PROF KINGSLEY MOGHALU: THE PRESIDENT NIGERIA NEEDS BUT MAY NEVER HAVE
PROF KINGSLEY MOGHALU
Samuel Enyi Otsapa
You live in Utako, Abuja and you want to travel to Surulere in Lagos but instead of boarding a bus going to Lagos, you boarded the one going to Okene, Kogi State. Although you are traveling on the right stretch of the Abuja to Lagos highway, you would stop in Okene and not Lagos, because you took the wrong vehicle. What to do? When your bus arrives and stops at Okene, you’d have to board another one going to Lagos; your intended destination.
This description fits Professor Kingsley Moghalu and his continuing ambition to become Nigeria’s number one citizen.
Arguably, the intelligent and very experienced political economist, lawyer, author, former United Nations official and Deputy Governor with Nigeria’s Central Bank is one of the best candidates jostling to take over from President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023 – but like he did in 2019, the bus he has boarded and is commuting with on the journey is not ‘destined’, in this moment, to deliver him to his destination, no matter how qualified he is.
In the run-up to the 2019 presidential election, our amiable and soft-spoken Prof. Kingsley Moghalu boarded the YPP (Young Progressives Party) vehicle and immediately, some of us knew that he would never arrive at his desired destination because one cannot drive an old molue bus and hope to arrive at the same location before someone driving a Toyota Landcruiser Prado SUV or a Jeep Cherokee SUV. After the 2019 presidential election, he and his YPP came distant behind the incumbent, President Buhari and the candidate of the PDP; Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
After losing the 2019 election, Prof Kingsley Moghalu left the YPP and became ‘non-partisan’ for two years. But three days ago, he officially joined the ADC (African Democratic Congress) and immediately announced his intention to again contest for the office of the president of Nigeria in the 2023 general election. On the day, Prof Kingsley Moghalu was quoted as saying that: “I am pleased to announce to you today that I have joined the ADC which I feel ideologically aligned with. I am honoured to become a card-carrying member of the party. In doing so, I restate my public announcement on June 1, 2021, making myself available to lead our country as a competent 21st century president and my intention to contest in the 2023 presidential election…”
After watching him speak at that occasion, I immediately dismissed his ambition as I did in 2019 because once again, he has boarded the wrong vehicle and he would not arrive at his desired destination no matter how hard he and his new “bus”, the ADC, work hard. Their ambition is akin to expecting a three year old baby to win a 100meters sprint race in a contest with seasoned adult athletes. Recall that in the 2019 presidential election, the late Obadiah Mailafia, who also worked at the CBN, was the presidential candidate of the ADC.
As I have already pointed out, Prof Kingsley Moghalu is undoubtedly one of the most qualified presidential materials for 2023 but with the political party he is contesting with, he cannot win – and I have elected to tell him this truth (if he does not already know it – because during each election circle in Nigeria, there are always contenders and pretenders) like I did in the weeks leading to the 2019 elections. My position on this issue must not be misinterpreted as a ‘diss’ on his personality, achievements, ambition or political party.
In this moment, and as far as the presidential election in Nigeria is concerned, the winner in 2023 would be the candidate of either the PDP or the APC – because currently and in the near foreseeable future, no “third force” has what it takes to push aside the two. Using again an earlier example to illustrate and buttress this point, one can describe the APC as a Prado SUV and the PDP a Jeep SUV while other political parties in the country, including Prof Kingsley Moghalu’s ADC, are at best secondhand molue buses – and in a race competition, the winner would certainly be the Prado or the Jeep. This is because no level of dedication or abracadabra would make a molue, ceteris paribus, arrive Lagos from Abuja before a Jeep or Prado.
I am so sure of this as I was in 2019 because the PDP and the APC are the only two political parties that are household names across the length and breadth of Nigeria, from Igumale in Ado LGA of Benue State to Orne in Rivers State. The umbrella and the broom are the most commonly known party symbols to Nigerians, particularly to those living in the hinterlands, and judging from the political culture and voting pattern of a mass of Nigeria’s electorate, we know that they ‘scrutinize’ and vote political parties and not candidates. In most cases, when Nigerians like a certain political party, they vote for any candidate representing that political party in an election.
A fine example of this is the Rotimi Ameachi versus Celestine Omehia case in Rivers State. In 2007, Rotimi Ameachi, Nigeria’s current Minister of Transportation, became governor of Rivers State without contesting as a candidate in the actual gubernatorial election of that year after the Supreme Court in October 2007 determined that he was the rightful winner of the PDP primaries in Rivers State. In the general election, it was Celestine Omehia who contested and won the election with the PDP but the Court sacked him after five months as governor and Ameachi, also of the PDP, was sworn in. Nigerians in the small villages know the PDP and the APC much more than the ADC.
Nigeria is a land of upsets and so in 2023, the PDP and the APC is unlikely to win landslides in all the 36 states, FCT and the 774 LGAs but the presidential election is for one of the PDP or APC. Other political parties; APGA, YPP, ADC, SDP, Labour, etc may win a state or two in the gubernatorial election, one or two senatorial positions, three, four or five seats in the House of Representatives and few seats in different Houses of Assembly but that is how much they can wrestle. Why? Because they do not have the grassroot investment, recognition and support to successfully wrestle presidential power from the ruling APC. Only the PDP can.
Unarguably, the PDP is Nigeria’s most national and grassroot political party but it lost the presidency in 2015 and 2019 because it could not manage it’s electoral successes as in-fighting and power tussles became the order of the day. It lost to a political entente formed by three old political parties along with a chunk of some disgruntled members of the PDP. This was the reason why the APC; a relatively new political party (formed in 2013) and President Muhammadu Buhari, a serial contestant and loser, was able to defeat the PDP and President Goodluck Jonathan as early as 2015. As things stands, Prof Kingsley Moghalu and his new party; the ADC, standing alone, cannot pull that stunt in 2023. When Prof contested in 2019 with the YPP, he lost in his own home state of Anambra where he scored only 4,091votes. PDP’s Atiku won the state with 524,738 votes while APC’s Muhammadu Buhari came second and John Gbor, the candidate of APGA, third. Prof Kingsley Moghalu and the YPP could not even win in his hometown of Nnewi.
So while Nigerians hanker for a president like Prof Kingsley Moghalu (Prof Wole Soyinka and Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi endorsed his candidature in 2019) because we know that the man is a visionary and one who is passionate and has what it takes to develop and grow Nigeria and Nigerians, the man himself is refusing to understand that in real politik and in Nigeria, as is the case in most democratic countries, one has to belong to one of the two biggest political parties in order to have a chance at winning a presidential election.
In 2000, former president Donald Trump attempted to contest as POTUS when he was a member of the Reform Party but he dropped that ambition after realizing that his chances against the Republican (George Bush) and Democratic (AlGore) party candidates was a mere 7%. But in 2016, when he was able to become the candidate of the Republican party, he; a political rookie like Prof Kingsley Moghalu is, defeated a seasoned politician in Senator Hillary Clinton of the Democratic party.
To arrive at his desired destination, Prof Kingsley Moghalu needs to join one of the APC or the PDP and work hard towards becoming the presidential candidate so he can have a realizable shot and chance in 2031, not 2027. But until he realizes and embraces this Nigerian street political reality, he would continue to come across as a presidential pretender thus denying Nigeria and Nigerians the rare opportunity and privilege of having a 21st century intelligent, urbane, visionary and compassionate individual as president.
