I want to make it clear that I am not a member of any political party and I will give my single vote to any candidate that I believe have a better program for Nigeria. What I will be presenting in this piece is a personal opinion and may not pass rigorous scientific examination but they still remain my opinion based on longtime observations.

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, the ruling party(PDP) has chosen the incumbent president, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, as its sole candidate for the 2015 presidential election. The president’s managers have also been out trying to sell his candidacy. The selling point for the president from all the adverts and jingles for now has not been different from that of 2011 election: Humility, love for the nation and humanity and to some extent his achievement in office. Weather this connects with the electorate is left to be seeing but for me, I think they need to do better. The ruling party does not give too much room for choice, therefore, there is no need discussing further about its candidate.
The opposition party (APC) on the other hand have three leading contenders for its ticket:

Rtd. General Mohammadu Buhari is a veteran aspirant. He will be taking his fourth shot at the exalted position if chosen as the candidate. He was a former head of state, a former military governor, former minister of petroleum, former chairman PTDF among other public offices he held. He is probably the only politician in Nigeria that has occupied a public office and came out with his reputation unscathed. He is probably the only politician in Nigeria with loyal followers without necessarily funding them. His selling point as usual has been his integrity (Believe me, we need somebody like that in this country) and his managers have been hammering on that. His only agenda if elected seems to be stamping out corruption, which is not bad, but we need more than that. His weakness is that he has been labeled a religious bigot and ethnic jingoist by his opponents. This label has somehow stuck to him with little or no effort from him to change it until recent. He is 72yrs old now and in some quarters considered too old. He got about 12milliom votes during the 2011 election but only 350 thousand of this votes are from the south. I believe he will do better in the south this time around if given the ticket.

Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is another candidate of the APC that has signifies his interest in vying for the ticket of the party. He is also a veteran contestant. He retired as a senior custom officer and also serve as vice president of Nigeria between 1999 and 2007. He is a successful businessman. He seems to re-invent himself with time and that’s the reason he connects with youth on social media. Of all the candidate, he seems to have a more robust and complete policy statement. He has remain consistent in his idea on how to move the country forward overtime. He has the best political network across the country among the candidates. He seems to have knack for assembling a good team around him as was evident when he was vice president. He also have deep pocket to give PDP a good run for their money; naira for naira. His major problem is that he has not been able to extricate himself for the label of a very corrupt person as he was labeled by his boss when he was the vice president. This may be his greatest undoing if he emerges as the APC candidate.

The third major candidate vying for APC ticket is Engr. Rabiu Kwankwaso, the current Governor of Kano State . Apart from been a sitting governor, Engr. Kwankwaso is also a former minister of defense. It is widely believe that he performed creditably well as a governor of a complex state like Kano. He has almost cult like following in the state. He also has the political sagacity to understand that all politics is local, hence, his people oriented policies. Unlike the first two candidates, he is still relatively young. He major undoing may be lack of political spread beyond Kano State. I think he is a candidate for the future.

Having briefly examine the candidates above, I still believe that 2015 general election will be majorly determine by ethnicity and religion. This is due to the fact that most Nigerian elites don’t vote. Majority of those that will read this article will not vote. The voters are not on social media. They don’t understand what you say in all the jingles, more especially the elitist jingles on electronic media. The voters in

Nigeria are the Okada riders, the miscreant are the motor parks, the market men and women, the taxi drivers etc. The ethnic and religious dummy can easily be sold among this voting population.

I have been privilege to visit all the geopolitical regions within the last one year. I have sought the opinion of these people from different races and towns. My conclusion from this interactions is; If APC is able to choose a candidate without internal rancor, the result of the next election will be as follows:

Northern Nigeria- APC 70%, PDP-30% with the exception of Benue and Plateau State. Benue may be upto 50-50. I cannot hazard a guess for Plateau State.
Southwest – APC 60%, PDP- 40%
Southeast – APC 20%, PDP – 80%
Southsouth – APC 40%, PDP- 60% ( this is due Ameachi and Oshiomole factor)

Going by the analysis above, the election is for APC to lose instead of the other way round. PDP may win some states in the north in governorship election but it will lose same state with wide margin in the presidential election. I have also noticed that an average northerner may not be as sophisticated as his southern counterpart but he appear to be more politically aware. It should also be noted that Kano State,

Kaduna State and Lagos States have over 22% of the voting population of Nigeria. The party that control these states will have a big say about the election result. These States are most likely to be APC states come 2015.

If the analysis is done base on geopolitical zones, Northwest has about 27% of the voters, Southwest about 19.3%, Northeast about 14.56%, NorthCentral about 14.53%, Southeast about 12.93%, SouthSouth about 10.34% and FCT about 1.28%. There is no need arguing that bulk of Northwest, Northeast, NorthCentral and Southwest will go for APC. If this assumption is correct, the APC will have about 60% of the vote. This is only feasible in a free and fair election. I believe the 2015 election will be free and fair.

Follow: Ayantunji Benjamin Gbenro (Ph.D)
@bengbenro

Articles on www.omojuwa.com are solely authors opinion