The three top contenders are Bola Tinubu from the governing All Revolutionaries Congress, Atiku Abubakar from the People’s Democratic Party’s and Peter Obi from the Labour Party. All three say they made their fortunes legitimately and deny any wrongdoing. The parties have laboriously promoted programs that are anticipated to gain popular support. Promises to resuscitate industries and improve delicate conditions have been made in different spaces, languages and forms. Still, the choices are also affected by factors beyond whose agenda is best.
The PDP and APC have nominated presidential campaigners that defy conventional morals about how the country is represented in its loftiest office. That this is indeed a discussion is representative of how the current administration has taken to prebendalism and largely ennobled members of specific demographics. It’s why campaigners can openly use religion, race and region to seek votes in a country erected along those veritably sensitive fault lines.
A vote for any seeker will support, to some position, the notion of how important it’s to identify these different aspects. Crusade rhetoric has also been reckless in some respects and disregards the challenge that will come with governance once the election is over. Mr Tinubu, who served two terms as governor of Nigeria’s richest state Lagos, is the most talked- about seeker on the ballot. There are endless debates about his age, name, health status, work profile and the authenticity of his university instrument, but it’s for the source of his wealth over which he has faced the most scrutiny.
Mr Abubakar touts himself as the most educated seeker on the ballot, having served as vice-president between 1999 and 2007- and it’s this period around which there’s some contestation. His former master,ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, indicted him of embezzling $145m from the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) in 2003.
Mr Obasanjo, who doesn’t wince down from intimately participating his opinions about other politicians, devoted a chapter in his book My Watch, published in 2014, to the contended transgressions of his former deputy. Peter Obi, who has also served two terms as governor- in his case in the eastern Anambra state, doesn’t hide his immense wealth, which he says has been made through banking and importing more goods into Nigeria.