The struggle for presidency begins…

General elections will be held in Nigeria on 16 February 2019 to elect the President and members of the National Assembly. They will be the sixth quadrennial elections since the end of military rule in 1999.

The President of Nigeria is elected using a simple majority of the highest votes cast, as well as over 25% of the votes in at least two-thirds of states. The 360 members of the House of Representatives are elected using first-past-the-post voting in single-member constituency while the 109 members of the Senate are elected from 108 single-seat constituencies into which the States are divided (three each) and one single-seat constituency consisting the Federal Capital Territory, all by first-past-the-post voting.

In this article The Issues Magazine will like to throw a search light on some major presidential candidates’ profiles, political parties and parties manifestoes and the yearnings of Nigerians home and abroad.

* Muhammadu Buhari of All Progressives Congress (APC) Muhammadu Buhari GCFR was born on 17th December 1942 is a Nigerian politician currently serving as the President of Nigeria, in office since 2015. He is a retired major general in the Nigerian Army and previously served as the nation’s head of state from 31 December 1983 to 27 August 1985, after taking power in a military coup d’etat.

The term Buharism is ascribed to the Buhari military government. He unsuccessfully ran for the office of president of Nigeria in the 2003, 2007, and 2011 general elections. In December 2014, he emerged as the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress for the March 2015 general elections. Buhari won the election, defeating the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan. This marked the first time in the history of Nigeria that an incumbent president lost to an opposition candidate in a general election. He was sworn in on 29 May 2015.

Buhari has stated that he takes responsibility for anything over which he presided during his military rule, and that he cannot change the past. He has described himself as a “converted democrat”. Muhammadu Buhari is therefore seeking reelection to lead Nigeria for the second term on the platform of the All Progressive Congress in the forthcoming election. In 2003, Buhari ran for office in the presidential election as the candidate of the All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP).

He was defeated by the People’s Democratic Party nominee, President Olus?gun ?basanj? , by a margin of more than 11 million votes. 2007 presidential election. On 18 December 2006, Gen. Buhari was nominated as the consensus candidate of the All Nigeria People’s Party. His main challenger in the April 2007 polls was the ruling PDP candidate, Umaru Yar’Adua , who hailed from the same home state of Katsina .

In the election, Buhari officially took 18% of the vote against 70% for Yar’Adua, but Buhari rejected these results. After Yar’Adua took office, the ANPP agreed to join his government, but Buhari denounced this agreement. 2011 presidential elections, in March 2010 Buhari left the ANPP for the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), a party that he had helped to found. He said that he had supported foundation of the CPC “as a solution to the debilitating, ethical and ideological conflicts in my former party the ANPP”.

Buhari was the CPC Presidential candidate in 16 April 2011 general election, running against incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu of Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), and Ibrahim Shekarau of ANPP. They were the major contenders among 20 contestants. He was campaigning on an anti-corruption platform and pledged to remove immunity protections from government officials.

He also gave support to enforcement of Sharia law in Nigeria’s northern states, which had previously caused him political difficulties among Christian voters in the country’s south. The elections were marred by widespread sectarian violence, which claimed the lives of 800 people across the country, as Buhari’s supporters attacked Christian settlements in the country’s centre regions. The three-day uprising was blamed in part on Buhari’s inflammatory comments. In spite of assurances from Human Rights Watch, who had judged the elections as “among the fairest in Nigeria’s history”, Buhari claimed that the poll was flawed and warned that “If what happened in 2011 should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood”.

However, he remains a “folk hero” to some for his vocal opposition to corruption. Buhari won 12,214,853 votes, coming in second to the incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP, who polled 22,495,187 votes and was declared the winner. In the run-up to the 2015 Presidential elections, the campaign team of incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan asked for the disqualification of General Buhari from the election, claiming that he is in breach of the Constitution. According to the fundamental document, in order to qualify for election to the office of the President, an individual must be “educated up to at least School certificate level or its equivalent”.

Buhari has failed to submit any such evidence, claiming that he lost the original copies of his diplomas when his house was raided following his overthrow from power in 1985. Buhari ran in the 2015 Presidential election as a candidate of the All Progressives Congress party. His platform was built around his image as a staunch anti-corruption fighter and his incorruptible and honest reputation. However, Buhari stated in an interview that he would not probe past corrupt leaders and that he would give officials who stole in the past amnesty, insofar as they repent. In January 2015, the insurgent group “The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta” (MEND) endorsed Buhari in the Presidential race, saying he is the best candidate to lead the country.

Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign was briefly advised by former Obama campaign manager, David Axelrod, and his AKPD consultancy. In February 2015, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo quit the ruling PDP party and threw his support behind the Buhari/Osinbajo ticket. On 31 March, incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan called Buhari to offer his concession and congratulations for his election as president. Buhari was sworn in on 29 May 2015 in a ceremony attended by at least 23 Heads of State and Government. OBASANJO’S LETTER.

On 24 January 2018, former president Obasanjo wrote a letter to president Buhari accusing his government of nepotism, while commending his war against corruption and lauding his achievements on Boko Haram. Obasanjo’s letter also included an appeal to president Buhari not to contest re-election in 2019 but to instead “join the stock of Nigerian leaders whose experience, influence, wisdom, and outreach can be deployed on the sideline for the good of the country”.

Shrugging off opposition from a previous president, during a national executive council meeting on the morning of April, 9th 2018, President Buhari declared his intention to re-enter the presidential race in 2019 and seek a second term in office as a democratic leader. This came after much speculation by political players and members of the public about whether or not he was going to run, especially considering his rather late timing. Reactions to his announcement have been mixed, as many observers think this put a question to his integrity. Buhari said during the 2011 presidential campaigns under the CPC banner that he would never seek a re-election bid should he ever become president.

*Alhaji Atiku Abubakar People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar GCON (born 25 November 1946) is a Nigerian politician and business tycoon. He served as the 11th vice-president of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007 under the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo. He is a member of People’s Democratic Party. In 1998 he was elected Governor of Adamawa State . While still Governor-Elect, he was selected by then presidential candidate Olusegun Obasanjo as his running mate. The duo went on to win elections in February 1999, and Abubakar was sworn-in as Nigeria’s second democratically elected vice president on 29 May 1999. Abubakar’s second term as Vice President was marked by a stormy relationship with President Obasanjo. His bid to succeed Obasanjo did not receive the latter’s support, and it took a judgment of the Supreme Court to allow Abubakar contest after he was initially disqualified by the Independent National Electoral Commission on the grounds that he had been indicted for financial misconduct by an investigating panel set up at Obasanjo’s behest. The Supreme Court ordered the electoral commission to restore Abubakar’s name onto the presidential ballot. Abubakar ran on the platform of the Action Congress , having quit the PDP on account of his issues with President Obasanjo. Abubakar lost the election, placing third after Umaru Yar’Adua and Muhammadu Buhari of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP).

Following the 2007 elections, Abubakar returned to the People’s Democratic Party. In October 2010 he announced his intention to contest for the Presidency. On 22 November, a Committee of Northern Elders selected him as the Northern Consensus Candidate, over former Military President Ibrahim Babangida, former National Security Adviser Aliyu Gusau and Governor Bukola Saraki of Kwara State. In January 2011, Abubakar contested for the Presidential ticket of his party alongside President Jonathan and Sarah Jubril, and lost the primary, garnering 805 votes to President Jonathan’s 2736. All Progressives Congress On 2 February 2014, Abubakar left the Peoples Democratic Party to the join All Progressives Congress, with the intent of contesting the Nigeria No 1. An presidency in 2015 on the party’s platform. On Friday, 24 November 2017, Abubakar announced his exit from the All Progressives Congress (APC), a party he helped to form. Return to PDP, On December 3, 2017, via a facebook live broadcast, Abubakar announced his return to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The announcement followed consultations the former Vice President had with party leaders and stakeholders from across the country. He said he decided to ‘return home’ to the PDP now that the issues which made him leave the party had been resolved. Fourth presidential run Abubakar declared his candidacy for the presidential nomination of the PDP mid 2018 and won the nomination at its convention on October 7. He defeated 11 other contestants and got 1,532 votes, 839 more than the runner-up, the Governor of Sokoto State Aminu Tambuwal. Atiku Abubakar continued his campaign rally from one State to another as he promise to complete any project abandone by APC led administration and restructure Nigeria by making it working again.

*Adetokunbo Olufela Durotoye was born in Ibadan, Oyo State on 12 May 1971, is a politician, business consultant, leadership expert, and motivational speaker. Fela is the president of the GEMSTONE Nation Builders Foundation, a non-profit, non-governmental organization targeted at training youths towards transformational leadership and social change. Fela Durotoye is the Nigeria presidential candidate of the Alliance for New Nigeria party (ANN) for the 2019 presidential elections. Fela Durotoye was born to Layiwola and Adeline Durotoye, both professors at the University of Ibadan. After his parents moved to University of Ife, Fela attended the Staff Children’s School (1974 -1981) and graduated to Moremi High School (1981-1986). Durotoye proceeded to earn his Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science with Economics, as well as a master’s degree in Business Administration (M.B.A) at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. He is an alumnus of John F. Kennedy School of Government Executive Education program of Harvard University. He attended the High Impact Leadership for a better society program at the Yale University, he is also a certified leadership coach of the John Maxwell team.

