With about 412 days to the 2023 general elections, the opposition political parties in Nigeria are yet to have a definite plans on how to wrestle power from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), even though their style of governance has been a subject of criticism from all and sundry.
Even though the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on paper had a successful national convention, they are still in limbo about best ways to approach the coming elections. They are still battling with the reality that the party is likely to zone Presidential flag to the North, and how to deal with reversing the anti North and anti Fulani bigotry and propaganda they helped promote in the last few years that are still fresh in the minds of the electorates.
If eventually, they decided to zone it southern region, who among their members of the zone? Perhaps Peter Obi or the much touted presidential material from the southwest, Seyi Makinde? The logical question should be, do they have a web of connection like Atiku Abubakar?
As per the so-called third Force, they are a bunch of jokers that can be likened to paper tiger who despite its ferociousness can not hurt a fly. They have been in deep sleep in the last three years immediately after 2019 election. Their structure exists only on social media with no able plans to win the election come 2023. The only votes they will get will be an increase in the number of followers and friends on social media. Many members of the third force proponents would still align with the two major political parties.
APC despite their shortcomings as a ruling party has subtly pointed to the directions which they might follow in the selection of their presidential candidate. Though the party is yet to zone the slot to any geo-political area, it can be predicted that the party candidate will likely come from the south with one aspirant building structures across the country. The aspirant is no other person than former governor of Lagos state, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
If the party decided to conducts primaries today, he will likely take the APC ticket with other potential aspirants hoping him (Tinubu) won’t contest and hand over his structure to his another candidate, or better still APC Governors would wield their power and insist on a consensus from their caucus.
If the oppositions parties continues with this uncoordinated approach to 2023 elections, they will likely lose the election in a thunderous manner, because you cant be preparing for chess match using ludo to practice. Something is quite obvious with opposition strategy going into the election season, they do not have a direction instead they are attacking the possible candidates of the ruling party. Same strategy used in the 2019 election.
2023 is going to be interesting.
