By Dr. Johnson Greg
When I predicted that OUK would be president in 2023, I was not campaigning for the man. You have to know that I have NO power to make anyone the president or to stop anyone from becoming president. So those of you that thought I was campaign for OUK don’t understand politics, particularly Nigerian politics. No amount of campaigning will make an unviable candidate win the presidency in Nigeria. The reason is because in Nigeria, outcomes of elections are not yet significantly controlled by the freewill of the electorates. If so, all that is happening in Edo state right now will be unnecessary.
I took all that into consideration. OUK will not have had a great chance if a powerful APC candidate from the North enters the race. That’s a given, for the obvious reasons. Also, if Tinubu enters the race, the primaries will be very tough for OUK because Tinubu is well positioned to outrig every other Southerner. But I also considered how other key players in APC viewed OUK. In other words, to what extent do they perceive him as a threat? Indeed, they fear him. I observed carefully how they conspired to have him convicted and sentenced to 12 years, and the reason for that was simply to take him out of battle. That conspiracy was executed by Southern APC men interested in 2023. So, if they had to go that far to get rid of him, then he is a force to reckon with.
I tried to analyze OUK strength within APC. Bear in mind that every realistic analysis of strength and weakness must be by a relative or comparative analysis. That is: Strong compared to whom or weak compared to whom? Absolute comparisons are useless because you will be comparing apples and oranges.
1. OUK has strong support in the North. He has probably more support in the North than Tinubu.
2. Because the Igbos stayed a away from APC, OUK and Okorocha are the dominant APC men in the East. Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu is a fine gentleman, but he is actually a feather weight in APC of the future. Even in the present administration he is not a strong or influential minister. Dr. Ngige is not the one either. And with Okorocha embroiled in fresh controversies over his role as a Governor, he will be too preoccupied.
3. Only OUK and Okorocha have the personal resources necessary to kick-start a presidential campaign. And faced with fresh EFCC inquiries, Okorocha would probably play things down.
If APC zones presidency to the East, OUK will easily get it. His problem becomes how to beat the PDP candidate. Will Atiku run again or will PDP also zone it to the East? This is easy to answer. The only part of Nigeria where PDP has clear dominance is in the East. And the East wants the presidency zoned to them. If Atiku runs that means he opposes the wishes of the Igbos. That will cause PDP to lose the East without any offsetting benefits to the party. PDP will not take that risk. That means that PDP will settle for someone like Peter Obi. Again, PDP runs into trouble here because the Northern voters will not support Peter Obi. You need to understand this: the day Peter Obi attended the funeral of the parents of the IPOB leader and was shrouded in the Biafran flag, that was good with Igbo voters, but very disagreeable with nonIgbo voters.
As I said earlier, the question should not be whether I’m campaigning for OUK. He doesn’t need my help to become the president because I’m not involved in any of the above chain on events that will make him the president. My possible role in OUK project is not in making him the president, but in helping him become the best president Nigerian will have so far so that this opportunity will not be wasted. You see, there are three stages to the OUK experience. First stage is him becoming the APC candidate. And I have no role in that. The second stage is him defeating his PDP opponent. I really have not much role in that given the analysis above. The third stage is making sure that as a president, he will succeed as the greatest president in Nigeria and he will be able to unify the country, reconcile the people, develop the country and ensure justice for all. That is where I will be able to help him.
As to whether there will be zoning or not, Babachir Lawal addressed that question in a Punch Newspaper interview as follows:
“Two, politically, Nigerians want zoning in the polity. In states where the people are homogenous on the basis of religion and tribe, they tend to rotate power across the zones or blocs within the state. At the national level, it translates into North and South; that is the understanding and every Nigerian has come to accept it. That, however, does not mean that Nigerians do not believe that merits should count. But people who have merits are available in all parts of the country and are not localised to any geopolitical zone.”