by Akin Osuntokun

As the reporting of modern electoral politics goes, the South West zone can be appropriately designated the battleground zone of the forthcoming Nigeria Presidential election in 2015. It is the zone where the election will be won and lost-particularly for the APC. As the electoral map mathematics and general political tendency stand today, the South-West is the least committed zone.

This toss up status runs contrary to its post-independence bloc voting pattern.
There is the near certainty that the presumptive PDP candidate, President Goodluck Jonathan will prevail in the South-South, South-East and North-Central zones leaving only the margin of victory to the imagination. Pretty much similar attribution can be made for the likely APC flag bearer, General Mohammadu Buhari, in the North-West and North-East zones.
The political competitiveness that is thereby inferred is good for the durability and viability of our multi-party system. The system will not long endure if either political party repeatedly goes into an election with the certainty of losing or winning. A time will come when the hopeless chronic loser will begin to see the system as an adversary in whose sustenance it has no vested interest-regardless of the fairness of the circumstances of its failure.

This nihilistic tendency corresponds to the zero sum perception of the system in which the loser loses all and the winner wins all.
Ordinarily, Presidential elections in Nigeria generate a lot of anxiety and uncertainty far more than it should. And the reason for this is known to all-too much power at the centre.

By itself, over concentration of power at the centre is not a problem. It only becomes a problem where the society to which it is applied inherently defies or it is antagonistic to the logic of centralisation.
By all accounts, Nigeria is a prescribed federalism. The corollary here is that the country is antithetical and not amenable to a unitary constitution-under which (unfortunately) the country has laboured in one form or another since 1966.
In this recognition, the contest for power at the centre approximates the culture of quarrying for booty and the spoils of victory in a conquered territory. Shorn of all pretention and hypocrisy it is no less the case now-that much explains the ferocity and desperation with which political players contemplate the election.
It is a platitude to suggest that the present political configuration-with specific regards to the South-west zone, is a culmination of the haphazard progression of the Fourth republic. At the onset of the renewal of its Presidential mandate in 2011, the PDP was in complete disorderly retreat in the zone and the formula for winning Presidential election therein had been effectively reduced to periodic ad hoc bargaining with the regional bound opposition party.
The subsequent formation of the APC made the sustenance of this formula a little less likely (as 2015 looms in the horizon) and the necessity of the formula was positively called to question by the PDP breakthrough in Ekiti state-which popped up virtually from nowhere. The trend accelerated with the final acquiescence of the Labour Party to the long standing overtures of the PDP.
The outcome of the governorship election in Osun State did not quite follow suit but the robust performance of its candidate indicates that the PDP has not lost the wind in its sail. And more than ever before, there is now a real chance that Oyo and Ogun states may go the way of Ekiti while the APC in Lagos state may implode under the stress of its own internal contradictions.
Going by the measure of the benign neglect the zone had endured under this dispensation, I think the PDP and its Presidential contender have been lucky with the less than hostile reception it is getting in the South-west.

I do not know to what logic we can attribute the seeming political apathy of President Jonathan towards the zone other than the resignation to the now untenable assumption that the zone is captive to the opposition party.
The element of luck is that despite this baggage, the PDP has re-emerged as a formidable contender in the zone. This extenuating circumstance for Jonathan in the culpability for setting the zone on the path of political relegation and marginalisation is the subversive role of the House of Representatives Speaker Aminu Tambuwal and his cohorts.
If any individual can be credited with unspeakable cruelty and insensitivity towards the PDP, Tambuwal has no contender. He started by subverting both the party and the South-West zone (by robbing the zoning arrangement); and has ended up following the vintage precedent of his biblical role model-and duly fulfilled the grand role of betrayal to which he was foreordained.
Yet, all who would not now find their voice notably went hysterical with fusillades of hyperbole in convicting and castigating Nuhu Ribadu for an incomparable lapse.

Those of us who believe in the notion that providence has a way of balancing scores can partly extrapolate the setback of APC in the South-West to the vicious kick in the groin dealt the zone by the likes of Tambuwal.
As the South-West becomes a disappearing act in the projected victory party of the APC, the need to go back to the drawing board becomes commensurately compelling.

