To be sure, if this merger had been forged towards the 2011 presidential poll, the electoral values of the 10 states involved now as well as the nationwide showing of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) in that election would have clinched the presidency for them.
The APC is an amalgam of the CPC, the ACN, the ANPP and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). APGA did not field a presidential candidate in the 2011 general elections.
The governors of Borno, Nasarawa, Zamfara, Imo, Lagos, Ekiti, Oyo , Osun and Ogun states met in Lagos on Tuesday to endorse the merger, which eventually led to the emergence of the APC. The governor of Yobe sent a representative to the meeting while Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State (ACN) was absent.
In the 2011 presidential election, the PDP polled 484,758 votes in Oyo; Osun, 188,409; Ogun, 309,177; Lagos, 1,281,688; Nasarawa, 408,997; Borno, 207,075; Imo, 1,406,289; Ekiti, 135,009; Yobe, 117,128; and Zamfara 238,980. In total, the party garnered 4,777,510 votes in the 10 states.
Nationwide, President Jonathan polled 22,495,187 to clinch the presidency; the presidential candidate of the CPC, Gen Muhammadu Buhari, scored 12,214,853; Mallam Nuhu Ribadu of the ACN garnered 2,067,301 and Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau of the ANPP received 917,012 votes.
It is common knowledge, however, that some of these governors, especially those from the south-west, put their parties’ machinery at the disposal of President Jonathan for the 2011 poll. However, if they had worked for their own joint candidate, as the APC merger would throw up now, the PDP would apparently not have scored as many as 4,777,510 votes in the 10 states.
Hypothetically, if the PDP had lost 4,777,510 votes to the merger parties, Jonathan’s final vote count would have been 17,717,677.
And if the 4,777,510 is added to the total votes garnered by the CPC, ACN and the ANPP in the 2011 presidential election under a merger agreement, their joint candidate would have triumphed with 19,993,303 votes.
A professor of political science in a federal university who does not want his name in the print told LEADERSHIP WEEKEND: “These hypothetical figures appear spot on, although they beg several variables imperative for victory in the last presidential poll and the coming contest in 2015. However, I think the opposition parties even stand a better chance of wrestling power from the PDP in the next presidential election if they put their house in order and seize on the apparent disaffection with the performance of the current federal cabinet.”
The lecturer added: “In my view, President Goodluck Jonathan clinched the presidency largely on sentiments generated by the way he was treated in the course of the Yar’Adua sickness saga by members of the now infamous cabal who wanted to cling to power, and the parochial polemics a certain section of the country put up to oust him. These apparently didn’t wash with the electorate in other parts of the country and they turned out in their numbers to vote for Jonathan.
“On a lighter note, I also think that the mythic mind of many who voted for President Jonathan was also a factor in his victory, as they somehow thought that the President’s Goodluck name and his mercurial rise to the presidency from the backwaters of Otuoke in Bayelsa State, without his plotting his way to the zenith of national life, would somehow rub off on the country and usher in prosperity for them.
“Perhaps his good-luck charm ran out or something, but then I think there is no such mythical link between one’s station in life and his name, no matter the load of good luck element in it. Nigerians who voted for the president on that mythic mesmerising have surely come to realise that it counts for nothing with the lacklustre performance of the president and his men. The president has been tested and obviously found wanting on the performance index.
Now is the time, I think, for these opposition figures to put their act together and really give the ruling party a big fight for the presidency -- a fight largely based on the PDP’s apparent failure to put the country on the path of the radical transformation we yearn for as a nation.”
But another don who also pleaded anonymity said: “While the hypothetical situation envisioned by these statistics seems plausible, these APC fellows have a lot of work to do if they are to scatter the nest of practised rustlers that the PDP has increasingly become since the return to civil rule. Mark you, I did not say democracy, to the detriment of national progress the way the Nigerian people envisaged on May 29, 1999.”
Leadership
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