Landslide before the earthquake  

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA

The phrase “landslide victory” crept into our national political lexicon in August 1983 when the ruling National Party of Nigeria [NPN] recorded a sweeping presidential election victory and also increased its haul of state governors from seven to thirteen out of 19. It snatched six governorships from opposition parties but lost one state, Kwara, to UPN. All the newspapers reported then of an NPN landslide victory but when reporters accosted the legendary wordsmith Dr. K. O. Mbadiwe and asked him what he thought it, he said, “No, no. This is not a landslide victory. It is a political earthquake.”

With the migration, last week alone, of two more state governors from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] to the ruling All Progressives Congress [APC], the latter has already recorded a landslide victory more than a year before the 2027 general elections and is on course to record a political earthquake in the upcoming elections. Whether that is historically safe, is another matter.

Both Adamawa State Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri and Plateau State Governor Caleb Mutfwang’s defections had been expected since the two of them publicly dissociated themselves from the decision taken at PDP’s Ibadan convention in November to expel several estranged chieftains, including Federal Capital Territory [FCT] Minister Nyesom Wike. Open disagreement with the decision of a national convention could only be a sign of preparing to depart.

The gale of defections of state governors from opposition to the ruling party at the federal level has consolidated one of the most conspicuous differences between politics in the Fourth Republic and that of earlier Republics, especially the Second and the Third. Defections in themselves have never been unusual in Nigerian politics. Ordinary party members, some of them imaginary, often announce their defection by the thousands usually as “supporters” of a major figure who defected. Since 1999, a lot of Federal and state legislators also defected from opposition to ruling parties. PDP gained a lot from those defections during its heydays. While MPs cannot legally defect from their parties unless they are split into factions, PDP Speakers and Senate Presidents always shielded defectors and never declared their seats vacant despite demands by their former parties to do so.

Since 2023, not only MPs but state governors are also defecting in the middle of their governorship mandates. Before Fintiri and Mutfwang, Rivers State Governor Simi Fubara sought an end to his political troubles by defecting to APC. That, too, was foreseen because he did not attend PDP’s Ibadan convention after he was restored to his seat after the six months’ suspension. He said he was defecting to APC to show gratitude to President Bola Tinubu for restoring him to office, a strange kind of gratitude because it was the same Tinubu who suspended him on grounds that many Nigerians thought were at the service of Nyesom Wike.

Before Fubara, Taraba State Governor Agbu Kefas also defected from PDP to APC. Some Taraba journalists said he did so against the wishes of his political godfather, General Theophilus [T.Y] Danjuma. Shortly after Kefas defected, Danjuma was seen receiving PDP leaders led by its new National Chairman Kabiru Turaki at his Lagos home. Before Kefas, Bayelsa State Governor Duoye Diri, defected; before him, Enugu State Governor Peter Mba did the same. Before Mba, Akwa Ibom State Governor Umo Eno jumped the PDP ship, and preceding Eno, Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori defected to APC with his entire cabinet, entire members of his state assembly, entire Local Government chairmen and councilors and entire PDP state, local government and ward executives. He also took along with him former state governor Ifeanyi Okowa, who was PDP’s vice presidential candidate in the 2003 elections.

Yet another PDP governor, Ademola Adeleke of Osun, jumped ship. He did not go to APC, because the Osun State APC is powerful, it narrowly lost the governorship to him four years ago, is bent on reclaiming it in the upcoming off-season election and will not concede its ticket to the dancing governor, since its own men are eagerly waiting in the wings. So Adeleke danced his way to the small Accord party and quickly grabbed its nomination. But another group claiming to be an Accord party faction held a parallel congress and nominated another candidate. So, although Adeleke was banking on his incumbency powers to fight his way to re-election even on the platform of a non-descript party, the Wike Formula in PDP may again be at play.

