Governors Seyi Makinde and Alex Otti occupy similar positions in the projections ahead of next year’s presidential election. Their leadership of two political parties has made them consequential players ahead of the crucial contest, LEO SOBECHI reports.

Different interpretations are being ascribed to the positions of Governor Makinde and Alex Otti as leaders of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) and the Labour Party (LP). For Makinde, the question is whether he is really in the race to win the presidential poll or merely positioning himself to bargain for the triumph of his preferred successor or influence the direction of ballots in Oyo State.

Then, Abia State governor Otti recently came out to boldly and publicly repudiate Governor Hope Uzodimma’s announcement that all governors of the five South East states have declared support for the re-election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

But the question around his declarative stance is whether his leadership of the LP, after the party’s 2023 presidential runner, Peter Obi, left for the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), grants him the freedom to negotiate with whoever is most likely to win the January 16, 2027, polls and thereby guarantee his second-term berth.

While Makinde combines his leadership of APM with his presidential aspiration, Otti, as the LP leader, is pursuing his second-term ambition. The two political leaders are most likely to influence the distribution of ballots in their respective states during the presidential contest.

In spite of what their opponents may say, both Makinde and Otti have demonstrated great leadership acumen, especially on account of their visible impacts in the South-West and South-East geopolitical zones, where two presidential runners, incumbent President Tinubu and the Nigeria Democratic Congress’s (NDC) presidential standard bearer, Obi, hail from.

But, while Otti walks a middle course to preserve his second-term calculations, Makinde, despite his emergence on the untested APM platform, is being framed by Tinubu’s supporters as getting into the presidential fray merely to play the role of a spoiler for the incumbent President’s vote tally in the mainline South West.

Makinde: Bracing regional dichotomy
Dating back to the immediate post-amalgamation period, Lagos and Ibadan stand out as very influential Western regional constituencies that influenced the course of Nigeria’s political evolution.

At one point, a major issue the British colonial overlords debated was the proposal to merge the Lagos Colony with the Western Region. Knowing that cocoa, which propelled the Western Region economy, had a great impact on the marine economy, particularly shipping, that served as the mainstay of Lagos Colony’s prosperity, Yoruba leaders advocated for the fusion of Lagos to form an economically strong Western Region.

Leaders of the defunct Action Group (AG) knew that a strong regional economy would not only enhance its developmental programmes but also help it in standing against the wiles of the British imperialists. That realisation informed the decision of the 11-man delegation to the 1950 Ibadan General Conference to insist on the merger.

Apart from the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adesoji Aderemi, the other 10 delegates were staunch members of AG, including Bode Thomas, Akinpelu Obisesan, Samuel O. Awokoya, Adekunle Soetan, Michael Adekunle Ajasin, Thomas Bankole, Chief Ogunlana II, C. D. Akran and Arthur Prest.

The forceful advocacy by the minority group compelled the British to accede to the proposal, which eventually found its way into the 1951 Arthur Macpherson Constitution by the British government.

That background is necessary to situate Makinde’s presidential politics in the lead-up to the 2027 general election. Speaking when he announced his intention to contest the 2027 presidential election at the historic Mapo Hall, Governor Makinde nuanced Ibadan’s central place and role in South West, nay Nigeria’s, political evolution.

While announcing the merger of his own splinter of the embattled Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), the outgoing Oyo State governor referenced Ibadan as a city of warriors, stressing that whenever the history of Nigeria’s nationhood is told, Ibadan always receives a generous mention.

He therefore declared his intention to run for the Presidency of Nigeria, even as he underscored the plurality of choices as the beacon of real democracy, adding that Nigeria will never subscribe to a one-party democracy.

But, taking up Makinde’s gauntlet as a possible attempt by President Tinubu’s detractors to push the 2027 presidential showdown to his stronghold, a former Ogun State governor, Olusegun Osoba, alleged that Makinde is merely grandstanding.

The former governor, who addressed South West APC faithful in the lead-up to the Ekiti State governorship, urged them to resist the temptation of complacency, remarking that Makinde’s presidential aspiration was part of a grand “strategy aimed at producing multiple presidential candidates from the South to divide votes and weaken Tinubu’s electoral strength in the region.”

Osoba, who made the remarks at the Ogun State Government House, before the announcement of the presidential primary results from the 20 Local Government Areas of the state, maintained that both Obi and Makinde’s presidential tickets pose a challenge to Tinubu.

His words: “Many people are saying that we have no opponents, but that is a misleading narrative. The enemies are many. As we approach the next election, there is a strong gang-up against us. They are plotting to field several candidates from our region in the South. Obi has emerged, Jonathan is quietly waiting in the background and Makinde has been grandstanding.”

Yet, pushing back on the claims that he was out to play a spoiler’s game in the presidential contest, Makinde insists that “Nigeria stands at a defining moment in its democratic journey, (stressing that) our country needs leadership that is visionary, courageous, competent and focused on delivering practical solutions to the challenges facing our people.”

