The Bazaar – By Sam Omatseye

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It is the way of the race. Just as the Apostle Paul says, all run, but only one receives the prize. But what prize? At what price? The view is now rife that the PDP ticket, in the words of Paul again, was a corruptible prize. For Paul, only the prize of heaven is without blemish. Even the UEFA Champions League final was not going to share its glory with two finalists. Liverpool was not too far from the Madrid crown. It sniffed it but snuffed it out after 90 minutes. Winning is not always about the fiery player, but about the goals. As the good book says, the battle is not always for the strong. Time and chance bestow the jewel.

So, it was for Abubakar Atiku. The Adamawa chieftain beat the field, in spite of the husky uproar of Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike. Before the primary, three big names bowed out. Sokoto State’s Aminu Tambuwal conceded charmingly to Atiku. Then Obi and Hayatu-Deen walked away, the former from the party, the latter from the race. Both cited an unfair contest. Obi cried that he was dumping the party. But it was the party that dumped him. The light-voiced fellow was pretending late in the game as though he did not know the rules of the game. He knew it was a contest of war chests. He signed up early. He wanted to wage war according to what Hayatu-Deen called “obscene monetization.” He was mobilized to monetize. He then compared his war chest with his rivals. He discovered that chest for chest, he had no cheers. He withdrew because he had no chest for the war. Suddenly, he turned into a righteous man who would not touch an unclean thing. Shakespeare said conscience has made a coward of men. Money turned Obi into a man of conscience. Not because he was too upright to fight, but because he was facing a certain catastrophe.

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Hayatu-Deen was only naive, fighting a contest of war chests on television and billboards when the spears and arrows of dollars flew about in the entrails of the grassroots. Atiku and Wike were constipating the delegates with their “materiel” of war.

So, to Apostle Paul again, Atiku won a corruptible prize, a dollarized victory. It was a bazaar of democracy, and what a bizarre duel it was. A democracy of the money men. Money and politics have never been more obscene than in the story of the PDP presidential primary. This is the cost of a perilous delegate system in which a few handpicked fellows of less than a thousand decide for a major party to run for the government of over 200 million people.

The open primary was tossed aside, and Speaker Gbajabiamila was a big voice for open and direct primaries. He evangelized its virtue as the gateway out of a democracy of vipers. But it was handed over to the plutocrats. We have made the political bed, and we must lie on it and snore. Maybe in another cycle, we will do well.

One thing is clear: the PDP has overthrown zoning. By picking Atiku, the southern governors’ pact to uphold the southern ticket has turned out to be a fatuous jamboree. Those who say Atiku’s win was a nod to the northeast are mistaken. Atiku is Fulani. If it is a northeast prize, then it should go to the Kanuri, who fills that landscape from Borno to a big chunk of Jigawa. To present Atiku is to ‘Fulanise’ the northeast and cast swine before Kanuri pearls. The Kanuri will not appreciate that insolence.
So, Atiku is a northern pick, not a northeast choice. It is the triumph of self-serving candidacy. Atiku has privileged his private fantasy over a fraternal nation. In his victory speech Saturday night, he said he aims to unify Nigeria. His mere candidacy defeats that idea. He was laughing at the south, at the Kanuri and his fair-minded Fulani folks, at the Igbo, Yoruba, Afemai, Kalabari, et al. He has soured the national palate. Those who expect the country to feel like one big family will be sorely disappointed. He is Machiavellian in the sorriest way ever. Here is a man, in moments of intellectual vainglory, who drew the sword for true federalism and restructuring.

But the battle is set for the APC. Some have said the best way to counter him is to pick another person from the northeast. That will be a surrender to PDP poohpoohing of zoning. Again, you don’t play your opponent’s game, or else you admit he is better. Some have pointed out Ahmed Lawan’s way because he comes from Yobe State and the northeast. But that is a bad strategy. He comes from the northeast, but the northeast has not come to him. Even in his Yobe State, he does not have command of the political jugular. He is not even Kanuri but hails from the Bade tribe, a small group in Yobe. There is nothing wrong with that, except that he has not transcended it. He hasn’t been able to get past the fact that he is popular in his senatorial district because he is a local.

The APC can only battle Atiku with a person who has the contacts and appeal of a nationalist. That person is also not the vice president. Yemi Osinbajo has been campaigning with modest energy, and all he claims as a strength is that he served under Buhari for seven years and acted for some weeks. He has not drawn out any vision or clarity of ideas other than an empty air of rhetoric. He has upset Muslims, especially in the north, and shown that he can’t break out of his RCCG comfort zone. He was cut out of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s cloth but now wants to declare himself the fashion designer. At the burial of one of Napoleon’s descendants, the writer Victor Hugo wrote, “Just because we had Napoleon Le Grand (the great), do we have to have Napoleon Le Petite (the small)?” Even though he could not handle Tinubu’s welfare ideas, the administration appropriated them and Buhari fired him from that task. He left him to shepherd the economy, whose currency is now the north of 600 Naira to a dollar.

Nor is Jonathan an option. His choice is to make the presidency go back north after another four years because he cannot seek re-election if he becomes president again.
The only option is to have Tinubu as the candidate. It promises to be a gladiatorial contest. Even if Atiku won the ticket with money, you must give him credit. He did not enter the fray yesterday. He has been at it for decades, from under Yar-Adua’s shadow. He has become his own man with his own money and structure across the country. He is a big name to fight in the national sweepstakes. He has contacts. He has people who swear by him. Forget that he has been the harlot of Nigerian politics, without a core of values other than the vanity of attaining political power. He has been able to show a muscle no one can ignore.

Other than Tinubu, APC has no one near Asiku’s prowess. The others are baboons waiting for a boon of anointing. Tinubu knows him well. At one of Atiku’s ashewo bus stops, he sought and clinched a presidential ticket for Tinubu’s party. He knows Tinubu is a tough cookie to crack. Tinubu knows business more than he does. He has done it for himself. He has done it for Lagos, a model for all states who want to plow out of the economic doldrums. Both even belonged to the Yar’adua group of yore. They both have grown to be different men of stature.

But even APC recognizes Tinubu’s advantage. Tinubu has been across the country and has made contacts that outmatch Atiku, region for region, tribe for tribe. In the field of ideas, Tinubu is original. Atiku has nothing but to ape popular tropes. Both have troops, but Tinubu has a heftier one. Tinubu has strategised to defeat Atiku. Atiku has no such record against him. With Atiku’s victory in the PDP, half the battlefield is open. The other half is in the offing.
The option for the APC is whether they want to win with Tinubu or lose without him. Do they want to fight a lion with a domestic cat or a bigger lion? It’s a battle of pound for pound and guile for guile. It will be a thriller. A week from now will prove it.

Omatseye is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of The Nation. (Edited by staff of theGazetteNGR)

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