Pulse Opinion: 2 harsh lessons Third Force should take away from presidential election

73 candidates were on the ballot for the election that took place on Saturday, February 23; but when the state-by-state collation and announcement of results commenced on Monday, February 25, many Nigerians were displeased that the results for all the candidates had to be announced by the collation officers of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Many were frustrated that announcing for all the candidates was a time-wasting exercise, especially since the election had long been touted as a straight contest between President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a sentiment that was proven by the final result.

While the frustration was self-serving because those candidates and their parties had equal right as the two biggest candidates and parties, it was hard to make an argument for them based on the numbers that were being announced as their returns.

While Atiku and Buhari were polling tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands in several states, all the other 71 candidates were playing lame catch up in the little league with 88 votes, 50, 37, 350, and sometimes up to the dizzying heights of 8,910 but then back to the familiar low of 61. At some point, a party got zero votes in an entire state.

With an election that had already taken too much of everyone's time and energy, Nigerians were simply anxious to get to the finishing line where either of the PDP or APC would be pronounced winner.

But how did we get here?

In May 2018, President Buhari signed the Not Too Young To Run bill into law, lowering the age qualification for president from 40 years to 35 and House of Representatives and State House of Assembly from 30 years to 25.

This Act opened up the field for new entrants who could now stake claims for legislative seats and the coveted seat of president. Even though the main battle for the presidency centered around Buhari and Atiku, two septuagenarians, many other contenders, not necessarily direct beneficiaries of the Act, started to rise from relative obscurity to demand that their voices be heard with their hastily-formed political parties that swelled the pool to 91 parties in total.

With the popular narrative being that the APC and the PDP were two peas in a pod who have failed to develop the country, a Third Force was called upon to liberate the masses from the stranglehold of the old political class.

Ironically, the first major Third Force incursion was launched by Olusegun Obasanjo, an 82-year-old former two-term democratic president and former military Head of State who is considered part of the problem that demanded a Third Force.

His attempt to launch a Third Force, mostly borne out of his annoyance with Buhari's government, took off with the Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM) in January 2018 but soon ran out of steam after he adopted the African Democratic Congress (ADC) as a political party to bring the vision to the fore. With the eventless burnout of the movement and nowhere else to turn, Obasanjo soon threw his weight behind Atiku, a man he's alleged over the years of engaging in serious corrupt conducts.

Obasanjo's failure did not slow down the Third Force movement as many candidates soon emerged to carry the torch, each promising that they're the nation's brightest hope of turning a great corner if only the Nigerian people would trust them with millions of votes at the polls.

In the crowded pool of Third Force campaigners for the presidency, only a few candidates stood out distinctly enough to be talked about when the conversation came up.

The poster boys for the movement were Omoyele Sowore, 48, of the African Action Congress (AAC), a renown activist and journalist; Kingsley Moghalu, 55, of the Young Progressive Party (YPP), a former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and Fela Durotoye, 47, of the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN), a well-known leadership expert and business coach.

Along the line, a former minister, Oby Ezekwesili, and, to a lesser degree, Donald Duke, a former governor, also staked their claims with the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN) and Social Democratic Party (SDP) respectively, but their campaigns hit the rocks in dramatic fashion before Nigerians even made it to the polls.

A major buzzword that dominated the campaign for the 2019 election was "coalition". With the list of Third Force candidates reasonably too long to sort through, many Nigerians made several appeals for them to align their visions and contest under one platform so that votes will not be scattered among them.

This clamour for cooperation between the candidates is what led to the ill-fated Presidential Aspirants Coming Together (PACT), a coalition which remarkably fell apart after Durotoye emerged as the consensus winner.

While Sowore withdrew from the group after the first meeting, Moghalu left it late till after he lost to Durotoye to raise objections to the process.

Months later, he described the PACT episode as a political assassination attempt by unnamed powerful forces to terminate his candidacy in its early stages. Despite his public boasts about a sinister sabotage, his decision to walk back on his commitment to PACT dogged the rest of his campaign.

The PACT misadventure did no favours for the coalition push as most of the political neophytes decided on their own to run solo, even with their already-bare political structures, while some others caved in to the temptation of announcing their insignificant endorsement for one of Buhari or Atiku to win the election.

While Durotoye was always eager to commit to any glimmer of a coalition with others, Sowore insisted that his AAC, a party registered in August 2018, was already in a coalition with the Nigerian people while Moghalu held any coalition talk with a good dose of scepticism.

This meant that all three, and a bunch of others, went into the election fighting the same battle on different fronts that they could have been battling on just one with a much better chance of success. Instead, they ended up getting picked apart in spectacularly ridiculous fashion.

The reason for many demanding to see a coalition of Moghalu, Sowore, Durotoye and others is simple: they're younger candidates who are also newly starting out in politics selling the idea of fresh hope for a nation that's just about had it with its regular customers.

That a coalition of these people did not work is not exactly a simple issue to unpack, no one should just expect them to seamlessly work together simply because they share a few similarities. However, many people have berated the band of Third Force candidates mostly for failing to work hard enough, at least, to form a serious coalition.

If the vote tally announced for the 2019 presidential election proves anything, it's that these candidates are more likely to succeed standing together than individually standing alone.

Of all three, it was clear during the campaign that Sowore had the most dedicated group of followers and it was no surprise that he polled highest of the three. However, he still ended up in 10th place on the log with even lesser-known candidates winning more votes in the election.

John Gbor, 70, of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Yabagi Yusuf, 64, of the Action Democratic Party (ADP) and even Davidson Akhimien, 53, of the little-known Grassroots Development Party Of Nigeria (GDPN) all polled better returns even though people hardly paid attention to them before the election.

Dr Nicolas Felix of the Peoples Coalition Party (PCP) who finished third in the election with 110,196 votes has had to dismiss insinuations that he got the votes of an unaware section of the electorate that believed they were voting for the PDP instead because of the party's proximity and similar colours to that of the main opposition party on the ballot.

However, even if the figures were fully meant for him, the fact remains he still fell 11.1 million votes short of Atiku's haul and a few more millions short of Buhari's 15,191,847 votes.

With attention already shifting to the 2023 elections, 2019 should serve as a lesson in how not to run for an election and should provide enough fuel for new age candidates to desire to work together to upset a careful balance of old political actors in the ruling party and the main opposition.

This does not automatically suggest that they'll win in 2023, but it provides them with a much better chance than the tame performances on offer at the polls this year. And more than that, some of these candidates have to ask themselves a very important question that many Nigerians asked them - do they have any business running for the Presidency to begin with?

Yes, the constitution allows for you to run. Yes, there's a party willing to accommodate your ambition. And yes, maybe you'll pick off the odd supporter here and there.

However, have you really thought about it reasonably and are convinced you have enough political clout and structure and resources to contest in a presidential election?

Throughout the campaign, many Nigerians pointed out that some of the Third Force candidates could have had a better shot at electoral victory if they aimed a little lower for positions that are more attainable than the presidency that already looked locked between two giants with near-unlimited resources.

However, a common retort from these candidates, from the 35-year-old neophyte to the older and wiser political outsider, was that the presidency is the only place they could make meaningful impact. Too bad it's also the one place they have the tiniest chance of pulling off a victory.

The 2019 presidential election is over and one would hope that it has served as a great learning curve for the nation's new crop of politicians trying to make headway for themselves, and the country. These lessons must be taken to heart and must shape how they approach the 2023 elections.

If this is not done, the dog will stray even further and further into political limbo.