President Atiku: Muslim Grade, Middle Ground
His Northern Muslim Grade and Southern Middle Ground
“Never show your anger. Tell nothing of yourself”, Pippi de Lena told his son, Cross, in the 1997 film, The Last Don.
If there’s one political don that’s lived up to this word in his fourth and likely last contest for Nigeria’s presidency, it is the Adamawa-born former Vice-President, Abubakar Atiku.
He’s taken Governor Wike and the G5’s slight in his strides, even to the point of retreating from the PDP presidential campaign in Rivers State.
From Dataphyte’s maths of the voting outcomes, Atiku’s path to the Presidency may be as narrow as a needle’s eye, but those who underestimate the ageing Don, like the Santadrios did the ageing Don Clericuzio, do so at their peril.
Last week we predicted that Atiku would come second with 30.19% of the total vote cast, after Tinubu’s 33.34%. We also calculated that Peter Obi would come third with 27.02% of the votes.
Recall we based the predictions on 3 factors that influence voter choice in Nigeria: religion, ethnicity and party structure. In this new scenario, we made a slight allowance for a fourth factor - a candidate’s popularity - regarding Peter Obi.
However, Dataphyte’s research team discovered that Abubakar Atiku might wriggle through to the presidency this time if only he plays the religious card better than Tinubu in the country’s northwest and northeast to lead Tinubu in the first instance of an inconclusive election. We call this Scenario 2.
Scenario 2: Atiku’s narrow passage to the Presidency
Atiku has competed in the Presidential race 4 times. He knows the pain of losing. But he’s learnt the mistakes of losers.
First, Atiku emerged as the PDP candidate from an unlikely party primary at the National Stadium, Abuja, where he defied the expected power shift to the south. He floored the overconfident Nyesom Wike, the Rivers State governor, using a last-minute manoeuvre from Tambuwal’s camp.
When the Party Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, lauded this successful putsch against Wike and others, he didn’t only reveal himself as an unbiased umpire, he revealed Atiku Abubakar’s capacity for deft undercover manoeuvre.
However, beyond his hard-won PDP primaries, Atiku faces Bola Tinubu on the one hand and Peter Obi on the other. But Tinubu appears to be Atiku’s arch-nemesis at the February 25 general elections.
Recently, Dino Melaye, a prominent member of the Atiku camp launched an offensive against Tinubu’s religious credentials. There have been reports that Tinubu is a nominal Muslim, with calls to Muslims to refrain from voting for him.
The danger of this offensive on Tinubu’s prospects in the election was not lost on Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), a religious organisation headed by Professor Ishaq Akintola.
“This is where Dino is going. His message was meant to be digested by Nigerian Muslims. That is why it is MURIC’s business to tackle him. He appears to be saying, ‘Drop Tinubu, He is not Muslim enough. Stop following him. My principal is a better Muslim’, the Professor said in an official statement.
Dataphyte measured the effect of stripping Tinubu of his religious advantage in the core northern parts of the country on his election outcome and found out that it could lead to an inconclusive presidential election in the first instance, with a run-off that would likely favour Atiku than Tinubu.
In scenario 2, Atiku would lead with 31.62% of votes, Tinubu would come second with 30.20% and Obi coming third still with 28.28%.
Furthermore, the number of states that Tinubu could have won would plummet from 22 to 13, possibly tying with Atiku’s 13 and edging above Obi’s possible wins of 11 states.
However, even in this unfortunate situation, only Bola Tinubu is still projected to win at least 25% of votes in 26 states.
The moment Atiku’s total votes exceed Tinubu’s in the first instance, even though he may not have a sufficient 25% of the votes in 24 states, he is likely to win the race in the run-off election.
That is when he’ll flip the ace card - his south south Igbo Christian Vice President pick - Ifeanyi Okowa, the Delta State Governor.
Tinubu would be in a steaming hot soup if he stood against Atiku alone, without Obi in the equation in the run-off.
With Tinubu’s assumed second-grade Muslim credentials and a first-grade Muslim as his VP pick, this time, he would not just lose the large voting block in the northeast and northwest, he would likely lose the southeast, south south and a large swathe of the southwest and north central voters to Atiku/Okowa.
Let’s see the details of our methodology as it plays out in this hypothetical scenario, compared to the previous scenario where Tinubu would have won in the first instance of the election without a run-off.
Methodology: How could Atiku win in Scenario 2?
We employ the same methodology to estimate the possibility that Atiku would secure the highest votes if Tinubu is stripped of his equal Muslim rating with Atiku in the Northeast and the Northwest of the country.
In Scenario 2, we strip Tinubu of his specific weight as a Muslim in the NW and NE zones and held all other variables (party and ethnicity) constant.
This hypothetical scenario assumes the Northwest and Northeast voters discount Tinubu’s Muslim credentials and pick Atiku over him as the “better Muslim” in the race.
To obtain the voter points for each candidate and the eventual percentage of votes, we multiplied the number of registered voters in each state by the voter turnout in 2015 and again by the RHI and VCH scores for each state. (See Table 4:Worksheet)
For reliability, we chose the Herfindahl Index metrics to ascertain the religious and voter choice homogeneity of voters in each state, used severally in measuring diversity and homogeneity.
These measurements were already made and analysed by Cletus Nwankwo, Religion and Voter Choice Homogeneity in the Nigerian Presidential Elections of the Fourth Republic
According to Nwankwo, “The level of homogeneity of voters’ choice in each state is considered as the inverted fractionalized Herfindahl index (HI) expressed as (Dalton 2008: p. 903):
“where HI represents the level of voters’ choice homogeneity (VCH), Xi2 represents the summation of the square of the percentage share of votes received by the parties in the election. (for votes received by parties, see Table 2 below).
“In this way, the voters’ choice homogeneity in each of the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in each election year was calculated.
“The Herfindahl index can be interpreted as the probability that two voters selected at random from among the voters in a state would have voted for different parties.
“In other words, the higher the HI values, the more voters in a state tend to vote for a single party (i.e. homogeneous). If the HI is low, then voters in that state have dissimilar (heterogeneous) choices, i.e. they voted for different parties.
“The HI value does not tell which political party voters prefer but an indication of heterogeneity in voters’ choices or otherwise (see Table 3 for the results).
Source: Nwankwo, Cletus Famous. "Religion and Voter Choice Homogeneity in the Nigerian Presidential Elections of the Fourth Republic" Statistics, Politics and Policy 10, no. 1 (2019): 1-25.
“Likewise, “Religious diversity is generally measured as the probability that two randomly chosen individuals are not of the same religion. Hence a Herfindahl-type fractionalization index seems to be a more robust measure of it. It is expected that the higher the religious diversity index, the less religiously heterogeneous a state is, i.e. the more religiously homogeneous the state and the more similar the voter choice in that state and vice versa.”
“You lost my vote”
Contemporary history shows that all the 3 foremost presidential candidates would do anything for a vote. But Atiku needs the Northern votes more than any other candidate to survive his likely last shot at Nigeria’s presidency.
The Abubakar Atiku political camp knows very well that all it takes to lose votes in the Northern parts of the country is to appear to be a medium Grade Muslim. