Here comes the ADC

ONE will be saying the obvious to declare that the 2019 transition process is as fluid as the running water. Though elections are some eight months away, the nation is not yet gripped by election fever. Candidates are not hitting the roads on popularity tests as things remain tentative.

A number of Nigerians have accosted me with the question, why are we having transition without presidential candidates? I usually assured them that the candidates would come in due course.

No doubt, we are having a unique transition process this time and everyone could feel it. Unlike the last season, when political activities dominated the space from 2011 all through 2015, the politics of 2019 is scanty. With the nation gripped in bloodletting and chilling fear of marauding bandits, who have redefined all sense

of humanity and turned killings to past time. With the tense situation, less attention is being paid to the nearness of the 2019 polls.

But like the still waters, things appear to be happening beneath. The political class, which has been heavily battered as inept, inhuman and largely corrupt by the sitting administration appears bent on re-inventing itself. The emergence of big voices including former President Olusegun Obasanjo, former Military President Ibrahim

Babangida and former Minister of Defence, General TY Danjuma on the scene earlier in the year meant all will not be quiet henceforth. And since the famous Obasanjo letter of January 23, 2018 and the formation of the Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM), the stillness is receding.

With that development, it appears that while the political classis looks scattered across the field like sheep without shepherd, they are still capable of locating the home of their owners.

The announcement of the fusion of the CNM into the African Democratic Congress (ADC) on Thursday, gave clear indication that the political class is set to tackle the Muhammadu Buhari challenge.  Two incidences during the week helped to give some focus to the battle for 2019.

First, the nPDP block of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) announced a rift with the party it joined in the late 2013 and gave a seven day window for its grievances to be addressed. The second incident is the fusion of the CNM with the ADC to form the acclaimed third force ahead of 2019.

Obasanjo, the founder of CNM hailed the development as a move in the right direction. Co-Convener of CNM, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola also reveled in the development describing the ADC as an untainted platform, which would rescue Nigeria. Not a few others are rejoicing alongside the two statesmen. Within three months of its existence, the CNM had grossed over three million registered members.  It is no doubt one of the fastest growing groups around the world. If it continues with that growth rate, the CNM and its political ally, the ADC can swallow the political space within a year.

But can the political class delude itself that the CNM pill will be enough to deliver victory in the 2019 election?  That would be more than ambitious.  The space remains fluid, even with the consummation of the marriage between the ADC and CNM.

To pose a big challenge to Buhari’s 2019 ambition, a number of steps remain to be taken by the emerging coalition. Thus far, the CNM/ADC movement has been unable to burrow into the Buhari political space,

which guaranteed him an average of 10 million votes since 2003 election.  That political space is in the North West and North-East. Without a shot into those directions, the enthusiasm that greeted the wide growth of the CNM could end in still birth.

And then the emerging coalition has only opened another source of headache for the coalition-seeking opposition groups. The groups were initially talking of the Third Force. The first being the APC, with the PDP being the second. Drama was already setting in over who truly is the Third Force. There were three groups that branded themselves as such; the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the CNM and the National Interest Movement (NIM).

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As each of the groups battle to retain Third Force as brand name, the ADC came in apparently not as Fourth Force. On paper, it compounds problems for the opposition and could complicate issues of ambition among politicians.

Enthusiasts would hope that issues of individual ambition would not overshadow the determination to tackle Buhari in the forthcoming election. If the politicians adopt the APC strategy of 2013/14; swallow individual pride and adopt a single focus on the quest for power, you could have a stiff contest for the Aso Rock seat come 2019. That approach could secure the nation a two-way approach to the contest and those in power had better watch it. If the Third Forces chose to go different ways, it could be winning it for Buhari like someone earlier wrote.  And each of them parades a good number of known aspirants.

The SDP is brimming with at least four presidential hopefuls; the PDP has an array of political hopefuls that keeps swelling by the day. Atiku Abubakar is there and then Sule Lamido, Ibrahim Shekarau, Kabiru Turaki (SAN) and Governor Ibrahim Hassan Dakwambo.  The NIM has in its fold former Governor Donald Duke, Economics Professor, Pat Utomi and Dr. Jahleel Tafawa Balewa, among others.

If the challengers refuse to bury their individual ambitions and allow the usual discordant tunes among the political class fester, we can be assured of each political grouping producing a presidential candidate.

That would only confine them all to learn the Buhari anthem. It would show they have learnt nothing over the years. And there they go again…