In summary, PDP that emerged from the 2023 elections with twelve state governors, is now down to three. Last year it lost control of Edo State to APC. The three governors left in PDP, i.e. Bala Mohammed of Bauchi, Seyi Makinde of Oyo and Dauda Lawal of Zamfara, must now be walking tightropes to avoid landslides and earthquakes. Bala and Makinde are completing their second terms in office so they are less endangered.  Governor Lawal however is a first termer who will be up for re-election in 2027. Somewhat like Adeleke, moving to APC is a bit problematic for him because he only narrowly defeated it in the last election and must first seek accommodation with Zamfara APC’s powerful leaders, Bello Mutawalle and Abdulaziz Yari.

Apart from the three left-over PDP governors, there are three other opposition party governors in Nigeria. They are Prof Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra [APGA], Alex Otti of Abia [Labour Party] and Abba Kabir Yusuf of Kano, NNPP. All three of them must be contemplating their political future. Soludo only recently secured re-election, having deftly fended off Federal hostility by playing the pro-Tinubu game. Although APGA has been in control of Anambra State since 2006, the party has hardly expanded outside that enclave and must be contemplating its post-Soludo future. Otti is also in quandary because LP is disorganised at the national level, with two claimants to its national leadership and with its leader, Mr. Peter Obi having one leg in the opposition ADC. In last month’s off-season guber polls in Anambra State, LP secured only 10,000 votes in Mr. Obi’s home state.

Governor Abba Yusuf of Kano also faces a dilemma. Although his state has a long history of defying federal power, remarks made by NNPP’s leader Rabi’u Kwankwaso suggest a move towards APC. Most probably, they are still haggling over the terms of the defection, because Kano APC leaders will not easily concede the governorship ticket to NNPP defectors, the latter’s incumbency notwithstanding.

In the earlier years of this Republic when PDP held unrivalled sway, it gathered a lot of decampees but few sitting governors. In 2007, outgoing Kebbi State Governor Muhammad Adamu Aleiro defected from ANPP to PDP and got the governorship ticket conceded to his bloc, which fielded Sa’idu Nasamu Dakingari. In Bauchi State too, Governor Isa Yuguda, elected on ANPP’s platform in 2007, defected to PDP, as did Governor Mamuda Aliyu Shinkafi of Zamfara. However, five PDP governors, namely Adamawa’s Murtala Nyako, Rivers’ Rotimi Amaechi, Sokoto’s Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko, Kano’s Rabi’u Kwankwaso and Kwara’s Abdulfatah Ahmed defected to APC in 2014 and enormously helped in the ruling party’s historic defeat.

I am just wondering. Why was it that in the 51 months of the Second Republic [October 1979 to December 1983] in this same Nigeria, not one opposition party governor ever defected to the ruling NPN? Not one. At the start of that Republic, there were nineteen states and five registered political parties. NPN, which controlled the Presidency, had seven governors; UPN had five; NPP had three; GNPP had two and PRP had two. Along the way, there were rifts in some of the opposition parties caused by PRP and GNPP governors’ desire to team up with their UPN and NPP counterparts to form the mega opposition Progressive Peoples Party, PPP]. Party leaders Aminu Kano and Waziri Ibrahim objected; FEDECO refused to register PPP [probably at NPN’s behest]; it also said any governor who wanted to defect to another party must first resign. Thus, GNPP governors Muhammadu Goni of Borno and Abubakar Barde of Gongola both resigned and contested the 1983 elections on UPN’s tickets. PRP’s Abubakar Rimi of Kano also resigned and contested on NPP’s platform, while Kaduna’s PRP governor Abba Musa Rimi opted to forgo re-election. All of them lost to NPN candidates in the “landslide victory” of 1983.

In the Third Republic, not one of the 30 state governors [16 NRC and 14 SDP] ever changed camps, so why are almost all opposition governors of the Fourth Republic in a wildebeest-like migration to the ruling party? Is it fear of anti-graft agencies, lure of alleged Presidential largesse to defectors, lack of trust in INEC to provide a level playing field, or fear that their parties will be so riven by [APC-sponsored] factions that they will be unavailable to provide anyone with a platform to contest the 2027 elections?

Caveat Emptor: Landslides and earthquakes in Nigeria’s political history, however achieved, step on mines down the road.