It takes a lot of work to become president

After each significant turning point in the election season, which started about a year ago, the claim that men and boys are separate has been frequently made by some. I actually started an eight-part series in May 2022 that I wrote for Elrufai News Magazine, focusing on potential outcomes during the election season. As some spoke about the religious tinge of the ticket, I essentially talked about issues that would allow the ruling party to keep the presidency. My prediction that the ticket would win could only be made by someone who considered the facts and figures rather than their feelings.

I continued working on another series here after the ruling party’s primaries were over. In them, I claimed that some members of the ruling party who ran against the eventual victor in the primaries viewed winning the presidency as a one-day event, an impulsive action, a knee-jerk choice, and even reeking of opportunism. In those pieces, I made note that some contestants purchased tickets not because they had worked arduously to realize their dream, but for other equally bizarre and unbelievable motives. I didn’t say any of that because I knew anyone who disagreed with me. Instead, I observed the political climate and, eschewing emotions, explained why I thought the election’s outcome would ultimately be what it was. I recently questioned a friend about the opinions I shared with him in our personal conversations prior to the elections. He responded, “You said so.”

As I always say, you haven’t been properly trained as a political scientist if you read political science and your analysis is pedestrian and largely motivated by sentiments. We can all have different perspectives, so it’s okay that my stance on many public issues as a journalist with a political science background has earned me various derisive nicknames. However, I cannot continue to reason based on feelings while receiving the kind of training I did. You can’t be trained as a political scientist and still reason like anyone else on the street, as one of my former political science lecturers actually said to us in class. Dr. Femi Badejo, one of my former University of Lagos professors, used to appear as an analyst on NTA News during that time. I still remember him asking the news anchor, “What’s the empirical basis for making such a generalized assertion?”

All of that serves as my way of coming full circle to the point of this essay, which is to make the case that, contrary to what some people demonstrated in 2022, planning for becoming a country’s leader does not begin the year of the election. It does so a lot sooner.

I choose this topic because I still hear some Nigerians argue that one could join a political party today and become the president of the country in a few months. If it can happen in other countries, it can’t happen in Nigeria where voters are affected by a variety of factors, not just the economy’s state or insecurity. I have previously stated that the majority of Nigerians who vote do not agree with some of the national issues that the educated use to determine who they want to vote for. Additionally, there is a group of people who vote disproportionately despite not being among our society’s most educated. One reason politics is said to be local is because the factors or problems that drive them typically are local rather than national. Anyone who rejects this idea isn’t prepared to accept the realities of our country, i.e., the factors that influence who and how our citizens vote.

I observed the amount of effort some people expended supporting their candidates and aspirants during the previous presidential election and the party primaries. It doesn’t begin when the election is over for someone to succeed in politics, win, and hold office. Politics always begins in the past, and those who understand it are aware of how crucial it is to prepare and present oneself appropriately for D-day. Many people don’t realize this, so they continue to say and act insensitively while threatening to nominate a member of their tribe as the next president when an election is just around the corner. Politics is a delicate subject. When the election comes around, you say and do all the wrong things and still get results. There is no magic involved; it is all about numbers.

Even as they expressed confidence that their candidate would win, some political supporters vehemently insulted people based on their tribe or religion. They were unfriendly and made others feel unimportant, but despite this, they were as enthusiastic as a whale about the candidate from their tribe winning among everyone they insulted. People believing they can do or fail to do some things and yet they or their candidate will win is one example of poor election preparation.

I also observe that many people make public appearances following every election to threaten civil unrest if their tribes are not given particular political positions. They and their supporters don’t back the victor, but they are always the first to advise him on how to set up his government for the sake of “equity.” This is a manifestation, in my opinion, of treating politics and power politics like young children playing in the front yard. Whether a person votes for the winner or not, I am in favor of a fair distribution of offices among all of our citizens. It is simply impossible to believe that those who vehemently opposed and denigrated the eventual victor would be the ones to give the victor instructions on how to set up his government. Another oblique example of their belief that they can win the presidency without preparation.

In my opinion, in a complicated country like ours, getting the most out of politics depends on playing the game skillfully and doing so in a deliberate, strategic way. Everyone has the right to express their desire to produce the president, but the work necessary to make that wish a reality doesn’t begin during an election year or on election day. In a country like Nigeria, victory is systematic, planned, and largely the result of careful politicking and a few key political alliances, so it should have started much earlier. For example, claiming the presidency requires more than those press conferences. Presenting a candidate for the presidency and gaining his acceptance across all tribes and religions takes much longer than the election season.

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It takes more than just being well-liked by some voters to win the presidency. In a country with more than 200 tribes and languages, it is insufficient to claim that your tribe has never presented a civilian president. Nothing in politics grants you special treatment; in order to receive benefits, you must compete fairly and use smart tactics. Real politicians are aware that picking a winner is a complicated process. They thus take into account all factors. They began long ago, not just before the election.

The aforementioned is motivated by some people’s assertions that their candidate won across the nation, which are refuted. Note that even in states where their party structures disintegrated into other parties, they still believed they had won. Before the general election, there were at least seven such states. Only a few months before the election, they came together under the same party. Only a few streets in the state capitals of some states allowed you to see the campaign posters for their presidential candidate. Recently, the electoral commission claimed that a presidential candidate who is currently in court lacked agents in nearly 60% of the country’s polling places. Yet their supporters thought they had prevailed. I believe that people need to learn better ways to control their expectations and aspirations.