DANIEL AYANTOYE x-rays the shortcomings of the All Progressives Congress regime under the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd) and its chances of winning the 2023 election

The ultimate aim of political parties is to win elections but this depends largely on their ability to sell their candidates to the electorate. Many believe that the electorate in a real democracy determines the emergence of candidates at all levels. Aside from the political permutations, circumstances surrounding the emergence of candidates through public acceptance also dwell most times on promises, and candidates for the 2023 presidential election are no exception.

With the emergence of a former Lagos State governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as the presidential flag bearer of the ruling All Progressives Congress; Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party; Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, Peter Obi of the Labour Party and several others, the stage is set as campaigns officially commence on Wednesday, September 28, 2022, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission.

Like previous elections and the political gimmicks that come before them, analysts said about 15 opposition parties would pick on the performance of the incumbent APC government to campaign against its presidential candidate, Tinubu. Prior to the 2015 general elections, a good number of Nigerians were cut between the choice of the two major political parties, the APC and the PDP.

The then President, Goodluck Jonathan, who emerged as the PDP standard bearer in the 2015 presidential election, and the APC presidential candidate, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), took their campaigns to every part of the country, urging prospective voters to queue behind them. The political parties engaged in various gimmicks.While the PDP-led government enjoyed the power of incumbency at that time and showering of fascinating praises on records of its performance, the then major opposition party, the APC, took advantage of the failure of the Jonathan administration to entice the electorate. Eventually, the APC’s Buhari emerged the winner of the election and was inaugurated as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and most citizens were hopeful of a better life.

Seven year down the lane, it is believed in some quarters that the performance of the Buhari regime will affect the continuity of the APC as a ruling party as well as the emergence of Tinubu as President in 2023. While some have maintained that one of the major aspects of wooing the electorate is the economy, others see the security of lives and property as an area where candidates must talk about to be able to garner many votes.

‘Tinubu’s chances low’

A political analyst and Professor of Economics at the Bayero University, Kano, Kamilu Fage, said the APC flag bearer had to worry about the current situation in the country because the judgment of the electorate would be based on how it had managed the economy and the current situation in terms of security of lives and property.

He said, “Any candidate from a ruling party has some challenges. On one hand, there is the probability that because they are in power, there is this incumbency factor that may assist the candidate of the ruling party, but on the other hand, there are challenges of belonging to the ruling party, especially if the political party happens to be in office for long. Many challenges of the ruling party will weigh the candidate down.“For example, one of the major problems that the APC will face is that it’s a government in power and within the time it has spent in office, there have been many problems ranging from insecurity to inflation and from unemployment to hunger and poverty generally.

“So, these are things that will weigh the party down because the opposition will take advantage of that and campaign against the party. Besides, the electorate will use such indices to measure the party before voting. The performance of the APC-led government under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari has come under severe criticism following the country’s economic challenges and insecurity.”

Similarly, the Chairman, Kwara State chapter of the PDP, Babatunde Muhammed, told Saturday PUNCH that the APC had failed Nigerians in the area of security and the people’s standard of living.

Mohammed said, “I haven’t seen any state in Nigeria where the APC can win in 2023. In 2015, the exchange rate when Goodluck Jonathan was leaving office was between N180 and N185 to one dollar. Today, we are talking about N700 per dollar; a bag of Semovita that was selling for about N1,300 is now around N7,000; a bag of rice that was N8,000 is now N36,000.

“Nigerians can no longer feed their families. Even what salary earners are earning now can longer take them home, not to mention taking them throughout 30 days of the month. If there is an election tomorrow, I don’t see any state where the APC can win and as politicians, I strongly believe Nigerians voted for Atiku in 2019, we all know what happened. So, the PDP is coming back stronger and the PDP will win the election in 2023 by the grace of God and with the support of Nigerians.”He added that the fact that the suffering of Nigerians had increased and insecurity was taking hold of some major parts of the country in the last seven years were enough reasons for the party to be aware that it had failed and people would not desire such continuity.

“Do we have this kind of security problem in 2015? The insecurity problems then were just in a few local government areas in Yobe and Borno states, but now, there is nowhere that is safe. All the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria now have a serious problem of insecurity. You can’t compare this APC-led government with the Jonathan, (Umaru) Yar’Adua and (Olusegun) Obasanjo’s governments and this is very clear. Nigerians are tired of this APC government,” he stated.

Adding his voice to the matter, the spokesperson for the Oyo State Chapter of the PDP, Akeem Olatunji, stated that there was no chance for the APC presidential candidate to win the 2023 election based on the performance of Buhari.

He said, “With the electoral indices of winning elections, I don’t think Tinubu stands any chance because the 2023 election is more or less a referendum on the performance of APC in the last seven years. The question is that, in the last seven years, have they better the lot of Nigerians? The answer is no.

“As of when they came in, the debt of Nigeria was around N7tn, but today, we are talking about N40tn. So, the inflation is at the highest level in history. Unemployment rate is at the highest level in history, and the cost of living is skyrocketing.”

Olatunji opined that Tinubu had offered his best to Nigerians when he presented Buhari in 2015 as the ‘saviour’ to rescue Nigeria.

Olatunji stated, “He (Tinubu) is still going to recycle the same people running this administration and Nigerians know that it is high time they changed the failing team and you cannot compensate for failure with another failure. My belief is that for any right thinking Nigerian, the days of the APC are numbered, and apart from that, whenever we are experiencing high cost of crude oil in the international market, that is the time when Nigerians used to have high reserves and excess money.

“During the PDP administration, we used to have an excess crude oil account; we used to have a sovereign wealth account whereby the entire excess funds that accrued from oil sales are kept, but now, there is nothing like that.”

On the Muslim-Muslim ticket, he said that would not save the APC from an imminent defeat, adding poverty had nothing to do with religion. “The more Nigeria makes money under this administration, the poorer the nation becomes. That they picked Muslim presidential and vice-presidential candidates is not going to save them because poverty does not understand religion. That’s why we are saying that the APC has already failed even before it entered the contest,” he addedOn insecurity, Olatunji stressed that in the history of the country, the highest number of breaches of security ranging from bandits’ attacks on civilians and the military to jailbreaks had been recorded under the Buhari regime.

Loud it, comrade.

The APC kidnapper has also compounded Tinubu's headache

The dynamics of the 2023 elections is quite different from those of the previous ones.
Due to BVAS introduction in the coming elections,rigging, ballot box snatching, as well as some of the malpractices that characterized previous elections will be greatly reduced. That's just one of the reasons that spurred people's interest to participate in the 2023 elections.
Again due to Buhari's & APC's woeful performance, Nigerians are eager to vote them out.
Tinubu is complicit in the sufferings his party inflicted on Nigerians after all he is their "national leader" & always takes credit for making Buhari president twice,in 2015 & 2019,so he should also take responsibility for his role in his party's destruction of Nigeria.
We can't reward failure by voting for the same characters that r responsible for our predicaments.
For those trying to sell Tinubu based on his time as Lagos governor,we have already seen his motivation for running for presidency, it's just to fulfill a lifelong ambition at the expense of rescuing Nigeria from the depths they plunged it into. Unfortunately,we can't afford to waste ur national life just to massage Tinubu's ego.
Taking back our country is a serious business and it has nothing in common with Emilokan's philosophy.

On what grounds will Tinubu campaign to Nigerians?