Underrate Atiku at Your Peril, By Hashim Suleiman
POLITICS DIGEST- Well, apparently some of us have come to understand that the scarcest essential in the Nigerian human resource is CRITICAL THINKING. On the street, we daily discuss political situations in different fora and what I’ve been able to pick out so far is the fact that you’ll hardly find any observer who’s genuinely willing to be objective about the situations going on. You will daily be filled with tendencies of political fanaticism which crosses all the political parties. What worries some of us is a fact that these political parties will naturally lack critical strategy because that can only be a product of factual and objective submissions and actions.
As the 2023 elections inch by, I have repeatedly said online and offline that the APC is in a big dilemma going into it especially as relates to choice of candidates and management of the perception of Nigerians. What makes it worse is that the party doesn’t look bonded enough to fight an imminent showdown from the PDP who appears to be navigating towards an Atiku who is coming in with 12 million votes in the bag because I’m not sure all those numbers who voted him in 2019 have come across any situation that would change their minds, thanks to the inability of APC to recruit sound perception managers who will work from the top like party positions or even executive positions.
The PDP leaders are experienced enough to measure the pulse of the nation and see a victory of Atiku and therefore wouldn’t mind jettisoning any zoning considerations and sticking with him after all they know him to be someone who is a democrat that keeps to deals and concessions. Little wonder why they came together to ensure a well bonded and successful convention that seem to be a work for the emergence of an Atiku candidacy. Atiku himself has been around for quite some time now and making lots of movements and reach outs. He is fully participating in party activities and hiding not his intentions to give it a shot one more time.
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Some rumors will even tell you some of the APC top shots who are not necessarily ready for the showdown are beginning to subtly reach out to him for some sort of collaboration that will guarantee soft landing. Indeed, the amount of work that is needed from the APC for this showdown is in no small measure. One of the biggest challenge is how to convince Asiwaju to drop his ambition after imminent show of intent. Asiwaju is basically back to living in Abuja now, something pretty surprising. He attends Jumaat service in different mosques in the capital city with a view to reaching out, who else is doing such in the party. When you allow someone to be too ahead of you while there is a strong opposition, the work to putting him out while guaranteeing your success becomes more of an impossibility.
While Asiwaju possesses all these advantages gained through consistent participation and building of bridges, his challenge is choice of pairing partner. Owing to the power of the social media and how much things have changed, the Muslim-Muslim option may be a bit more tedious than the Abiola example. I had in some of my previous posts posited that an Asiwaju/Pantami ticket would go far because the Sheikh would come with as much Islamic capital to neutralize that which would have been gotten by Atiku. The possibility or otherwise of options like this and many more remain the challenge of the APC which if they can work around would guarantee some chance at clinching the number 1 seat one more time. How’s the possibility of this level of objectivity? Only time will tell.
But finally and clearly, Atiku appears very ready to clinch that seat, perhaps it’s some destiny and he might as well consolidate our need to believe that perseverance does pay after all, he remains the only one who has consistently given a shot since 2007 when he left the Vice Presidency seat. The PDP also seem to have agreed to the fact that he appears the only one who can sweep that election for them. I have spoken to lots of guys on this permutation and in line with the fanaticism I had earlier described, they’ll dismiss Atiku like some garbage and I’ll wonder what sort of advise such kinds of folks would be giving to the APC party because they sound absolutely fanatical about the party but don’t care much whether strategies are required to win the elections.
Political parties who wish to win elections have to give premium to employment of critical resources that are capable of formulating strategies that are sound enough to win elections. Nigerias democracy is advancing.
Hashim Suleiman
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