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Segun Sowunmi is a former presidential campaign spokesman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and a political commentator. In this interview, he speaks on the 2027 presidential election, why President Bola Tinubu may be favoured. He also shares his view on the failure of the opposition politicians to unite and form a formidable coalition against the incumbent, among other issues. JOY ANIGBOGU brings the excerpts:
What’s your reading of the political situation in Nigeria with the emergence of presidential candidates for the 2027 general election?
I think that we’ll have to say that because of what we’re observing, that the fashion of our own democracy is a bit worrisome. Some of the legacy parties like the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have reached a stage in its life where if they’re not careful, we may not even have any of those candidates on the ballot. Because if we keep pulling ourselves in court and we don’t come out on time, it’s a huge disadvantage, As for the African Democratic Congress (ADC), they have about three candidates but, of course, Atiku Abubakar is one of the frontrunners. As for the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), when you are a frequent sojourner in an election that requires people to be able to easily identify platform, recognise symbol, and make commitments at grassroots up to whatever numbers you are expecting, you will see where the challenge of Peter Obi’s efforts will be. For the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, you’ll have to say before now it was his election to lose, but right now it’ll be magical for anybody to easily beat him. I know people like to frame elections from the angle of maybe where the tribal numbers are, and sometimes maybe their own imagination of opposition conversation around performance. But the fact of the matter is that the president is sitting really pretty. His political machinery is well-armed. You can see that almost all their structures are beginning to fire on, and I can imagine that by the time they blow the whistle, it’ll almost be like a hurricane. My bet right now is that the president will win it, and more than likely he will be able to pull a lot of his governors across the line, and he will also most likely get a majority in the Senate and majority in the House of Representatives. In one or two locations where there are off-season elections, they may pull some efforts in the governorship.
In the ones that are not off-season, more than likely people will just most likely follow that pattern. For me, as far as the presidential election in Nigeria is concerned, I have started looking at 2031, who are the people that we should begin to look out for, so that we can get out of this recycled element, who obviously don’t inspire too much to the entire efforts of the country. How did we find ourselves here? We found ourselves here because we didn’t really quickly understand that democratic parties must be built to last, and that the stability of political parties cannot be built around the ambition of individuals. Because what we’ve done now, from what we can see, is that almost all the parties have become a fandom of one individual, wearing the coloration, the energy, even the privileges that a ticket and all that is according to the wish of one man. I hope that by 2027, we would have exhausted that silliness, and we can now settle into having political parties that can have shared leadership and shared authority, and probably become more stable. If you recall, I’ve also tried to work very hard to say that let’s have an alternative conversation on how we want to continue with this democracy. I created the alternative movement, not really as a political party, but as a platform where we can just be asking ourselves, at a very deep and personal level, how do we even improve? How do we make it better because obviously, development is one thing? How do we agree on a consensus on development? But we cannot be quick to the next generation of chaos, and call it democratic, multi-party democracy.
Do you think in an election where it’s fair and square, without the power of incumbency, the President would still have this political weight that he has, and this assurance that he would win elections in 2027 based on his performance?
There’s something called the danger of the single narrative, especially populated and pushed by big voices. The first man who was shouting that the president should resign is a bit naive as to the working of a presidential system, American-style, vis-a-vis a parliamentary system. I think you just wonder whether those ones are just playing. In the second instance, you have to understand that no president is popular all through his tenure. There will always be those polls you do to say, what is the approval rating today? Today is high, tomorrow is low, tomorrow is high and today it’s low. But one thing you must understand, and I really hope that you are able to reflect on this, is that by the time they get to the actual election campaign season, political parties are naturally going to start marketing what they’ve done, especially incumbents. They’ll have the privilege of showing roads, some of the things they’ve done, and they’ll have the capability to stylize the conversation across the country. They’ll have the capability and the opportunity to bring their state leaders to show what they’ve done in those states, and people will be able to touch their performance at close quarters. If you look at the FCT, for instance, how do you tell anybody that they’re not working there? That’s almost too late. They’re doing about 22 days only to do projects. Those projects are not in the sky. They are on land. And then, when you see, they can be beating—don’t get me wrong—but it’s for you to beat an incumbent. Opposition has to be damn serious. In 2015, when they were coming to deliver victory punch against PDP, it didn’t mean that President Jonathan wasn’t doing some things well.
