Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari won a second and final term in office in 2019 courtesy of deep support from the northern part of the country, where he got 77% of the 15m votes he polled.With preparations in full gear for the next presidential election in February 2023, the big question is: who will win the battle to inherit the Buhari bloc vote? Atiku Abubakar, Nasir el-Rufai, Bukola Saraki, Aminu Tambuwal and Bola Tinubu are all making a case.
The voting pattern in Nigeria’s recent elections points to the north as a major decider of how the outcome usually pans. Apart from having the higher number of voters (44.8m compared to the south’s 39.1m), northern Nigeria also has a more active voting population, according to data obtained from the Independent National Electoral Commission.
Data released just before the 2019 elections shows that the north-west and north-east geo-political zones recorded 44% and 41.7% turnout respectively, the highest in the election, while the south-south (28.9%) and south-east (26.1%) had far less turnout.
In 2023, who will receive these votes?
Among the names that have been mentioned in political circles as favourites to inherit Buhari’s bloc vote – in the race to lead the world’s most populous black nation – is Atiku Abubakar, Nigeria’s vice-president from 1999 to 2007 under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), whose 16-year rule was ended by the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015.
Like Buhari, Atiku – a multimillionaire entrepreneur – is a northern Muslim and has had a long-time presidential ambition which dates back to 1992 during the botched Third Republic. Since then, he has contested for president on four more occasions. Although he is yet to declare his intention to run again in 2023, his close associates – and his gestures – say his eyes remain on Aso Rock, Nigeria’s seat of power.
For the north, it would not be business as usual since they have learned their lessons from the Buhari experience.
Atiku told The Africa Report that the state of affairs in Nigeria has become “far worse” than what it was before the 2019 elections and that he has “never been bothered about the future of our country more than I currently am.”
As an outsider in government circles, he has remained vocal about certain policies and actions of the Buhari administration, releasing 10 statements critical of the president in the last two months alone. He said he “will only give up (on Nigeria’s development) when there’s no longer breath in me”.
“The people of Nigeria have had a long-time expectation of good governance which has been out of the reach of common Nigerians, especially by the coming of the present administration. That is why many leaders, including myself, see it as a call of duty to keep reminding the government to fulfil its promises and obligations to the people,” he says.“What is disturbing is that most of the time, the government ignores our recommendations. However, it is not about myself alone. A good number of leaders, men and women of goodwill, are perturbed by the turn of events in the country and everyone has been talking to this government,” he told The Africa Report.But beyond his intervention, the former vice-president has hit the ground running, according to one associate. Furthermore, in June 2020, the son had said his father “will be aspiring to the number one office” in 2023 while “The Atiku Support Group” was launched in December 2020 to actualise his presidential ambition.Although he has dissociated himself from the group, one of those actively involved in its activities likened Atiku’s current posture to having ‘his eyes on the goal’. The source said the former vice-president will “most likely” take another shot at the presidency in 2023 to fulfil his dreams for Nigeria.“The Waziri (Atiku) is serious about the presidency because of his passion [for the country]. That is what has kept him going since his first attempt and from the look of things, he will most likely contest again in 2023,” the source said.
Nasir El-Rufai is currently analyzing his options.
Governor Nasir El-Rufai in the north-western Kaduna state is also being rumoured, within APC’s inner circles, as a favourite top shot who could enjoy widespread support in northern Nigeria as a presidential candidate.
El-Rufai has also been seen in the past as the ‘Kakaki’ or unofficial spokesperson of core northerners and Fulani on issues that affect them. In 2012, he likened the killing of any Fulani person to a loan that must be repaid, and said in 2016 that he had to beg and pay some herders who migrated to Kaduna and were allegedly killing residents as a form of revenge in the prolonged pastoral conflict.
Only recently, on May 7 2021, the governor claimed that when the Fulanis are victims of extrajudicial killings, they “never forget and will come back for revenge”. Although the comment drew the ire of many Nigerians who interpreted it to mean his support for violent attacks by some herdsmen, it was embraced by some of the northerners who felt he was advocating for their interest.
The governor has also been strongly involved in calling the shots in some of the APC administration’s programmes, such as in 2018 when he chaired the party’s restructuring committee. The 2023 election could be an opportunity for him to push for the implementation of some of the panel’s recommendations, especially with regards to true federalism, state police and local government autonomy.
Although some of el-Rufai’s actions and comments suggest that he may be eyeing a vice-presidential ticket instead, arguing in 2020 that the presidency should be zoned to the south, a Kaduna-based analyst with access to the government house said the governor is “still calculating” a possible shot at the race.
According to the source, “2023 is not a priority for the governor now as he is preoccupied with restoring peace in the state but that is not to say that he is not eyeing Aso Rock. He is but it is too early a call to make for certain.”
El-Rufai, who was the minister of the Federal Capital Territory in the early 2000s, has been in the news for both the good and bad reasons, a trend which is also believed to be part of his strategy. He recently fell out with union leaders after sacking thousands of workers in the state, just as he has been battling with increased killings and abductions, some of which have targeted schools.
Saraki, Tinubu, Tambuwal also in the picture
Others favoured to inherit Buhari’s votes in the north include former Senate President Bukola Saraki and Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State, both of whom had sought the PDP presidential ticket in 2019.
In the case of Saraki, a two-time former governor of the north-central Kwara State, he is believed to have widespread support among notable persons within the PDP, with much of the goodwill that he enjoys coming his way when he led the upper legislative chamber from 2015 to 2019.
Now tasked to unite the PDP in his capacity as the chairman of the party’s national reconciliation and strategy committee, Saraki is “doing exactly what he needs to build on his support within the party and to bring him closer to the stakeholders,” according to a source at the party’s secretariat in Abuja.
There is also Bola Tinubu, the national leader of the APC, who has all but confirmed his presidential ambition, although sources at the ruling party said he is “not so favoured” in the race, especially with his cold war with Buhari’s close aides.
But, unlike Buhari, Tinubu’s goodwill is prevalent in southern Nigeria and a few other states in the north, which could make it challenging for him to break through in the north except with a very popular running mate.
As one of the sources at the presidential villa put it, “Tinubu would definitely be saved more by votes from the south than the north.”
Hearing from the horse’s mouth: Who the north will support
Six years into the Buhari administration, the north is “very disappointed” with the president’s style of leadership, according to the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), a top socio-political northern group that was very instrumental to Buhari’s election in 2015.
Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, the spokesperson of the forum, told The Africa Report that they had mobilised support for Buhari because they believed the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan was “losing the battle against Boko Haram and had abandoned the north to the group.”
“Six years down the road, we are worse than where we were in 2011; Boko Haram is stronger and now we have multiple threats all over the country,” he says.
Now, the group has learnt its lessons and says it will back any candidate that can unite the country amid deep ethnic and religious divides not minding their ethnicity or religion.
“We will support a leader with a very clear idea of what the problems are, what they are likely to be and how to solve them, not minding their identities. We are committed to the emergence of the leadership of this country that will commit and execute a programme that will reconstruct Nigeria and they are in everywhere, whether as northerner or southerner, Muslim or Christian,” he says.
There are also talks of ‘protest votes’ playing out in the 2023 elections. According to Mudashiru Dahiru, an Abuja-based political expert, “it is not going to be business as usual for the north because they have learnt their lessons from the experience with Buhari. There are going to be many protest votes, especially against the APC and politicians who have been in power for a long time.”
