The battle to displace President Muhammadu Buhari in next year's election has intensified in the last few weeks given the gale of defections in both the ruling and opposition parties, which has ratcheted up the political temperature in the country.
Although there is the belief that the increasing jostle for the nation's plum job may have been stoked by the perceived ineptitude of the Buhari administration, the president's men have latched on to the integrity narrative, which remains one of the defining indices in the 2019 presidential election.
Apart from selling Buhari from the point of view of integrity, which appears to be his major selling point in the countdown to 2019, there is also the belief that the president still holds down his traditional political base in terms of voting in the two critical zones of the North-east and the North-west.
But a majority of his challengers have dismissed those two issues in the 2019 election, saying while integrity would take the back seat for capacity and nationalism, his so-called traditional voting bases have also had a whiff of the current ineptitude and would not vote blindly in next year's major election as they had done in previous elections.
Although there are almost 20 aspirants presently seeking to displace Buhari in next year's election, only eight sit on the front row, with equally intimidating profiles and imposing political statures, huge enough to confront Buhari's menacing machine and cult-like franchise. They include a former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar; President of the Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki; former Kano State governor and senator representing Kano Central, Rabiu Kwankwaso; former Speaker of the House of Representatives and Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Tambuwal; former deputy governor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Kingsley Moghalu; another former Kano State governor, Ibrahim Shekarau; former Kaduna State governor and immediate past national PDP Caretaker Committee chair, Ahmed Markafi, and former Jigawa State governor, Alhaji Sule Lamido.
While it is true that many of the above listed have the requisite administrative and governance experience as well as impressive political standing, both in regional and national politics, the question remains whether anyone of them can really displace Buhari in next year's election, despite his alleged shortcomings.
Atiku Abubakar
Often described as the most experienced and prepared for the office of the president, an ambition he has nursed since the 1990s, Atiku has many things going for him. His first shot on the presidential ballot was in 2011, when he lost to former President Goodluck Jonathan. He has since kept the dream alive.
A dependable ally of former President Olusegun Obasanjo as his deputy, Atiku literally took charge of the economy, an assignment that very well positioned him and aided him in holding down the nation's economy with the same approach to his businesses, both at home and abroad.
Atiku is one candidate with acceptability across the various political divides, but without his own base as Buhari, a situation many consider a huge disadvantage.
Besides, he has had to battle the stigma of corruption - no thanks to Obasanjo - even though no competent court of law has found him guilty of graft. It is believed that the only barrier standing between Atiku and the 2019 presidency is Obasanjo, who despite the pressure being mounted on him to let Atiku be and give him a chance, recently said he the reason he was unable to support him was to avoid God's anger given what he knows about Atiku.
But in the final analysis, he has what it takes to give Buhari a good fight in 2019, particularly with his huge war chest.
Bukola Saraki
A former Kwara State governor for eight years between 2003 and 2011, the current Senate President, Bukola Saraki, is indisputably an issue in the nation's body politic today. Being the chairman of Nigeria Governors Forum at a time the body was at its peak of political and economic relevance, Saraki seized the opportunity of his office to build a strong political network. Emerging the Senate President in 2015 against the position of some power brokers within his former party, the APC, Saraki has since carried on in the office, despite opposition and attempts to remove him.
Buhari once described him as one of the most influential politicians in modern Nigeria, not because he is the senate president but because of his capacity to navigate through the most difficult political terrains. He is about the most visible politician and has effectively deployed the goodwill of his office in building useful consensus.
There is no doubting the fact that Saraki has always had his eyes on the presidency, even when he has yet to actually run in any presidential election. To pursue his ambition, he has defected to the PDP, a move that stands him in good stead at the polls. And with the Supreme Court ruling which cleared him of allegations of corruption, and failure to declare his asset, he is good to go. But his candidacy appears weakened by fate. While geographically he is from the northern part of the country, North-central, his spoken language is South-west (Yoruba). Politics, as they, say is local. Either way he presents himself to the electorate, northerner or southerner, he is bound to face a tough challenge of navigating the ethnicity barrier. Even more complicated for him is where he picks his running mate from. If he picks from the South, he is going to alienate the North which will see the combination as a Southern ticket. If he picks from the North, the South will view it as North-north ticket. But Saraki remains a good presidential material. He looks good to win the North-central and the three Southern zones. But the North-east and the North-west are impregnable for him and these two zones have huge voting numbers.
Rabiu Kwankwaso
Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso, representing Kano Central, was governor of the state for eight years. He is one Kano politician with a cult followership, the type many say can only compete with Buhari's relevance in the North, particularly North-west.
No wonder he prides himself on being the only politician from that part of the country with strong ties to the three Ks (Katsina, Kano and Kaduna), the same as Buhari. Presently in a supremacy battle with his successor, Abdullahi Ganduje, a man he had walked with as an ally for years, Kwankwaso's political followership is as scary as Buhari's.
The fact that he came second during the 2014 primary of the APC might have put him in a good standing as one of the few that would define 2019 presidential power contest. Kwankwaso has been able to build a strong following under the Kwankwasiyya movement over the years across many of the northern states. But is this enough to defeat Buhari in the North-west and North-east? Time will tell, but, first, he has to get through the primary.
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