enthusiastic base.
Unfortunately, Atiku doesn’t have
the fanatical followings that Buhari,
a cult figure, has. Despite the
fact that youth unemployment
rose from 3m in 2015 to 13m
in 2018 (a 263% increase over
3½ years) under Buhari, most
of the poor still prefer him to
Atiku. They see Atiku, a multibillionaire
(allegedly), as part of the
problem, and Buhari, a “sandalwearing
ascetic”, as the solution.
In this regard, the 2016 US
presidential election holds many
lessons for the Nigerian election.
Donald Trump, who could
wow a strong base, the poor
working-class White, most of
who could literally die for him,
beat Hillary Clinton, who, despite
having positive ideas and vision,
inspired little passion or enthusiasm
among her middle-class and
college-educated supporters.
Truth is, Atiku’s support base is
threadbare, compared with the
rural and urban poor who, as
someone puts it, “would die for
Buhari before they knew why”!
Another reason is the integrity
or character factor, and
here, again, we can learn from
America. In the 2016 election,
Donald Trump ceaselessly attacked
the integrity of Hillary
Clinton, repeatedly calling her
“Crooked Hillary”. That fired up
Trump’s base, who truly believed
Clinton was a “criminal”, but
‘ Despite the fact
that youth unemployment
rose
from 3m in 2015
to 13m in 2018
(a 263% increase
over 3½ years)
under Buhari,
most of the poor
still prefer him to
Atiku. They see
Atiku, a multibillionaire
(allegedly),
as part of
the problem, and
Buhari, a “sandalwearing
ascetic”,
as the solution.
,
also dampened the enthusiasm
of Clinton supporters. Scholars
have shown that an incumbent
with a poor record can divert
voters’ attention and shape the
debate in a more advantageous
way. To be sure, the APC cannot
win on its record, on corruption,
security and the economy. But it
is relentlessly playing the integrity
card, painting Atiku and the
PDP as corrupt. That, of course,
is what Buhari’s supporters
believe and want to hear, and it
is energising them. By contrast,
Atiku lacks passionate supporters
who believe enough in him to
counterbalance Buhari’s fanatical
supporters.
The truth is that the perception
issue is working, or might
work, against Atiku in this election.
AzuIshiekwene, a Vanguard
columnist, wrote last week in the
paper that “the indescribable fear
of who the real Atiku in power
could be – that unknowable
quality – makes it a bit easier to
forgive Buhari’s shortcomings”.
He is right. Atiku, as I wrote
recently,“carries a baggage of
negative perceptions and is running
under a party that still has a
serious image problem, a legacy
of PDP’s 16 years in power”. And,
of course, the APC, despite having
its own serious integrity or
character issues, with allegations
of corruption swirling around
the party and the Buhari government,
is successfully defining
the debate about the issue to its
advantage.
Now, another reason for
Atiku’s seeming lack of momentum
is his lukewarm support in
the North. The truth is that Atiku
can’t win the election unless he
can beat Buhari in the North.
Yet, he doesn’t seem to have
enthused the North with his
radical proposals. For instance,
unlike the South, the North is
not enthusiastic about political
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restructuring, some are even
hostile to it. Cleverly, if also
opportunistically, Buhari has positioned
himself as anti-restructuring
to appeal to those parts
of the North that are hostile
to the issue. Of course, Buhari
has also warmed himself to the
hearts of most of the poor in the
North the way that Atiku hasn’t.
What’s more, over the past 3½
years, Buhari has cynically, with
elections in mind, courted the
Fulani herdsmen by refusing to
condemn their rampaging and
killing of farmers in the Middle
Belt and elsewhere in Nigeria.
The recent endorsement of
Buhari for re-election by Miyetti
Allah, the herders’ association,
was clearly a reward for his
sympathy towards their cause.
But, sadly, it bears a similarity
tothe endorsement of Donald
Trump in the 2016 presidential
election by the racist Ku Klux
Klan (KKK)!
The US example brings us
to another reason why Atiku
appears to be struggling in this
campaign: lack of party unity.
Following the bitter presidential
primaries between Hillary Clinton
and Bernie Sanders, which
Sanders’ supporters believed
Clinton won with some skulduggery,
there was schism in
the Democratic Party. Sanders’
supporters refused to campaign
wholeheartedly for Clinton
and some even probably didn’t
vote for her. Some believe that
had Clinton made Sanders her
running mate, just as Barrack
Obama did with Joe Biden, a
fellow primaries contestant, she
might have won the election.
That example has some
salience in Atiku’s case. Although
he won the PDP’s presidential
primaries overwhelmingly, there
are many in the party, including
influential state governors, who
are not enthusiastically supporting
him. A recent report in
Premier Times in which a PDP
governor said Atiku might lose if
“he fails to address the concerns
of party leaders over a plethora
of issues”, including his controversial
choice of Peter Obi
as his running mate, is enough
to dampen enthusiasm of PDP
supporters. Atiku certainly can’t
gain momentum, let alone win
the election, if his party is not
solidly behind him.
Then, finally, there are doubts
about the credibility of Atiku’s
manifesto commitments. Few
believe he can deliver on his
radical manifesto promises. Atiku
certainly needs a landslide victory
to be able to push through
his proposed political, economic
and institutional reforms, including
large-scale privatisation and
political restructuring. Without
a landslide, which is near-impossible,
or a unity government,
which is desirable but unlikely,
Atiku’s promises are seen as pies
in the sky.
So, yes, Atiku has the vision;
he also, apparently, has the competence.
But he is dogged by
several factors undermining his
campaign, some created by his
desperate opponents, the APC,
others by his own party, and yet
others by his own controversial
personality. But can he turn all
these around? Well, we have to
wait and see!
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