Peter Obi: Where Atiku got it wrong  By Andrew Agbese

Atiku made a promise to do only one term and hand over to the Igbo by 2023. This, coupled with the grievances the zone has with the current administration due to its handling of the IPOB agitation and the comment about 5 percent as against 95 percent should have been enough to sustain the interest of the Southeast in seeing the back of the APC led Government in 2019.

The small print contained in the Atiku promise is that whoever he takes as his running mate is automatically confirmed as his official successor when he leaves office by 2023, if he wins in the next election.

This is where the problem lies.

By choosing what others would consider his successor even before getting to the office,  Atiku has sealed the fate of others from the Southeast who may have been interested in taking over from him as far as the PDP is concerned.

There are many prominent politicians from the Southeast that have indicated interest in running for the presidency.

What the choice of Peter Obi has done is to compel them to either bury their ambitions or to seek refuge on another platform.

You don’t do that in politics.

Since Atiku had made the promise to hand over to someone from the South east, he should have left the choice open by picking his running mate from another zone.

This can easily be worked with the running mate with the understanding that the pledge is binding on the two of them and would have made politicians from the South east region double their efforts to see to the realization of the dream in the hope that it would favour them.

Nigerian politicians only work where they stand to benefit personally. They hardly want to work for another.

But since Atiku has named Peter Obi as his running mate which by extension means he is his preferred choice as Vice President for four years and possibly president for another eight years, prominent politians from the Southeat and even South South whose reason for supporting Atiku is to see that they end up as possible sucessors to him would be disillusioned and may work against the party.

If past experiences are anything to go by, the fact that Peter Obi has been chosen is enough to make prominent politicians from the southeast double their efforts to see that the idea does not materialize so that it would not bury their own ambitions.

It would have been a different matter of Atiku had not made any promise to any zone.

But he has.

This would give the Buhari camp the message they need to convince the Southwest not to buy into the PDP project because while Atiku is not constitutionally barred from going for another term, Buhari cannot go beyond 2023 and Yemi Osinbajo is already looking good to succeed him.

The fear is that if Atiku wins and reneges on his promise and recontests, then that means Obi stands the chance of doinf eight years as Vice President and another eight as president.

A typical Nigerian politician whose ambition would be affected by that would not want that.

By this decision, Atiku has watered down the support he would have got from people like Ike Ekweremadu, Theodore Orji, Eyinaya Abaribe, Sam Egwu, Achike Undenwa and others who are in the same party with him and has succeeded in foreclosing any chance of negotiations with those in other parties like Chris Ngige, Rochas Okorocha, Sullivan Chime, Ogbonnaya Onu and others who could have been swayed by the prospects of being considered for the position to lend their support even if secretly, like some are alleging a PDP governor in the South south is currently doing to the APC.

People talk about Obi’s prudence and the other good qualities he has that could complement that of Atiku and how it puts them in a good position to run an efficient government. But that is like putting the cart before the horse; they have to win the elections first before that can come into play.

The North west vs Northeast

I have seen many analyses that gave the Northeast zone to Atiku based on the fact that he is from that area.

But the truth of the matter is that when it comes to politics, majority of the people in the North east tend to follow the path of their kith in the Northwest even at the expense of sacrificing their own.

Simply put, the Northeast takes political direction from the Northwest.

This is because demarcation between the Northeast and Northwest is largely artificial; they people are basically the same.

While a man from Ibilo in Edo State which shares border with Kogi State would for instance identify with his fellow Edo man no matter the distance, a man from Bamaina in Jigawa State sees the man from Babaldo in Bauchi State as his brother more than somebody from Bogoro on the other side of the state.

And this goes down to places like Ningi, Darazo, Azare down to a large part Gombe,  Yobe and Borno States and some parts of Taraba.

That is why the only time the North east went different ways with the Northwest politically was in 1979 when Waziri Ibrahim’s GNPP won both Borno and Gongola States. But by 1983, the GNPP lost the two states to the NPN even with the presence of Ibrahim.

That partly explains why Buhari has consistently been winning Bauchi, Yobe and Borno States even with a PDP government at the center.

That Atiku is contesting the presidency  will not make much difference to majority of the people in the Northeast as the zone will most likely again take political direction from the Northwest.

The Southwest

Atiku should have tried to divide Buhari’s votes in the South west by offering them the same thing Buhari has offered, the VP.

Since Buhari had never made any pledge to support Osinbajo to succeed him leaving the matter open,  Atiku could have benefited from the reticence by leaving the issue of which region would succeed him hanging.

If Osun could have voted Nuhu Ribadu in 2011 based on the belief that he was the candidate of the Southwest, the Yoruba would have had no problem gravitating towards Atiku if they have the same assurance.