Three major shifts in the presidential campaigns

By FAROOQ KPEROGI

THREE unexpected, barely perceptible, but nonetheless significant and potentially seismic shifts are taking place in the presidential race, which are confusing attempts to predict the outcome of the presidential election. The shifts are in the shifting patterns of the fortunes and political coalitions of the presidential frontrunners.

APC’s Bola Ahmed Tinubu suffers a deep, organic, almost irreparable depletion of his political goodwill in the Islamic North among everyday voters as a direct result of his failed, politically ill-advised attempts to recite the Fatiha on three separate occasions. The Tinubu-supporting APC governors of the north will have a hard time reversing this.

In the wake of Tinubu’s Fatiha misadventures, videos of which have gone viral and become grist to pastors’ mills, there is a growing consensus among ordinary voters in the region that Tinubu is not the Muslim he said he is, but that he is either a munafiq or a Christian. In Islam, a munafiq (i.e., a religious hypocrite posing as a Muslim) is worse than an infidel. Whether this conclusion is warranted or warranted is immaterial. I am only stating the prevailing sentiment among ordinary people there.

Personally, I want a country where the doctrines people will or will not subscribe to do not determine their qualification for political office. There is absolutely no connection between faith – or the lack of it – and competence. In fact, overreligious people tend to be dangerously inept fake people.

But there is no denying that religion is going to have an inordinate influence in shaping the contours of this presidential election. For example, Tinubu’s former edge in the Muslim north was anchored in the idea that he was a Muslim who chose to “honor” his religion by damning the consequences and choosing another Muslim as his running mate. Voting for him was portrayed in sermons as a political ‘jihad’. No one preaches that in mosques today, and people who did in the past are now the object of stone-cold ridicule.

The biggest beneficiary of the reduction of Tinubu’s religio-political capital in the Muslim north is the PDP’s Atiku Abubakar, whom northern Muslim voters had been lukewarm at best. Atiku’s opposition to Sharia in the early 2000s, at a time when it was both literally and politically suicidal for a northern Muslim to do so, was resented, particularly by the conservative church establishment.

He had also once rejected the honorary title of West African Muslim “Alhaji” in a press statement, saying he preferred to be addressed simply as “Vice President Atiku Abubakar.” This annoyed many northern Muslims. Moreover, his cosmopolitanism and associative politics had led him to be labeled “a southerner in northern skin,” to borrow the expression of a friend from Kaduna whose identity I have sought to conceal.

Despite the efforts of the APC’s northern governors, Atiku’s acceptance in the Muslim north is increasing dramatically, not because of anything he has done or said, but because he is the only other option for voters in the region after Tinubu. .

Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso may marginally win the majority of the vote in Kano, but there is a sense all over the Muslim north that he is just a petulant “spoiler” on whom people will not “waste” their votes. Barely registering a presence in the minds of most northern Muslim voters, Obi is generally seen in an unflattering light.

Tinubu has discovered the phenomenal transmutation of his political fortunes in the Islamic north, not because of Muhammadu Buhari and the Aso Rock cabal (who now frankly have no political capital) machine against him, but because of his Fatiha debacles. In response, he has chosen to change course and go all out for the Yoruba nationalist.

In speeches about Yoruba campaign stumps in the southwest, Tinubu has increasingly retreated into his ethnic shell. For example, on Thursday in Osogbo he said to a huge crowd: “Omo oko ni wa, a kii se omo ale [We are sons of our fathers; we are not bastards]. Awa la gbe won the be [We put them in power]. Awa l’a maa ro po won [We are the ones that will replace them].” That was obviously a dig at Buhari and his inner circle.

On Friday in Ekiti, he repeated the ethno-nationalist themes that have now become his usual style of campaigning when speaking in Yoruba to a Yoruba audience. “This election is yours. It is the election that you will use to free yourselves,” he said. “They want to turn us into servants. We are not servants.” Of course, that’s not the language you’d expect from the ruling party’s candidate.

The trope of slavery and servitude is an emotionally convincing dog whistle in Yoruba nationalist politics. It evokes images and sensations of “Fulani domination” without mentioning it, encouraging a united ethnic front, especially since Buhari and his clique who oppose him, and Atiku, his closest challenger, are Fulani people. In other words, Tinubu’s latest campaign style is straight out of the “Yoruba Nation” playbook.

A Yoruba friend who helped me translate Tinubu’s stupid speeches said that Tinubu “actually prepares the West for resistance.” And he can be successful because, at least on the surface, his complaint is valid. He and the Yoruba supported Buhari and his “Fulani” people to come to power on condition that their gesture would be reciprocated after eight years.

Now it’s time to pay back, and Buhari and his “Fulani” people are reneging on their promise and wanting to hand over power to one of them from another political party. You may question the merits of this argument, but it seems to be gaining popularity in the Southwest, even among people who used to despise Tinubu.

If what appears to be happening in the Southwest turns out to be true, it’s bad news for Peter Obi, who has anchored his entire presidential campaign in fueling Christian resentment over the exclusion of faith at the top of APC and PDP presidential tickets . Ayo Adebanjo captured the Christian nationalist impulses in Obi’s popularity on Friday when he said, “If Obi loses, a Christian Southerner may never be president again.”

That’s an inaccurate, off-the-wall claim, of course, but it was strategically calculated to mobilize the Christian vote for Obi against Tinubu, with whom Adebanjo and his associates have a personal problem. Nevertheless, Tinubu’s apparent rejection by northern Muslim voters who now question his Muslim faith over his inability to recite the most-recited chapter of the Islamic holy book buys him sympathy from Yoruba people who did not care about his politics.

Increasingly, even Yoruba Christians are reconsidering their rejection of Tinubu’s “Muslim-Muslim” ticket. It’s not what they thought it was. This will potentially reduce the “Christian” vote the Obi campaign had counted on. But relying on the religious solidarity of Yoruba voters has always been a politically risky strategy, because ethnicity has historically been a stronger force in Yorubaland than religion.

How these changing dynamics will affect the outcome of the election is still up in the air.

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