Further, as part of the broad national coalition, the Oyo State governor argues that he is the best candidate to complete the remaining four years of the Southern Presidency. He recalled how former presidential aspirants in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), like the then Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, and Pastor of the Global Citadel Community Church, Tunde Bakare, refused to join Dr Kayode Fayemi in stepping down for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu during the 2022 presidential primary.

However, insiders maintain that Makinde believes that two crucial factors propelling his presidential chase are the age of his ideas and closeness to the new generation of voters who desire a resetting of Nigeria rather than a renewed hope. Yet, one other factor that buoys the APM presidential candidate’s optimism is the thinking that mainline Yorubas, particularly the Omoluabis, will side with him during the January 18 presidential ballot.

Otti: Rethinking confrontation politics
Having lost previous governorship polls to the influence and power of federal might, Abia State governor, Otti, is said to be working on the strength of lessons learned and has decided to play safe.

Otti, who believes that what is good for the goose is sauce for the gander, maintains that since he, like President Tinubu, is seeking a second-term mandate, there was no reason to fight against the President’s re-election.

But APC leaders in Abia State say that the governor was merely behaving like a crab in his re-election politics, noting that while Otti desires to be in total control by shunning outright defection to APC, his decision to emulate Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s progressives working together was to give the impression of support for President Tinubu.

Conversely, supporters of the ruling party, particularly Senator Orji Uzor Kalu and Benjamin Okezie Kalu, also claim that Otti subtly sustains the confrontation politics that fed the Obidient wave, which catapulted the Labour Party (LP) into popular reckoning in the South East on account of Peter Obi’s presidential candidacy.

APC apologists point to the nomination of a Resident Lecturer in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at MIVA Open University, Dr Chibuzo Okereke, as LP’s presidential standard bearer. They claim that while Governor Otti is selling a dummy to President Tinubu that Okereke’s candidacy is intended to reduce Peter Obi’s vote tally from Abia and neighbouring South-East states, the LP will not pursue any vigorous campaign for its presidential flagbearer.

A candidate of the LP for one of the legislative seats from the state confided in The Guardian that Otti’s middle-of-the-road game plan informed the attempt to ensure that the president’s wife, Oluremi Tinubu, did not meet with the Akwete women weavers in Obingwa Local Government Area.

He stated: “We are walking a tightrope; our leader, Governor Alex Chioma Otti, does not want to be seen as being for Tinubu, because that could anger our people to vote en masse for NDC candidates.

“So, we understand that the governor is also playing safe so that the Presidency would not unleash the federal might against him during the governorship. My understanding of the situation is that the governor wants the presidential candidates to earn their votes from the state on their personal merit.”

The LP gladiator explained that when Governor Otti countered Governor Uzodimma that the South East had not adopted any presidential candidate, it was just to show that he was not siding with the President, at least in the open.

Recall that the Chairman of South East Governors’ Forum, Senator Hope Uzodimma, had announced that all the governors from the zone have resolved to work for Tinubu’s re-election, explaining that they arrived at that decision based on the remarkable development that Tinubu has brought to the region.

But Otti used his monthly media programme to debunk the assertion, noting that although Uzodimma was entitled to his individual opinion and, as a governor, “he can’t speak for everybody in the South-East.”

And, while adding that the final choice of a president in 2027 rests with Nigerians at the ballot box, the Labour Party, which he is committed to, will present its own candidates.

“I am not opposed to President Tinubu running for a second term; every eligible citizen has a constitutional right to contest. When the time comes, Nigerians will decide who will be elected President in 2027,” Otti declared.

Despite the governor’s swift pushback, some stakeholders in the region accused the Abia State governor of lending LP to the ruling APC through his cousin, the Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, to reduce whatever ballots that the NDC candidate could garner from the South East.

They alleged that Otti’s LP and Nyesom Wike’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are fielding Okereke and Senator Sandy Onor, respectively, as presidential candidates to replicate what the coalition elements are doing through Makinde.

In a statement, Professor Elochukwu Amucheazi and Professor Jerry Nwokolo, President and Secretary of the Igbo Leaders of Thought (ILT), regretted that “the governors undermine their own mandate to deliver democracy dividends to the people when they continue crediting the President with every project they have executed.

“Enough of all these sycophantic dispositions. Political officeholders from Alaigbo should face the provision of democracy dividends as their mandates. Those parroting presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, in ‘reeling out unfounded propaganda that there has never been any government that has remembered Ndi Igbo as the present government,’ should stop forthwith such irresponsible lies,” the group demanded.

The ILT recalled how the democracy that Nigerians are currently enjoying came as a product of a long-drawn political struggle against military rule, lamenting that those who claim to be champions of democracy are emasculating the opposition against the dictates of democratic norms and culture.