As Nigeria’s primary opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party, or PDP, has been losing ground. Since losing to the ruling All Progressives Congress, or APC, in 2015, the party has suffered and has lost some of its states.
Segun Sowunmi, a former campaign spokesperson for Atiku Abubakar, the party’s 2023 presidential candidate and a former Ogun State governorship candidate, says that if Atiku and Nyesom Wike, the current Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, had been the party’s flag bearers, the PDP might not have lost the 2023 presidential election. Additionally, he considers the potential for an Atiku-Wike or Atiku-Peter Obi ticket in 2023. Excerpts:
A few days ago, Peter Obi was spotted in the Atiku area. Will he rejoin the PDP, and what are his prospects of becoming the party’s leader?
Party primaries and the general election are the first two obstacles that any candidate seeking to become president of Nigeria must overcome.
various parties have various customs when it comes to party primaries, but in the PDP, of which I have been a member from its founding, we don’t have the mindset that people won’t participate; anyone who wants our ticket must do so.
We could be convinced that yes, we have a Southeasterner, especially now that we are hearing that the South should do eight years. The PDP has a bet in the South, and no one in the South-South can argue that we haven’t given him the ticket. Yes, your argument can be very convincing, and we can mobilize people to convince others for you.
As far as the presidency is concerned, we have never given the Southeast ticket, and the Southeastern part of Nigeria cannot be cheerleaders to other zones in the PDP. However, if they leave it open and everyone is allowed to come and fight for it, may the best man win. We gave Jonathan, who finished Yar’Adua’s term in 2007 and received his own free ticket in 2011, and we gave Obasanjo a ticket in 1999 and he received a second term in 2007.
The opposition party needs to be more practical in its search for sources of funding. That’s where I stand. There is a Yoruba man, President Bola Tinubu, who is the APC’s prospective presidential candidate. If someone is saying that “you have to be contesting and every political party has a rule that a serving governor and president have the right of first refusal except if they are not going,” then you are making an exotic calculation, and I might be mistaken.
Which candidate—Atiku Saraki, Atiku-Obi, or Atiku-Wike—has the highest chance of helping the PDP unseat Tinubu in 2027 in terms of electoral spread?
You raise an excellent point; we might have been quite fortunate in the 2023 election if we had been smart and chosen the Atiku-Wike ticket. You are aware that a hypothesis remains a hypothesis even if it is not tested.
Regarding Atiku-Obi, we tried it in 2019 and know what occurred. People like to argue that you can combine the numbers Peter received in the last election and Atiku received to reach the desired result. Some of those numbers are mutually exclusive; some people will stand up for Atiku and not agree with Peter Obi, some will stand up for Peter and not stand up for anyone else, and of course, some will stand in the middle for both of them. I worked too hard on this election-related analysis to buy that kind of jargon. How big will that number be? I’m not sure.
Every election, I always remind people, you have to start over. After four years, if you’re clever, you’ll need to remeasure the individual to ensure that the clothing you made for me is still appropriate for its intended use. You will experience the misery of a lazy person who does not want to deal with the difficult task of listening to the electorates to know exactly where they are if you assume that it is just a combination and you are holding your breath until the next election, when everything will always be exactly as it was in the previous election.
It’s possible that the problems and the dynamics are entirely different. Maybe Tinubu will look to the North, where they might have some serious concerns with the votes they gave last time, even from his APC, and how they are likely being treated, if he is experiencing any problems, which I am not implying. Even in the Southeast, I doubt that kind of animosity still exists in the southern portion of the nation. If you go to the Southeast now, you will be fooling yourself by claiming that you don’t understand that they have more space than they have ever had. You will also be fooling yourself by claiming that they don’t have larger political gladiators and that it would be foolish and dangerous to assume that if they take a position that the South wants to do for eight years, the South won’t choose their Southern brother if it turns into a game between a North and a Southern man.
Since we haven’t seen a commensurate vote on the ground, you can use the off-season to measure. These are simulations and assumptions, but I’m just saying that anyone who wants to run elections in 2027 should be busy conducting polls, benchmarking, deep diving, and traveling the country and paying close attention to where people are. Social media isn’t the best way to gauge public sentiment.
