With the 2027 presidential election just a matter of time, the candidate of the Labour Party in the February 25, 2023 presidential election, Peter Obi, is already laying the groundwork for winning votes in the northern part of Nigeria.
Obi, 62, is a former Governor of the Igbo speaking state of Anambra in South East Nigeria. He is also a highly successful businessman.
Obi showed guts when he contested to be president in 2023. And though he came third in the hotly contested election, he however left an indelible “don’t underestimate me again” mark on naysayers.
One of the reasons why Obi fell short of becoming Commander-in-Chief is because he had a poor showing in Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria.
Because of this, analysts have insisted that going forward; his 2027 presidency dreams could once again become a nightmare if he did not restrategise to “capture” the north.
The snag here is that to reach Nigeria’s political stratosphere, candidates for the office of president are usually categorised by the region they come from, whether northern or southern Nigeria. And Obi, who is from the Christian-dominated south, is viewed as an outsider in the north because politics there is often thought to intertwine with religion.
So, chances are that in 2027, Obi will sweat blood to have northerners queue behind him. But like the slogan of sports apparel manufacturer Adidas, which says “impossible is nothing,” Obi is gradually working his way around to remedying this situation.
“And why not? Why would he not want to entice the North before 2027?” Obi’s supporters have asked with good reason, arguing that with the north’s packed out geopolitical zones, the North East, the North West and the North Central with their 19 states, plus one Federal Capital Territory, between them, overlooking them will be a foolhardy venture.
The North East has the following states, viz. Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Taraba and Yobe.
The North West has Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi, Katsina, Kano, Kaduna and Jigawa states while North Central includes Plateau, Niger, Nasarawa, Kwara, Kogi, Abuja and Benue states.
After Nigeria’s electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission, prior to the last general elections, released the breakdown of eligible voters in the country, the North did not disappoint as their voting strength and the tremendous political influence that accompany it, were there for all to see.
Out of the total 93,469,008 million eligible voters in Nigeria last year, the three regions in the north have 50,161,722 million of these voters, with 12,542,429 million, 22,255,562 million and 15,363,731 million eligible voters coming from the North East, North West and North Central, respectively.
When it thereupon got down to the nitty-gritty of last year’s presidential election, voting pattern showed that Obi struggled to make an impression on the primarily Muslim states in the North such as Zamfara, Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto, Gombe, Yobe, Kebbi, Bauchi, Jigawa and Katsina.
Nevertheless, in Christian areas in the North such as Nasarawa, Benue and Plateau, the floodgates of votes were opened for Obi.
Another challenging consideration for Obi that made him come down to earth is the section of the Nigerian Constitution which says that for a candidate to become president, he or she must secure the majority of votes and at least 25 percent of the votes cast in 24 states and Abuja, the FCT.
Obi won massively in the South East but he failed to replicate the same feat in the South West.
He failed to score 25 percent of votes in five South West states that include Ogun, Ekiti, Ondo, Oyo, Osun. Lagos is the only state where he scored more than 25 percent of votes in the region.
Because Tinubu is from the South West, Obi knows that votes from a northern state like Kano can augment his chances of winning the 2027 presidential election, and hence, one more likely reason for the “groundwork” he is currently doing.
Obi’s “northtrotting” has seen him visiting states like Niger, Kano and Kaduna states. He also used Ramadan to make a splash. Obi not only brought and shared food with Muslim faithfuls but also broke his fasting with them.
While in Kano, he visited the Emir of Kano, Aminu Ado Bayero, in his palace and drilled a borehole in a mosque in the ancient city.
In Kaduna state, it was the same story. He drilled a borehole in one of the communities scattered across Zaria but for his trouble, some eminent Nigerians, like former presidential aide, Bashir Ahmad, former PDP spokesperson, Daniel Bwala, and Nollywood actress, Tonto Dikeh, chose to go for the jugular.
They mocked Obi for the quality of borehole donations and declared he was perfecting his “eye-service” game in the north.
In spite of the series of bashings, the UPNORTH Ambassadors, an Obi Support Group, have also been hard at work. They renovated an Almajiri school and fixed a borehole in a Katsina community.
While many northerners are wondering what Obi will do next in their zones, a socio-political organization dedicated to the advancement of northern Nigeria the Arewa Renaissance Group, unimpressed, has given him a cease and desist order. They said Obi’s projects were an “eyesore.”
Meanwhile, on Obi’s moves to woo the north, a political analyst, Reginald Anene, said that Nigeria’s unwritten power rotation agreement would pose a serious threat to Obi’s chances of becoming president in 2027.
Anene said the North won’t stand Obi, a southerner like Tinubu, if he wanted to come in and start fresh, possible 8-year tenure as president in 2027 when it should be their turn (north) to produce the next president after the expiration of Tinubu’s second term in 2031.
Anene, a pastor at the Christian Life Ministry, also said that Obi’s moves in the North was “a journey to nowhere” because of the intrigues surrounding rotational presidency.
He said, “It is just a journey to nowhere simply because there are certain calculations that go into rotation of power.
“It is not a written document but unconsciously the North and the South have come to recognize it and want to keep it even to the foreseeable future,” he said.
Anene said that the arrangement for the office of president since the start of the fourth Republic in 1999 has been such that a southerner would rule and he or she would be succeeded by a northerner.
He said when Goodluck Jonathan tried to distort the arrangement; northern politicians colluded with one another to kick him out of office.
“And it was not just the northerners in the opposition party but even northerners in Jonathan’s own party, the PDP. They colluded in sabotaging his reelection bid in 2015.
“So, the northerners will want to support Tinubu because it will be in their best interests. There is no way they will want Obi to win because he (Obi) will not go for only one term,” he said.
Anene said although Obi was being a politician and doing what any politician would have done, he succeeded in “playing his hands too quickly.” He then lampooned Obi for desperately wanting to be president even though he (Obi) had said otherwise.
Moreover, Anene said that northerners would continue to see through Obi and say disparaging things about him if he continued “fraternising” with them.
He also explained that northerners have power brokers and leaders they listen to but that was not to say that they were dull, stupid or subservient to their leaders. Anene said their culture, religion and illiteracy were responsible for that.
Anene said since the LP did not have a foothold in North East and North West, the people Obi should have been “looking to reach out to” were the power brokers,
“Unfortunately, the power brokers are not in Obi’s camp. They are either with the PDP or APC.
“The LP does not have a foothold in the North West or North East. They probably just have a sprinkling of some strongholds in parts of the North Central.
“But in the North East and North West, they have not been able to make any meaningful inroad and I don’t see this changing in the next three years,” Anene said
A current affairs analyst and Asset manager, Ifiok Usanga, said of Obi, “I know many people may have dismissed Obi’s new methods of ‘encroaching’ into the North, but who are those complaining?
“It is those who are afraid that their political careers will be done if Obi gets between 30 to 40 percent of votes from the North in 2027. And based on how people voted last year, Obi would win the whole thing.
“Obi should continue with what he is doing. But my only worry for him is his unwillingness to ditch the Labour Party. That will be his greatest undoing.”
