It must have been a happy event for the people of Kwara Central Senatorial District at the weekend, coinciding as it did with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Senator Saliu Mustapha, who represents the district in the Senate, launched what was described as “a multi-billion naira agriculture and human capital development empowerment” involving the dishing out of 200 youth scholarships to university level, skills acquisition for women to fix and repair solar panels, one hundred abattoir trainees to go home with one cow each; as well as the sharing of refrigerators, grinding machines, sewing machines and two tractors per each local government in the district.
In two decades of “democratic” practice in Nigeria, the role of the legislator has been severely redefined from that of passing good laws, check and balance of Executive power to empowerment programs of this nature. Folks at the grassroots do not care a hoot how many bills and motions a legislator sponsors, or the quality of his contributions in plenary or in committees. The real measure of a “good” legislator is how much he does of these programs, in addition to quietly dishing out money to constituents whenever he is in town to settle medical bills, house rent, food bills, school fees and pay for marriages, birthday parties and religious pilgrimages. Senator Saliu is known to be a wealthy man who has been doing this for some time, so his constituents must be rating him very highly on the legislative score card.
But, in my opinion, the ceremony was thrown off gear when National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bashir Ajibola, released a cat among the pigeons when he veered off from its convivial nature and declared that “there is no vacancy in Aso Rock in 2027.” According to newspaper reports, Ajibola said, “The programmes of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in his Renewed Hope Agenda are yielding fruits and turning the country into a self-dependent nation. The food security reforms are yielding good results. I enjoin you all to support President Tinubu and Senator Mustapha in the elections with your votes. I repeat, there is no vacancy in Aso Rock in 2027.”
A small contradiction in there. If there is no vacancy in Aso Rock in 2027 [or at any time thereafter], why is it necessary to urge voters to support the president and the senator “with your votes”? Which votes again, when there is no vacancy? However the number of votes any Nigerian has, they are of no use until it is time for elections and vacancies are declared in some posts. Mind you, even during the general election season, not every post is available for you to cast a vote, because there are [I think] six off-season governorship elections in the country which hold at different times. Voters in Kogi, Edo, Anambra, Osun, Ekiti and Bayelsa states, for instance, looked on askance as voters in all other states trooped to the polls in February 2023 to elect state governors.
Senator Ajibola borrowed this notorious “no vacancy” phrase from the late PDP chieftain and then Minister of Works in the Obasanjo cabinet, Chief Tony Anenih, who first uttered it ahead of the 2003 general and presidential elections. It caused shock and consternation all over the political field and beyond at the time. What did he mean no vacancy, when the constitution clearly stated that a presidential term expires four years from the day of inauguration, Electoral Act directs INEC to conduct an election into the same post many weeks before that expiry, political parties had rolled out time tables for their primary elections and aspirants all over the country were gearing up to contest, a happy time for Nigerian voters and “party members” because money flows at no time like when elections are at hand?
I once attended a dinner at Chief Anenih’s Asokoro residence in Abuja and seized the chance to ask him why he made that statement in 2002. It was widely construed to mean that there will be no free and fair contest and that the ruling party was going to cling to power “by hook or by crook, mostly the latter,” to borrow the words of former US President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal of the 1970s. The Chief denied that that was what he meant and said he was only making an observation because there was already an occupant in Aso Rock. Well, I stopped there, so as not to ruin the dinner; otherwise I wanted to say that there is an occupant in Aso Rock quite alright but he has been served with a constitutional quit notice to vacate the place by May 29, 2003.
Probably the only other statement that caused as much consternation as the No Vacancy announcement was then President Olusegun Obasanjo’s statement during a PDP campaign rally in Akure in 2007, when he declared that the election was a “do or die” for his party. Even the Senate told him “to stop heating up the polity.” Do or die! Who was going to do and who was going to die? The understanding at the time was that Obasanjo’s anger was directed at Chief Olusegun Mimiko, a former minister in his cabinet minister who defected from PDP to Labour Party and was its Ondo State governorship candidate that year. The fact that INEC, then led by Professor Maurice Iwu, declared PDP candidate Olusegun Agagu as winner of the election, only for the courts to upturn it and hand the chair to Mimiko, was proof enough that the promise of “do or die” was sinister and implied the use of methods illegal.
As does this No Vacancy statement. What message does it send to party members and to opposition folks? There are always fears that in Nigerian elections, ruling parties at the federal level have tremendous advantages. They are believed to have more money through unbridled access to the state treasury; they are believed to have the support of the security agencies, which could look the other way when they unleash thugs; and it is also feared that they could have the collaboration of Electoral Commission officials.
If ruling party supporters believe that their party will railroad its way to power no matter what, then they lose the motivation for hard work, and they could become careless with their words and reckless with their acts. The leaders also become smug and no longer worry that the socio-economic condition of most folks is the determinant of election success. I believe NPN suffered from this situation back in the Second Republic, and for a time PDP also suffered from this when its leaders publicly proclaimed in 2008 that it was going to rule the country for sixty years. In other words, that there was to be no vacancy in fifteen consecutive elections.
The No Vacancy declaration also sends a message of desperation to opposition parties. Does that explain, for example, why the main opposition party is decapitated by a sitting cabinet minister who controls its national leadership and for more than a year, has prevented it from having a national executive committee meeting where it can sort itself out? While APC’s hidden hand is visible in PDP’s disorganization, it is not yet visible in the disorientation of LP, which finished only a stone’s throw behind APC and PDP in the 2023 presidential election. Julius Abure’s sit-tight posture as party chairman; lone LP governor Alex Otti’s feeble attempt to rescue it as well as former party presidential candidate Peter Obi’s running around to build 2027 alliances even while his 2023 political base is in shambles, could all be self-inflicted. Or maybe not, I don’t know.
To declare that there is no vacancy in Aso Rock or in any state Government House could psychologically rattle the opposition, but it becomes self-defeating if those who utter it begin to believe their own propaganda. The danger is real that if party chieftains swallow this line of thinking, two things will suffer: shun good planning and hard work, and more immediately, miss the chance to tell the party’s leaders in government what exactly needs to be done to win a free and fair election.
I have a few suggestions. The party national secretary should put up a memo saying, “Look, presidential elections will hold in this country exactly two years from now. Here is a short list of things that we need to do within that time. We should bring down inflation and cost of living; we should reduce fuel and transport prices; reduce banditry, kidnapping and insurgency to the barest minimum; significantly improve electricity supply; significantly reduce unemployment; build more critical infrastructure; boost food production; shore up the naira; reduce leaders’ profligacy; intensify the fight against corruption; impress our countrymen and women with financial transparency; instruct ministers and key officials to avoid costly gaffes and slips of tongue; eliminate this perception that we are intolerant of critics; avoid financial and sex scandals by our top chieftains; and then work to eliminate perceptions of regional imbalance in appointments. While our leaders in the government work at these, we in the party would work at the manpower, financial, logistical, legal, organizational, physical, electoral and spiritual mechanics of winning elections.”