The ticket for Atiku-Saraki
In actuality, the Atiku-Saraki ticket is really challenging because, technically, it requires you to remain in upper Niger in order to select two candidates; perhaps one of them would run while we search for a supporter in the southern region. However, it would be challenging to have a man from the South and Southwest together. Instead, you might say that Atiku could run for office and then support him with a Southerner, or Bukola could run for office and we would support him with a Southerner.
Although I have never considered it that way, we can reinstate Peter Obi and Bukola Saraki. As I previously stated, my stance is both clear and ambiguous; you cannot shout the names of just three candidates for president of Nigeria when there are 220 million people in the nation. Since it appears that we are dissatisfied with every president, our problems have gotten to the point where we must carefully consider what they are offering beyond rhetoric.
It would be foolish to assume that the only thing political parties have against Tinubu is tribalism because they would be shocked at the kind of human capital he has in other parts of the country. However, elections are far more scientific, deeper, and penetrating, and for anything they want to say, they have to contend with the fact that Tinubu knows whatever they think they know in politics, whatever they think they can do and conspire in politics, he also can because he is a politician. Therefore, choosing a candidate requires a far more thorough, methodical, laborious, and in-depth examination of what the public has to say.
Is a Southern president desired by the populace? Four years after one Fulani, are they prepared for another? All of these issues need to be explored, and I’m not sure how anyone could imagine winning the general elections without conducting a thorough study and benchmark. Younger members of the generation are starting to worry a little bit, but they shouldn’t think that we can’t tell them which direction to go; if they want to be angry, let’s all be angry together.
You recently made some recommendations on how PDP should deal with Wike and Atiku, do you see the party adopting your recommendations in the next NEC?
I do not know, to be honest, one of the issues of a democratic institution is that everybody can put together and put forward their views and ideas, my prayer and hope is that they are able to sit.
I disagree that a persistent issue should be solved in a straightforward manner, that you should be blinded or deaf to what you perceive to be one side of an issue, or that you can be so self-righteous or dishonest as to believe that none of them are good or bad. I usually say to people, if you are to build institutions that would last, you must stay in the big middle because when you sieve it down, you see the extreme here and there, that would be an area that is difficult for people to operate.
But for you to be in the middle, it will be compromising here and there, a desire to forgive some issues, and it will mean the need to be practical in the things that would work. Fortunately, I think those are very well-considered opinions. As someone who has never left the party and has never stopped advocating, I think I’m right in believing that we Africans can create a lasting democratic institution. I don’t care if people want you to be their cheerleader or if they just want you to go around insulting people they don’t agree with every day without trying to understand what they’re saying. I want to lead the party if they allow me and anyone who wishes to lead must be prepared to be fair and balanced.
Will the PDP BoT meeting with Wike bring about peace in the party?
I have never imagined the consciousness with which the men calling themselves BoT now caused the problem in the country and this democracy, that they can solve it with the same consciousness. In the first instance, we will begin to ask them, why are they singling Wike out of the situation. Why haven’t we heard from them talking about other people who are more aggrieved? Is this the first, second, or third time they are going to visit him? Why haven’t we seen that they have the courage to scold him harshly given that most of them are older than him or are they in their illustration that as the conscience of the party are so unwilling or afraid to tell him that certain things are not acceptable?
We have styled them as the conscience of the party, so hopefully they have an institutional memory of where the party is coming from but I doubt if they have any idea of where the party is going. I wish them well and I pray they are able to come up with something that is reasonable but let’s encourage any effort in any direction that would bring help, though I would have preferred that they had a direct approach to the whole issue.
What approach do you think is most appropriate in resolving PDP’s leadership crisis?
I think an early convention is the most appropriate, with an early convention they can start primarily in the sense of the excos because I do not believe that the fixation of the conversation of replacing just one person in the exco is a smart way to solve a problem that has eaten deep into this particular executive. So I would have preferred that they should be able to say that we are giving time from this time to this time to prepare for an early convention which should take into consideration that you have reformed the party to some extent, listen to the citizens of the country who decides who gets the ticket, and draw the line wherein this type of thing would not be accepted and make it very clear.
The reason why I said that is – the issue that led us to the 2023 challenge had its root in 2015 and it’s almost as if an invisibly do-me-I-do-you in, you know, in our local language is on the table. There are those who feel that some people left the party and caused the party to lose an election in 2015 and there are those who believe that 2019 should have been zoned to another part of the country, so what are they talking about, and there are those who believe that one man in the person of the former Governor of Rivers State is the issue and I do not agree.
