By Felix Akpan | Opinion
It is becoming increasingly obvious even to political neophytes that the G-5 Governors are more interested in their post-immunity political survival than anything else; because whether Atiku wins or loses the presidential election, there would be consequences. As a corollary, if the matter between them and their party is not resolved to their satisfaction, they are most likely to support a candidate with considerable clout to defeat Atiku and stymie whatever adverse plans Atiku has for them no matter the outcome of the elections. So, let’s have a conversation about how to resolve the Chicken game between the G-5 Governors and their party amicably.
Let’s begin with what Atiku and the PDP could do to checkmate them and render them politically impotent if they choose to remain reclatriant and endorse a candidate of a rival political party. It would seem that the option of sanctioning them as per the Party’s rules of engagement may negatively impact its chances of winning the presidential election since power is supposed to revert to the South before Atiku surreptitiously highjacked it. That means suspending them from the party would amount to shooting oneself in the leg. Following the game’s theoretical model, that option is off the table. In a zero-sum game situation, the best option in the circumstances is to concede to the demands of the G-5 Governors and go to the polls as a united PDP family irrespective of whatever grudges they may have against the G-5 Governors.
Following that option, the only causality would be the National Chairman of the Party, Iyochia Ayu. However, he could be placed on life-support, pending the outcome of the election. And there’s no better life-support than being Atiku’s man Friday in Robinson Crusoe’s perspective, which technically means that Ayu would still be an integral part of whatever decisions the party takes. The idiomatic expression a single tree does not make a forest resonates with why Ayu should be sacrificed because the votes the G-5 Governors could influence in their respective States will be more than what Ayu alone could secure for the PDP.
This simple solution I proffer here explains why political parties need the services of strategists who are not necessarily members of their parties to provide seminal prognostic solutions to knotty issues dispassionately, devoid of egotistic consideration, as I have just done for the PDP, Pro bono. Regardless of how the PDP and the G-5 Governors resolve their differences, we need to reexamine the concept of party supremacy and close the gap the G-5 Governors have adroitly exploited, so far, to forestall future occurrences of such despicable political shenanigans.
In the worst-case scenario, if the PDP fails to concede to the demands of the G-5 Governors, whatever political decision they would take may be detrimental to both parties. It could also decide the outcome of the polls even before we cast our ballots, especially if they choose to support Bola Tinubu. However, if they go with Peter Obi that means the Northwest zone would decide who becomes the next President of the country.
Politically speaking, if the Northwest decides the outcome of the presidential polls it may not augur well for the G-5 Governors because the zone is controlled by the ruling APC. If they don’t support the APC’s presidential candidate, the succor they seek to escape from Atiku’s wrath may not be guaranteed if Tinubu wins the election because Obi doesn’t seem to have significant political clout in the zone.
Endorsing either Tinubu or Obi isn’t the only dilemma confronting the G-5 Governors at the moment, the bandwagon effect of doing so on the other elections, particularly the gubernatorial and State House of Assembly is also making them restless. In the era of BVAS and electronic transfer of the poll results asking their supporters to vote for a rival party in the presidential election and their party in the subsequent ones might be a dangerous proposition with dire consequences for them. In this regard, what happened in the Southwest zone in the 2003 presidential elections would suffice. In that election, 5 out of the 6 AD governors endorsed former President Obasanjo of the PDP for a second term and ended up losing their states to the rival PDP in the gubernatorial elections. The only AD governor who survived the bandwagon effect of Obasanjo’s victory at the polls was former Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos State. And that was because he refused to endorse Obasanjo. The details of how Obasanjo outsmarted the other 5 AD governors after winning his elections in their states are well documented in Bisi Akande’s book, My Participation. Without a doubt, Governor Makinde of Oyo State should be familiar with the details but Governors Wike, Ortom, Ikpezau, and Ugwuanyi might need to read that section of the book to gain more insights on how to navigate the 2023 presidential elections.
My take on the matter is that Governor Wike and his gang lack the moral high ground to make unnecessary demands on the party after Atiku and Ayu outsmarted them in the Party’s presidential primary election. If they were sincere about justice and equity as entrenched in the Party’s Constitution they should have supported a candidate of Southeast extraction as the party’s presidential candidate, particularly when Atiku was willing to withdraw from the race if the party’s ticket was zoned to the Southeast. Since they accepted to jettison the party’s constitution and allow everybody to participate in the primaries, why is it so difficult for them to do the same and allow Ayu to remain as the National Chairman of the PDP until after the election? Why should the G-5 Governors cherry-pick the provisions of the party’s constitution to approbate and reprobate and otherwise?
The G-5 Governors should come off their high horse and close ranks and support Atiku in the presidential election in the overall interest of the party. If they don’t and choose to support another candidate, it would amount to committing political suicide even if the candidate wins because he who sups with the devil will always use a long spoon. This is the time to end the Chicken game by either the party conceding to the demands of the G-5 Governors or vice versa because if they don’t, as is expected in such a game where either player refuses to chicken out, it would end in a disaster, mutual self-implosion of both parties.
♦ Professor Felix Akpan, Ph.D. teaches Politics and Public Administration at the University of Calabar. He is an alumnus of the US State Department, Education, and Cultural Studies.
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