In 2015, Fela completed the executive seminar program on strategy, innovation and governance at the Lagos Business school. This was followed by the supernumerary police training program at the Nigerian Police training college where he passed out with a distinction. Fela Durotoye was a financial analyst at Ventures & Trusts Limited in 1992. He was the head of customer service department at Phillips Consulting Limited in 1998.

Fela went on to start V.I.P Consulting Limited in year 2000 which soon became notable in customer and human management in Nigeria. The firm was restructured and switched from a consulting firm to a social enterprise called Visible Impact Limited. Durotoye facilitates and speaks at management and leadership retreats across within and outside Nigeria. In 2018, Durotoye gave a speech to over 200 entrepreneurs at the inaugural Nigerian American Business Forum in Tampa Florida, where he shared the podium with senior senator Mohammed Shaaba Lafiagi, senator Ben Murray-Bruce , Nigerian Stock Exchange chairman Abimbola Ogunbanjo, Media pioneer Biodun Shobanjo, former governor Peter Obi and technologist.

On February 22, 2018, he made his intention to run for Presidency in the Nigerian general election, 2019 under the political party Alliance for New Nigeria. A coalition of 11 aspirants under the umbrella of the Presidential Aspirants Coming Together (PACT) unanimously elected Fela Durotoye as their consensus candidate. On Saturday, September 29, 2018, he emerged as the presidential candidate of the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN) for the 2019 general elections. While contesting for office, Fela said its not easy to run for office, but added that, the best way to serve his nation’s interest is to do so from the nation’s highest office.

After several months, he chose Khadijah Abdullahi-Iya as his running mate. She has been a successful social entrepreneur and would be his vice-President.

*Another Presidential candidate is Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu who is also a Nigerian political economist, lawyer, former United Nations official, and professor in international business and public policy at the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Kingsley is the founder of Sogato Strategies LLC and a senior adviser of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum. Moghalu worked with Central Banking Journal as a contributing editor. In 2016, Moghalu founded the Institute for Governance and Economic Transformation. Moghalu served as deputy governor of financial system stability and the director of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from 2009 to 2014; he led the implementation of reforms to Nigeria’s failing banking sector.

He is a member of the International Islamic Liquidity Management Corporation and non-executive director of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria. In early 2014, Moghalu distanced himself from the suspended head of CBN, Lamido Sanusi. Sanusi alleged a $20 billion fraud at the country’s publicly owned oil corporation.

Moghalu expressed frustration that Sanusi had overstepped his role as the head of a central bank and crossed into political activism, but emphasized his support for Sanusi’s leadership in monetary policy. Moghalu joined the United Nations in 1992. His first assignment was in Cambodia as a UN human rights and elections officer with the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia.

A year later, he was appointed political affairs officer in the department of peacekeeping operations at the UN Headquarters in New York. From 1996 to 1997, he served in the former Yugoslavia as political advisor to the special representative of the UN Secretary-General in Croatia.

Kingsley was then assigned as legal adviser to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UNICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, in 1997 and later promoted to the role of the international tribunal’s spokesman. As special counsel and spokesman, he was responsible for policy development, strategic planning and external relations.

The UNICTR delivered the first-ever judgement by an international court on genocide, and more. Moghalu has also served as a member of the board of directors of Opportunities Industrialization Centers International in Philadelphia, a non-profit global entrepreneurship development organization founded by the late US civil rights leader Reverend. In February 2018, Moghalu declared his interest to run for the presidency of Nigeria.

Kingsley chose to run under the platform of the Young Progressive Party. As its remains some days from today, Nigerians will embark on their sixth quest since 1999 to select, through voting, their dream President. That is, if the scheduled February 16, 2019 date for the Presidential election will hold as planned. Expectedly, that President would be one who would truly appreciate the multifarious challenges of the nation and make humanistic efforts, as many are wont to say, to resolve them.

A President, who, for once, would ipso facto tackle identified challenges of the nation without giving excuses for inability to do so. As the countdown to the 2019 Presidential election, many concerned Nigerians have had reasons to review the last three years and developments so far in Nigeria’s political realm vis-à-vis expectations of the would-be President from the 2019 polls.

No doubt, opinions are divergent: while the Pro-Buharis would do or say anything to justify their stand, the anti-Buhari group will do same in the opposite direction. This is not new, mostly because it has become so fashionable in Nigerian polity that one never sees anything good in the other, even when the truth can be very clear to discern.

As it has become customary in Nigerian politics, emphasis will be more on what the anti-Buharis say ahead of the 2019 polls, only because it is considered normal for the average Nigerian politician to judge government more by what the opposition say. It seems more in this context that I want to say: “Every alarm raised about suspected violence in the conduct of an election should be taken seriously not only by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Police, but also by political parties and the totality of Nigerians.

