SINCE a former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, came third in the 2023 presidential election, many have touted that his surest path to the Presidential Villa is by being a running mate to a northern politician. The same forces are currently urging him to join a coalition designed to unseat President Bola Tinubu in 2027.
The forces in the coalition are mainly made up of northern politicians who feel the Tinubu administration let their region down after helping him win the 2023 election against their own, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who came second.
With President Tinubu running the first four years of what many believe to be the turn of the South, it is expected of the coalition seeking to unseat him to field a southern candidate who will conclude the second half of the southern presidency.
However, with an heavyweight like Atiku in the coalition, who has been contesting presidential primaries since 1993 and presidential elections since 2007, it is unlikely that the coalition will field a southerner as the flag bearer of whatever political party it adopts.
Since the coalition is perceived as a northern project, Southerners need to be convinced to tag along, and that is where Obi comes in.
If the coalition agrees to field Obi as presidential candidate against Tinubu, it means the northern bloc will be subjecting itself to the dictates of another southern president if their move succeeds. Such a move also raises many questions.
Will an Obi agree to serve just one term and hand over to the north in 2031? Can anyone really vouch that he won’t go the way of former President Goodluck Jonathan, who allegedly jettisoned an agreement to hand over power to the north in 2015? Is it not more certain that Tinubu will hand over to the north after concluding eight years in 2031 than an Obi who might be consumed by power on concluding his first term by then?
With the north’s desperation to return to power, the answers to the questions should not be difficult to know. Same region ensured a southern president was voted out in 2015 and had its son, former President Muhammadu Buhari, rule for eight years. Same region fielded two of its heavyweight politicians, Atiku and former Kano State governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, against Tinubu in 2023.
If one of them had won, that would have seen the north rule for another eight years. Why would that same region now want an extension of the southern presidency beyond 2027? Why would the north want the south to benefit from a coalition it leads against the same south? The north’s silence on placing Obi as the coalition’s flagbearer can only mean one thing.
In 2023, Obi ran for president on the platform of the Labour Party (LP), which many said had no structure. However, the former governor was able to get 6,101,533 votes despite not having any governor backing his campaign. Atiku, who ran on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which had more than 12 governors at the time, got 6,984,520 votes, just about 800 more than Obi. If the coalition is to bring Obi and Atiku together, that could mean 13 million votes awaiting it, which is more than the 8,794,726 votes that made Tinubu President.
But who will be the flagbearer and VP candidate between both men? Atiku has already served as VP for eight years and has over time shown his desire to be president. He’s currently deep in the coalition, with many seeing him as its likely presidential candidate. He’s no stranger to teaming up with Obi who ran as his VP candidate in 2019, with 11.3 million votes bagged. Coming together again in 2027, both men could deliver more than they recorded in 2019 to unseat Tinubu and the 8.7 million votes he has in his bag.
It will be a huge gain for the north if the coalition succeeds in getting Obi to support an Atiku/Obi ticket in 2027, because the former governor not only comes with six million votes but a horde of supporters called Obidients. He also comes with a region (Southeast) that is hungry because it is yet to produce a president or vice president since the return of democracy in 1999.
The Atiku/Obi ticket will produce one of the best campaigns the Nigerian political terrain has ever witnessed because it will merge the northern grassroot politics and Obidients’ social media abilities. Except Tinubu is the god of politics, the ticket might give him nightmares, and the north knows this.
In 2023, Obi slammed those who claimed he lacked the structure to run for president because he wasn’t running on a platform that had bigwigs. According to him, such platforms are structures of criminality and poverty. However, an Obi alignment with the coalition spearheaded by the north could raise questions. If Obi believed so much in the structure that gave him six million votes, why would he need a coalition that could be made up of politicians from structures of criminality?
What will become of the Obidients who see him as a saint and the messiah to lead Nigeria away from corruption to greatness? Some of them are already issuing threats against talks of a coalition. To them, Obi shouldn’t be seen hanging with the structures he once demonised. Aligning with the coalition means he risks losing a huge chunk of his supporters.
The only reason Obi might consider the VP slot is if he’s promised power when the north is done. Accepting to join the coalition on such basis will only pass him off as a political neophyte. Promises in Nigeria’s political terrain are deceitful words you say to a lady to sleep with her. We all remember what happened to the promise allegedly made by Jonathan concerning handing over to the north in 2015. What about the fight put up by Tinubu in 2022/2023 against those who tried to prevent him from getting the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC), which he believed should got to him for his support for the Buhari presidency. Can Obi put up the same kind of fight if found in that kind of position?
If an Atiku/Obi ticket loses to Tinubu in 2027, the loss will paint Obi in bad light. Going back to run as Atiku’s VP candidate will be synonymous to a dog going back to its vomit. The loss will see his supporters scattered abroad. No one will want to keep chanting the Obi mantra because they will have to do that till 2039 when power will eventually return to the South, with Obi’s Southeast competing against the Southwest and South-South for it. It’s either he becomes president in 2027 or settles with being the president Nigerians never had.
But being a vice president is to announce to the world that he doesn’t believe in himself, which is why he’s ready to be the VP who attends events his boss is not interested in. Accepting to be VP means that he won’t be able to display the magic he promised Nigerians because his position lacks the power to do so.