It was just that the miscuing of the narrative and our inability to see that they have organized themselves well, and they didn’t come into that election, essentially, with everybody trying to say that he has to be president at the same time, or not respecting the principle of the pendulum, where power should reside. What we saw was that they put two big parties, ACN and CPC, with two big gladiators, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Muhammadu Buhari of blessed memory. They went over and above that to go and kind of like to crack even the irresponsible member of the ruling party, that they will now be new PDP, and joined them. You see, elections are a residual decision-making event, and it’s also a science. And there’s a science of numbers. There’s a science of money. There’s a science of the science itself. And there’s a science of outcome based on predictability. Yes, 2023 may have given people the illusion that they won 12 states each and one person got 11 states and maybe Abuja making 12, and that maybe that wouldn’t mean that it would translate. But you have to look at the zones. You have to look at the governors. You have to look at the level of development. You have to look at the candidates. Candidate Buhari is not the same as candidate Tinubu, and I don’t mean it from the angle of maybe some economic genius or maybe some political wizardry. No. It’s just that a politician pays attention to the things of politics, and by every stretch of imagination, Tinubu is probably the very first real politician that is sitting in the office of president.
So, what do they know that he doesn’t know? And those who are supposed to have created a coalition of an opposition, they couldn’t even agree to do primaries, and by the time they got to consensus, almost everybody had voted out. And right now, you have everybody all over the place claiming that they’re going to win a presidential election. The thing about analysis is that analysis is not day-of-the-event results. So we still have to wait. 24 hours is a very long time. Anything can happen. But if you know how to do this benchmarking properly, people can scream all they like. It’s not going to happen and you saw what happened in Ekiti. It was not close. And they’re going to go to Osun State in a few days’ time. You’ll see that when we get to Osun, it will be between the Accord Party and the APC. And the Accord Party doesn’t have any big presidential candidate that can cause an upset. So, where would the presidential candidate come from? Wouldn’t they bring agents? Wouldn’t they do all the things we know they need to do? Well, I may be wrong, but I think the president will win this election easier than he won the last one.
What states is Tinubu going to win, what are the key winning areas is he going to get and what is his path to presidency, in your own estimation?
I believe that when you put it that way, the election is between him and Atiku, no doubt about it. And I expect that the president is going to win good numbers in the south-south, and he’s going to win significantly better number in the south-east. Remember that those were not places where they usually got good numbers before, but they’re going to get better numbers there. Of course, he’s going to get good numbers in the southwest. I even suspect the south-south may even bring in more numbers than the southwest, the way I’m looking at things. The president is going to do very well in the north-central. The president is going to do significantly better than he did the last time in the northwest, because for the northwest, you have to look at where the big players are, the big voices that control the election and the big money. And when it comes to the north-east, the president, I think that the vice president will have to pull his weight a little bit more and maybe their governors will try more. But if you remember, where I expect the president to be weak is probably maybe in the north. But in that north that the president may be weak, I’ve looked at all the governors there, I’ve looked at all the big players. Let me give you an example of Katsina State. The last time PDP won Katsina, one of the persons that worked very hard there was the then-director-general of that campaign for Atiku. When we won Katsina, even though we lost the election, I went to Katsina to go and thank them just for the effort.
Even in off-season state governors elections, look at Anambra, for instance. The person who is from there, Peter Obi couldn’t even bring numbers to the table. And the present governor of Anambra has done so significantly well and is even a major campaigner for the president. So, really and truly, I don’t want us to drill down into breaking it into, that’s too much work, and we don’t have enough time for that. But from just the mood assessment, you’re going to find out that, yes, the president is not going to be as weak as he was the last time. And also remember, the last time he was contesting for president against the establishment of his own party. Of course, it’s not a rule for him. He has a lot of cleaning up of his post-primaries states, of his own party. Almost everywhere they have some crises. He needs to figure out a way to clean that out. He needs to also figure out a way to go back to the people that he worked with the last time, tell them thank you and assure them that he’ll make it better. But I don’t see how the opposition will be able to quickly get themselves together.