I feel that our issues are a bit more systemic, I started noticing it in 2011 when I was the Director General of Jonthan-Sambo’s campaign in 2011, I saw clearly that as the person in charge of the presidential campaign in Ogun State where the challenge of the party is and I have been screaming on the needs for reforms but ironically, what they have always assumed is that they should just manage to be a ticket bazaar platform so that anybody who gets their ticket will just assume that they can harvest votes.
And of course, they tried it in 2019 it didn’t work, in 2015 we lost, in 2023 it didn’t work and I marvel at how they think the conversation on the table now is a ticket, which I don’t agree with.
The conversation on the table now is how they could reform the party to an extent so that there would be an introspection to what exactly is the party all about now, and how do they differentiate their own position and their programmes from their rivals. And how do they ensure whatever it is that they are calling their desire either to get a ticket or be a candidate is in tune with the Nigerian people?
Do you see February’s NEC meeting as a catalyst for resolving PDP’s crisis?
It depends on what the NEC is meant to answer, if it’s that the NEC is meant to be a test of who has the better number to force that position, even forcing that position wouldn’t solve the problem. If NEC becomes something that does not allow the status quo to remain without a commensurate understanding of everybody coming to the table, it will not solve the problem. What can solve the problem like I said is for us to be clear in our mind that the injury done has been too much and we should be willing to say let’s start afresh.
For instance, if you want to discuss Damagum, what about the others, have you accepted the lies of all the others without mentioning them, lest they think that I’m criticizing them for being inefficient? I do not accept it.
So, I do accept that whatever the argument for and against Damagum does not solve the challenges that I see, we need a people’s purpose executive when we are in opposition, we need to find new energy, we need to find something that would bring us to the upstream and it does not include those who make statements that are difficult to prove bothering on defamation and label just because they have the opportunity and the might.
People who make allegations that can’t be proven are best fools because they run the risk of the person they are alleging drag them to court to show cause and when you make claims that you yourself have no evidence, they start saying the party is comatose and using some of the most inappropriate adjectives to describe the party; I think those ones deserve better condemnation.
Because at the end of the day, what exactly was expected of the PDP that it has not done, it has done about five or six primaries for the off-season elections and none have been contentious with candidates emerging, it has done ward elections, it has done LG executives, state government executives and most of them are not contentious, at the end of the day, the one sticking issue does not reflect the totality of the matter. I think Nigerians must be a little bit sympathetic to PDP for democracy is noisy because everybody is trying to push their own interest and agenda.
And it’s in that context that you hear all these arguments of going to court and in organizations where all these things are not allowed, where when one person barks, everybody agrees without complaining, that would not be democracy.
As much as it may seem noisy, that is the evidence that the party is democratic and this is why some of its issues demand bigger levels of understanding, if somebody feels aggrieved and is in a democratic party, he is entitled to go to court and if you have a case in court, can you now go ahead and pretend as if it’s not in court?
If you do that, you run the risk of your case being subjudiced; so you can see how complicated it is, that’s why I feel that they should put more energy and try to see if it’s possible for an early convention so that we can use that early convention to go through the entire process of horse-trading, in the process, some of the issues of where do you want to zone to? Who is the best man to do this? Some of those issues will be settled and if they do it well and all-encompassing, and do not use exco positions just to favour weak people who they consider to be their friends or those that would listen to them, everybody will be better for it.
Is Wike’s grievance with PDP due to any hidden presidential agenda?
I’m not his spokesperson and do not have the power to speak for him but the truth of the matter is that Wike is not a pretentious character. He is even so unpretentious which is part of the problem, so I don’t think that if Wike wants to run for the presidency he will be hiding; that’s not who he is. At least, I have been in this party since he has been here and we have been seeing ourselves, we’ve had the benefit of lots of good positions in the party, he’s not made of that kind of pretentious material to say he wants to be president when he doesn’t want to be or being afraid to say when he wants to be president.
At least, for the 2027 circle, I have not heard anything to that effect and if he wants to be president, he will obviously say it at some point; but certainly, you can’t be accusing him of such because it will be uncharitable to do so.