This is because Nigeria is very much embroiled in violence for its own survival, that any additional spate of violence is disastrous and inimical to the stability of the country”. And since experience has shown that the “alarms raised” usually become the basis for judgment of incumbent governments, this analysis will broaden the horizon beyond election violence to policies. Abimbola Adelakun captured the crux of this analysis in The Punch in his piece titled, “A Nigerian future without Buhari is possible”. He noted in the piece that as Nigerians, “we already know what ails us. What no one seems to know yet is how to upend this lousy government and pave the way for a more productive and forward-looking governance”.

To buttress his stance, Adelakun identified two categories of people in Nigeria: those clamouring for a second term for Buhari and chose to do it blindly, and those who are yet to make up their mind, but are keenly watching events as they unfold daily to be able to make up their mind on where to pitch their tent. “One is the Buharists, a cult of devout followers of the President whose desire for a perpetual Buhari leadership has little to do with the quality of his governance.

I will argue that no Buharist, none whatsoever, boasts of either the President’s intelligence or his deployment of it to confront serious national issues. “Instead, they exaggerate every mundane insight he has into simple issues and praise his supposed moral integrity because there is almost nothing else that continues to recommend him for the Presidency. “It does not bother them that Buhari does not articulate any vision for the Nigerian state, neither has he demonstrated that he is driven by a sense of urgency to push his country beyond its state of poverty and disrepair. “When he returned from another medical tour in the UK recently and was interviewed, it was frustrating that he was still stuck on the same old song about corruption and jailing of offender. “There is another category of people who are not yet resolute about voting for either Buhari, his opponents, or abstaining entirely. This constituency has significant numbers that can sway the nation’s fate in this 2019 general election.

In the days ahead, they are the ones to be convinced that given Buhari’s antecedents and temperament in handling crucial national issues, he is not the man for Nigeria’s future”, he said. Adelakun argued that “Buhari also clings to corruption as a solo agenda because he has to pander to those whose sole demand on his Presidency has been for him to jail those who denuded the nation’s wealth.

Some of those followers, based on the issues that preoccupy their politics, are either blind to the gnawing reality of growing poverty or they have so much swallowed the All Progressives Congress (APC) propaganda that they live in an alternate reality”. The crux of Adelakun’s argument is that the Buhari-led APC had “fight against corruption” as its gambit in 2015, and over three years later, it is still struggling to convince Nigerians that the fight against corruption is still on, with only increase in hunger and sundry hardship to show for it.

Meanwhile, the opposition at all levels is also plotting to beat the incumbent to the same game: the system is once again agog with alignments and re-alignments, and the only genuine picture being painted is that of perceived deprivation of personal interests, or protection of same by the key actors. In the midst of all these, little thought seem to be given to what governance should actually be about.

Aare Afe Babalola captured the scenario in Vanguard of July 25, 2015, when he said, “…however, as is again usual with them, they seem to have forgotten to write into their equation of political alignment and realignments the very thing that should be uppermost in the minds of any political leader truly desirous of serving his people; the unity and interest of the nation and the people they seek to serve”.

As February 16 approaches, therefore, the expectations of Nigerians would be for aspirants for the coveted Presidency, and any other political position for that matter to be able to not only identify key questions on how to revamp Nigeria’s economy, but also proffer workable solutions.

Paramount among the questions would, of course, be how to provide a workable solution to the hydra-headed corruption syndrome which has eaten deep into the nations psyche at all levels of governance. Part of it should be that merit is given its place in the polity, against the current stance of who occupies what space depending on the dictates of a relative selfish few whose decisions are often influenced by a quest to prove power.

While this is on, deliberate effort also needs to be made to debunk the seeming inherent notion that stands out Nigeria as a corrupt nation. This is because there is no country in the world that is not corrupt. The difference is that while developed countries focus more on practical ways of de-institutionalising the corruption phenomenon, countries like Nigeria use it as a political gimmick, the way the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) used it to ascend the presidency in 2015, but with nothing concrete to offer.

Adelakun addressed this when he said: “When you compare the corruption in Nigeria to what goes on in the USA, our Nigerian leaders, for their entire thievery, look like mere pickpockets. In fact, larger economies give rooms for wider chances of crimes and abuse of power.

“What their systems have done differently has been to build systems and reproduce social processes that encourage continuous self-improvement to ameliorate occurrence of corruption. They did not paralyse initiatives by taking corruption as their peculiar cultural habit”. This is the ultimate expectation of Nigerians when the next president takes charge of the highest position in the country, come May 29, 2019.

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