A journalist asked me yesterday what advice I would have for Tinubu as he commences his third year in office. It sounded rather odd to me because I have never seen any Ahmed Tinubu in office as the President of Nigeria in the last two years. I have always seen an evolving process of electing a President for Nigeria that started in 2023 but which has been prevented by the system to mature into an elected President.
In 1979, the country came to the same crossroads of deciding whether to abort a presidential election process midway or allow it to proceed to maturity and completion. They chose to abort it by declaring Shehu Shagari elected President with one quarter of the votes in 12 States out of the 19 States that the country consisted of that year. The 1979 Constitution provided for one quarter of the votes in each of at least two-thirds of the States of the country for a win on the first ballot. The mathematical computation of 2/3 of 19 comes to 12(2/3). There was no 2/3 of any State as the Constitution did not divide any State into three.
Wisdom, forthrightness and firmness of purpose dictated a strict interpretation that 12 States did not meet 2/3 of 19 States. Expediency of “getting it over with” dictated a creative interpretation to sustain the declaration made by FEDECO, the election body. The Supreme Court of those days chose the latter option and arrived at a ruling of adding one quarter of two-thirds of the next State where Shagari obtained the highest votes out of the remaining 7 States to the 12 States to produce 12(⅔) States.
It sounded smart – straight from the Merchant of Venice rule book. Save and except that there was a little detail that the noble law lords lost sight of.
It was a little detail of numbers. Popularity of a presidential candidate is not only a matter of spread of support across the country, it is also a matter of numbers in terms of whether or not a majority – over half of the voters – are behind him. The requirement of spread is in reality a formula or an algorithm for arriving at a president elected with a majority of the votes cast at the election but with the required national mix. It is expected that in the process of fulfilling the constitutional requirement, the candidate will gather more and more votes from State to State to place them in the end not just in the highest of votes but also in the majority so that the nation can kill the two birds of national unity and majority support with one stone. It is only where such is not possible because the requirement of spread is satisfied to the very last detail by the candidate with the highest votes that the Constitution would be content with a President who is in the minority in the polity by reason of over half of the voters having rejected him by casting their votes for other candidates. The hope is that the spread of blocks of popularity across the country would compensate for the lack of majority support.
Shehu Shagari was a minority in that election although he obtained the highest votes. His votes came to just about 33% of the total votes cast. Though declared President and affirmed by the Supreme Court, he faced popularity, legitimacy and authenticity challenges. He was compelled to look for broader support. His NPN party went into an alliance with Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s NPP. The alliance proved too rocky towards the end. What he did next was to lure and coerce collaborators from other parties to either join the NPN or sabotage their own parties from within for his own benefit, and then to absolutely commandeer the election body, FEDECO, as his election result manufacturing machine. In the following 1983 elections, his party produced what the redoubtable and bombastic Ozumba Mbadiwe called “a moonslide” – an attempt to reference something larger than a landslide. The result was bewilderment of the populace, loss of faith in the system and implacable resentment.
The military struck on 31st December, 1983 to the joyous applause of the people as Messiahs.
We are headed right back there. The stumbling stone is the same. Section 126(2)(b) of the 1979 Constitution is now re-enacted as section 134(2)(b) of the extant 1999 Constitution but with a fundamental addition to the algorithm, which is the FCT, Abuja. The new provision has set out to overcome the challenges that the old provision experienced. The number of States are now 36 and there is no longer a challenge of divisibility by 3 – no issue of ⅔ of a State can arise again. Secondly, and just as fundamentally, the FCT has been added to the requirement of spread with the twin effects of increasing the votes that a winning candidate would gather in total, and bringing the people in the FCT, being a block separate from each of the States, into reckoning for the assessment of the popularity of a candidate within the territory. The person elected President has a particular and distinct relevance to the people of the FCT because he will also act in the capacity of their Governor to regulate their day to day existence.
In 2023, Tinubu emerged as the candidate with the highest number of votes with only 36% of the total votes cast but failed to secure 25% or one quarter of the votes in the FCT. The system responded the same way that it did in 1979. INEC took it upon itself to interpret the FCT out of section 134(2)(b) of the Constitution and declared Tinubu elected when good men were in their beds in order to avoid a riot. The competing candidates again made the same mistake that was made in 1979 by proceeding to the election tribunal, hoping to overturn a few votes or gain some, rather than to the regular court for a constitutional interpretation. The Court of Appeal, as the election tribunal, and the Supreme Court, on appeal from it, did worse than the Supreme Court of 1979 by producing a rationalization that no professor of English language in the world can decipher, with all due respect to the law lords – all out of the expediency of producing a President for Nigeria by May 29th, 2023.
The trajectory afterwards has followed that of Shehu Shagari. With 36% of the votes for Tinubu, it means that 64% of Nigerians rejected him by voting any other person but him. He lacks the confidence of a majority leader. Tinubu cannot call for an alliance like Shehu Shagari. He is compromising and coercing his way through. Like in post 1983, institutions in the land have lost credibility and independence and cast off discipline as they are all now an extension of the kitchen of the President. The people are bewildered and have nowhere to turn to. A one party state looms and the despair and despondency would, unless there is immediate drastic redirection, be complete in 2027 when Tinubu’s APC produces a “sunslide” (this time round) winning over 90% of all contested positions in all elections both State and Federal.
The trend analyst must be true to his observation. With our neighbors having produced the hitherto unthinkable to the excitement and envy of our people, it would not be wise to think that there is no Traore wannabe in our country. You cannot go the same way as your forbears, proving that you have learnt nothing, and expect to have a different result in the end. We have lasted this long since 1999 only because the PDP worked so hard to deepen and strengthen democracy even at their own expense.
If the Supreme Court had been firm enough in 1979 to send Alhaji Shehu Shagari to a second election with Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Shagari would easily have won and achieved the required consolidation of popularity with the ballot box instead of the attempt to do so with the instruments of power. With two candidates, the winner would necessarily have over half or 50% of the votes and therefore would be in the majority in the polity.
In the same way, if Tinubu is sent to complete the 2023 presidential election in a second election, he most probably would win it easily to place himself in the majority in the polity. That would give him the confidence to leave the opposition alone, concentrate on his policies and grow the institutions of the country.
If Traore should happen to or upon us, I have a feeling that for the first time in the history of this country, it is not only politicians that would be seen on national television tied to the stakes. Some wigged and gowned persons would be in the first batch.
It is said that the ear that refuses to hear will fall to the ground with the head. Nigeria knows how this will end. Nigeria is just guiding it. Apologies to Odogwu Pararan.
By Chuks Nwachuku, Legal Practitioner and Leadership and Good Governance Advocate. [email protected]