In seeming response, General Buhari has come out openly to own the possibility of fielding a Muslim-Muslim Presidential ticket-to which no less a personality than President Olusegun Obasanjo has responded with alarm and condemnation.
In emphatic indication of one who has been thoroughly schooled in propagating this platform, Buhari went to town as follows:
“In 2003, whom did I chose as my running mate? Chuba Okadigbo. He was brought up by Zik. And he was senate president and was a serving senator when he accepted to be my running mate. He was a Roman Catholic. He was an Igbo. In 2007, whom did I pick? Edwin Ume-Ezeoke. He was a Roman Catholic. He was an Igbo. And in 2010, I even chose a pastor. Pastor Tunde Bakare.  Honestly, what do Nigerians want me to do? If they don’t believe I’m not a fundamentalist, what also can I do? This new phenomenon of religion is another blackmail political confusionists in Nigeria are bringing to the fore. What kind of people are we? Nigerians will always bring something to cause confusion while we are trying to stabilise the system… I have not absolutely closed my mind to picking a Christian or Muslim as running mate if I get the ticket”.
In the first place, it amounts to abject over-simplification (or feigned ignorance) to reduce the critique of Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian Presidential ticket to the person of Buhari or the predilection of any individual. Nobody is criticising this idea because of Buhari. It is simply a bad idea whose contemplation is made worse by the association of such a polarising figure.

Secondly how does the observance of political correctness (as the running mate choice of Okadigbo, Ume-Ezeoke and Tunde Bakare indicates) become justification and extenuation for a future political misdemeanour?
And then in the most brazen contrivance of self-righteousness imaginable, Buhari was actually blaming Nigerians for a sin he has the singular honour of being the foremost proponent.

In what manner should Nigerians view a politician who goes around urging Muslims to vote for only those who would protect their faith?; a former head of state who chose the precise moment of Sharia inspired national turmoil to proclaim “I will continue to show openly and inside me the total commitment to the Sharia movement that is sweeping all over Nigeria, God willing, we will not stop the agitation for the total implementation of the Sharia in the country,”
In the same interview, Buhari sought further justification in the Abiola-Kingibe precedent “Why did Nigerians line up and elect Abiola and Kingibe?” Well the short answer to that poser is that Nigerians did that because prior to 1993, top Nigerian public figures did not go around canvassing fellow Nigerians to vote only those who would protect their faith. If Abiola or Kingibe had behaved similarly, there would have been no precedent to misappropriate for the cause of a patently divisive agenda in 2014.

Furthermore, in 1993, Nigeria was a long way to Boko-Haram and the credible suspicion of political usage it has spawned; and the world was light years away from the 9/11 turning point.
Not yet done Buhari contended “I will tell you something. Tinubu’s wife is a Christian, Governor Fashola’s wife is a Christian, Governor Amosun’s wife is a Christian, Bisi Akande’s wife is a Christian, Governor Ajimobi’s wife is a Christian. For goodness sake, the children of these political leaders in Nigeria were bred and brought up by Christian mothers.

You think those people, wherever they participate, they will bring a religious issue?”
Without prejudice to the religious liberalism of the personalities cited, we would do well to remind ourselves that the most rabid racist in America’s contemporary history, Strom Thurmond, had a child with an African-American consort; and Adolf Hitler was a descendant of Jews and Africans.
Beyond these gratuitous evasions, my fear is that I hope the South-West is not being targeted in an insidious manner.

The logic behind the composition of presidential tickets is no rocket science. It is predicated on the principle of complementarity-you either aspire to reinforce what you consider the strength of your ticket or seek to neutralise and diffuse a negative perception. A good example of the latter is Buhari’s own previous presidential tickets.
If Buhari or any Muslim religion denominated winner of APC Presidential primaries now goes ahead and nominate a fellow Muslim running mate then the ticket will be an illustration of seeking to reinforce an identity-considered to be the selling point of the candidature. The unique identity being reinforced here is the Muslim identity-since it is implausible to find any other attribute that is particular to such a ticket.
Further implication will be found in the fact that the region from which the Muslim running mate will be sourced is the South-West-where there is a sizable population of Muslims. Is it logical to presume that a surreptitious appeal is thereby being made to Muslim voters in the zone? What signal would this send to Boko-Haram and similarly misguided potential political jihadists? What is the possibility that the materialisation of such a ticket will provoke and precipitate a counter religious mobilisation of Christians? Would this ticket be deemed nationally inclusive or exclusive?

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.