What I think is going on is that everybody has a way they react to what they consider to be a hurt or an injustice for the breach of their right. And if people have the ability to fight or react to the breach of their right, you may not like it but it will be a bit too much to say they don’t have the right. When you injure people, you can only be sure of your own action and not predict the action of the person who feels injured.
This particular matter, when you talk people expect you to follow their narrow prism, its not so, the truth is that 2023 became complicated as a result of what we call the Delta Accord – Asaba Accord where governors of Southern extractions went to Asaba hosted by former governor Okowa and they came out with a communique claiming that the presidency of Nigeria should go to the South in the next election.
If you had followed me or searched through the internet, I was on television the very day screaming and shouting that PDP should not be forced into zoning that will not be to their advantage, after all, for a political party to be able to run, it needs to run where it can have some advantage and numbers.
And like I said in case, it becomes compulsory that it wants to zone South, then they should simply say we are going to the Southeast because at that time, I said we have gone Southwest with Obasanjo, gone South-south with Jonathan, so nobody should pretend to PDP that we do not know where our liability is; and I said our liability as far as Southern presidency is concern is with the Southeast. I said that very clearly but you know people like to think that they are smart and at the end of the day, they create a complication.
With its plethora of issues, can PDP withstand Tinubu in 2027?
We have to reinvent ourselves and in doing that we have to go back to the drawing board and in doing that some of these problems we keep having will just disappear because why are people scheming to insist that they must control the exco, is it not because they are assuming that whoever owns the exco totally owns the ticket? Atiku was not in the country when they were putting together the 2018 exco yet he won the ticket in 2019, those who had the powers to put the exco together – the Secondus exco – if you know how hard Wike fought all the Western leaders to install Secondus, that didn’t stop Atiku who was not part of that exco scheming.
I don’t know why people don’t learn from their mistakes, I think that for a political party, anybody who wants to be president must make himself so presidential and attractive to such a point that by the time you get to any party, it’s almost accomplished so long as the party primaries and process are clean. When they open up the forms, people will buy and crisscross the party. All those thinking that they can eliminate or joke with Atiku’s political capital by the time he gets to the primaries again and he beats them all the case will be settled once and for all.
What are the chances of Tinubu winning in the 2027 election?
There is a pathway for anybody who wants to win, if you want I can show you the pathway for the president which is easy. For the pathway of Tinubu’s victory, first, count all states he has governors, especially in the North, then count all those who are first-term governors who would be looking for a second term; then count the ones that are second-term looking for successors; then discount it by asking yourself is there anybody the opposition is bringing that can stress them to the point that they would subject their own election to the risk of losing their party’s election which would include Senate and Reps so that they can lose their own seats.
The biggest loss that happened to PDP was in 2015 and the reason was that a lot of our governors and senators lost their seats due to people claiming that they wanted to prove a point, some of those people who proved a point have not recovered till today. What makes you think that the governors on APC’s table would be so childish to prove that point and lose their own ticket?
Have you asked yourself if the younger elements, I can list them if you want – the NSA of this world, the Vice President of this world, the Zulum of this world, the El-Rufais of this world, and such younger elements who may be interested in becoming president after the turn of the South – have you asked them if they are ready to push their presidential date further than the worst case scenario another four years?
So, what I’m trying to say is that anybody who rules out Bola Tinubu that he won’t win the next election is a fool, these things are not as easy as that. To beat him, you need to get down to the drawing board, running helter-skelter won’t work.
For instance, by now you need to start settling platform issues, platform issues are why we are talking about the PDP. If you are going to do a merger, you need to all come to the table now without an overacting assumption that somebody is going to take the ticket as nobody will sit in a merger to ‘merger’ themselves as of their own advantage if you have already predetermined who will get the ticket, these are all practical issues of politics.
When you look at the economy for those shouting when it was good, did you give the poor Northerners money? Did you give the poor Nigerians money that you will now say when the economy is bad they would leave, you don’t know that. That you are stimulating tribalism in the country does not mean that others cannot stimulate something else, others forget that he’s the Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces of this country, within now and the next one-and-the-half years; he has enough opportunity around.
What if the economy picks up and people can see the tangible things, how would you be able to beat him? What if we get to election day and it becomes an issue of money? What if you can’t mobilize enough money like the president? He can be beaten but not by this melody of misdirected activities where those working hard to give us strength are being disrespected, while others are sitting in their houses drinking Fura thinking that the presidency will fall on their laps.
