When, as pre-school children playing football in narrow alleys near our grandfather’s house, as primary school pupils playing football in dusty fields or in river valleys, and later as secondary school students playing football in grassy fields, we always looked forward to Half Time. Referees had a way of blowing the whistle to mark half time; they did it in a unique way, with a prolonged whistle, with much élan, and they point to the center of the field as they do so, meaning the ball should be kept there in preparation for the Second Half.
The team that is leading in the scores relishes half time because they believe they are winning the match and their opponents are dispirited, downcast and desperate. The coach of the leading team will be happy; he will gather his players together, congratulate them on their winning streak, point out their strengths and the loopholes they must plug in order to maintain their winning streak. On the other hand, the coach of the team that is trailing in scores at half time will be full of reproach, blaming his strikers for not striking fast enough, blaming his midfielders for not rushing forward and backwards at the same time, blaming his wingers for not making accurate passes, blaming his defenders for not marking the opponents’ strikers well enough, and blaming his goalkeeper for not diving fast enough to catch a grounder, for not jumping high enough to deflect a corner kick, and for diving too early during a penalty kick and allowing the kick taker to see an open goal space. Both sides will juggle their tactics and reshuffle their players in order to maintain the lead or to even the scores, as the case may be.
Like football, like politics and governance. For many months, Presidency bigwigs and most of our state governors and their top aides had been glancing non-stop at the calendar towards the magic date, May 29. They must have circled it with a red marker pen. Until 2018, May 29 was a public holiday in this country, to mark the return to civilian rule after sixteen years of unbroken rule by four military dictators [one of them Draconian, one of them trickish, one of them brutal, and one of them very soft] plus one soft and almost disinterested interim civilian ruler. It was in 2018 that, as part of wily reelection calculations, President Buhari dropped May 29 as public holiday and transferred the honour to June 12 in order to attract South Western votes in the 2019 elections. He was lucky he got away with it because such gambit sometimes backfires. Ask President Jonathan, who in 2012 renamed University of Lagos to Moshood Abiola University, but the gambit backfired, loud protests followed and the government had to backtrack.
Feelings ahead of May 29 varied widely between first term and second term rulers. Seven state governors across the country who were elected in off-season elections did not care a hoot about May 29. Their attitude was like that of the hare which heard the shouts and drumming of a hunting expedition and said, “They are looking for antelope, not me.” Of the twenty-nine state governors in this country for whom May 29 is important, eleven are in their second terms. They have been in office for six years. According to American pundits, a governor or a president in his second term should be running for the History books, and his top concern is to leave a legacy that will continue to make an impact long after he has left office.
That is in America. In Nigeria, a second term governor is running, not so much for any Adu Boahen, Cheikh Anta Diop, Kenneth Dike, Abdullahi Smith, Yusuf Bala Usman or Ade-Ajayi authored History book but for a Senate seat, hopefully as a stepping stone to a juicy ministerial seat or even higher. At least two current second term governors are openly angling to go straight from state Government House to Aso Rock, thus leap-frogging over Senate, ministerial seat or even the Vice Presidency. A second-term governor in Nigeria has another major concern: who should succeed him in two years’ time. Anointing a successor in Nigerian politics is a very tricky art. Very few people played godfather and lived to reap the fruits. Most other would-be godfathers remind me of the label one company placed on a bottle of concentrated sulphuric acid: ‘If you drink this, you will not live to regret it.’
That’s for state governors. The current President is a first termer, and many months before the referee blew the half-time whistle, it was noticeable to old political reporters like me that most of the Presidency’s actions and antics were already geared towards securing a second term. A first-term Presidency has many political advantages over first-term state governors, but it has other, major disadvantages as well compared to state governors. Beginning with the advantages, the Presidency has much more visibility; a much bigger public purse to play with; many more juicy ministerial, ambassadorial and agency head appointments to make; huge oil block licenses and billion-dollar contract [read: Lagos-Calabar coastal highway] favours to confer; control over security agencies including, allegedly, to confer safety from anti-corruption agencies; control over the national leaders of his political party and, by extension, to meddle into the affairs of its state chapters. Add to these the ability to meddle into and instigate crisis in opposition parties, as NPN did ahead of the 1983 elections and as APC is alleged to be doing now, up to and including the allegation that INEC is stopped from registering new political parties, even though APC benefitted from mid-term INEC registration in 2013. In 1983, NPN’s maneuvering stopped FEDECO from registering the opposition Progressive People’s Party [PPP] and instead registered the briefcase Nigeria Advance Party [NAP] of Dr. Tunji Braithwaite, with the [forlorn] hope that it would cut into Chief Awolowo’s South Western base.
Those are some of the advantages that the Presidency has over governors in terms of maneuvering for a second term. Yet, there are serious disadvantages. To begin with, a state is much easier to dominate politically than the whole country. Many states are ethnically, linguistically, religiously and culturally homogenous. Even though politicians try to play up other divides such as senatorial zones and emirates [read: Jigawa State], these pale into insignificance compared to the divides at the national level, which the Presidency tries to balance like a gymnast. Feuding at the national level between North and South, Muslims and Christians, six geopolitical zones, 250 linguistic groups, noisy opposition parties, trade unions and civil society organisations, as well as greater media scrutiny, not to mention complicating regional and international factors, are quite often impossible to reconcile. As you please one group, you alienate others. As you bend over backwards to make amends, you ignite protest from the earlier group. No president since 1999 or even before that, has been able to win support all across the country. Some sections always feel left out and are waiting for the next election.
The other problem for the Presidency is: the impact of its policies, and policy failures, comes out in much bolder relief than it does at the state level. This is perhaps inevitable because the Constitution reserves for the Federal Government exclusive powers in the areas with the greatest impact on citizens’ lives, such as security, macro-economic policy, federal roads, railways and airports, electricity, the biggest health and educational policies and projects and sometimes, foreign policy as well. A good percentage of a state’s citizens get to see the governor in person, but very few citizens ever get to see the president outside television screens. While voters in the states could support their governor’s reelection hopes based on projects executed in their localities or even for attending wedding and funeral ceremonies, voters tend to assess the Presidency based on major socio-economic policies and factors. No one blames a governor for inflation, high cost of living, high transport fares, high cement and fertilizer prices, naira devaluation, unemployment, kidnapping, banditry, insurgency, oil theft and inter-communal clashes, all of which are seen as federal failures.
One can imagine the confusion among Presidency bigwigs as they sat down to assess whether they were doing well in the eyes of citizens as the halfway mark approached. On the one hand, there was the avalanche of congratulatory messages in newspapers, including costly wrap-around adverts, listing the government’s achievements and thanking it for jobs well done. Ahead of May 29, there was the wave of adoptions of the President as the “sole candidate” in the 2027 elections by party organs, governors and National Assembly leaders, in open violation of the letter and spirit of their own party’s constitution. It also ignored a historical truth: such advance anointments have resulted in serious crises and wrecked political parties in the past. Then also, the wave of defections from opposition parties to the ruling party must have pleased Presidency officials, even though conflict between “party natives” and “party settlers” could spell trouble in next year’s primary elections.
Much like a football coach at halftime, political leaders at Federal and state levels will make their calculations, alter their line ups, change their tactics and instruct their strikers, midfielders, wingers, defenders and goal keepers based on their understanding of where things stand in the first half. They will either be chewing gum and intently starring at the field of play like Sir Alex Ferguson, or they will be clumsily jumping up and down the field and gesticulating wildly at the players like the football legend turned coach Diego Maradona at the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa. They will either use Half Time to catch their breath, or some of them will enter the second half still gasping for air.
