Op-ed: Why I am convinced Buhari is not supporting Tinubu for 2023 presidency
The 2023 presidential election will be the second time in Nigeria’s political history that an outgoing president will be conducting an election where he is not on the ballot. The first time this happened was in 2007 when President Olusegun Obasanjo was in office. As soon as it became clear that the National Assembly was strongly against his alleged third-term agenda, he buckled his belt, laced his shoes and went shopping for a successor and picked Umaru Musa Yar’Adua as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, who he vigorously worked and campaigned for. The former Katsina state governor had a smooth victory, defeating his main challengers Atiku Abubakar and Muhammadu Buhari, thanks to Obasanjo, who single-handedly held his hands and ran his campaign with so much zeal as though he was avenging the loss of his third term bid, even when the candidate was away in Germany receiving medical treatment.
The election though was marred with irregularities and adjudged one of the worst in Nigeria’s history. It was so bad that even Yar’Adua admitted that the electoral system needed reform.
If President Buhari’s rhetorics are to be believed, the 2023 presidential election is expected to be fair and free of violence. The president has reiterated that he wants to leave a legacy of a well-conducted election and vowed to deal with any person or group plotting to taint the election.
Unlike Obasanjo, Buhari does not look like he is going to hold the hands of Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, not like the former needs anyone to hold his hands. After all, he was instrumental in Buhari’s victory in the 2015 and 2019 elections as leader of the APC. Buhari did not mince words when he admitted that Tinubu played a major role in his emergence as president.
Tinubu is a seasoned politician; even his biggest detractors will admit that he grew his political empire to spread from Lagos to spread to different parts of the country. Perhaps his best move was not running for Senate in 2007 after leaving office as governor of Lagos state but sitting back to build a political dynasty while his colleagues rushed to the hallowed chamber, a move that alienated many of them from the grassroots.
Despite Tinubu’s political growth, even he will admit that his inroad into the north has not been so successful. His move to select Kashim Shettima, former governor of Borno as a running mate was done to court the support of the majorly Muslim north thereby discarding the country’s unwritten rule of a regional and religion-balanced ticket.
This is where Buhari’s northern base would have been highly beneficial to Tinubu. In the years Buhari has been contesting for the presidency, only once did he have less than 7 million votes. In another attempt, he averaged 12 million votes even when he lost the election. His northern base is second to none politically in the country. All it will take for Tinubu to inherit this base is for Buhari to urge his supporters to transfer the same faith they have in him to the APC presidential candidate. That has not happened openly yet.
Buhari’s body language has been the same since he became president for a second term. The affairs of the party that brought him into office do not interest him anymore. At the party’s presidential election, he refused to endorse any candidate or any region, choosing instead to sit on the fence and let the party delegates decide.
The same thing is already happening ahead of the 2023 presidential election. So far, Buhari has so far appeared in the presidential campaigns in Adamawa and Jos. Not once did he explicitly ask the people to vote for Tinubu, instead urging the people to vote for the right candidate that will prioritise education and security.
Perhaps Buhari is trying to strike a balance between guaranteeing a fair election and throwing his weight behind the candidate of his party but this will not give Tinubu the sort of help that he needs in the north. Not only does he have two heavyweights in the region to contend with – Atiku Abubakar and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso – but a growing youth participation in politics that is titling towards support for Peter Obi.
If Tinubu loses the presidential election, it would likely be down to not getting enough votes in the region and he can hold Buhari responsible for that.
