WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A CANDIDATE CAN NEVER BE ELECTED EVEN WHEN ALL THE ODDS SEEM TO BE IN HIS FAVOUR?

All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Primaries:
(1) Muhammadu Buhari – 3,430 votes
(2) Rabiu Kwankwaso – 974 votes
(3) Atiku Abubakar – 954 votes
(4) Rochas Okorocha – 624 votes
(5) Sam Ndah-Isaiah – 10 votes.
Atiku is rich, incredibly rich. He is smart, he is good with women. He is actually more modern and more exposed internationally than all the other candidates he contested with. He had the best of relevant experience as a Vice President for eight years in the past 16 years. He is tested in the battlefield given the manner he survived the machinations of the craziest President, Olusegun Obasanjo. He is clever and sleek. Hence he survived massive FBI investigation that finally sent a US Congressman for Louisiana (Congress Jefferson) to a federal prison.

Atiku is more national-minded than the other candidates – He married a wife from every major tribe in Nigeria. He ought to be the most formidable candidate for anyone to face in elections. But he could not even win the primaries in his party, concluded last week Thursday in Lagos.
What is it that makes it hard for the electorate to trust Atiku? Why is Atiku unelectable? This is something for political scholars and pundits to study and try to understand.
I did not expect the Governor of Kano, an unknown quantity, to beat Atiku in the primaries. And I did not expect Buhari to beat him black and blue like this. The result of the APC primaries makes Atiku look like an amateur in the game of professionals. It was an upset. The margin of Atiku’s defeat is mind-boggling.
Or could this result tell us something else about the APC? Does it tell us that APC is not a liberal party that is interested in moderate candidates? For APC delegates to prefer a hardliner and unknown entity like Kwankwaso over Atiku and for them to prefer also a hardliner like Buhari with such a wide margin over Atiku, there ought to be concerns as to the the real orientation of that party.

•Emeka Ugwuonye, Esquire, lawyer and activist, writes from Lagos. Photo shows Atiku.

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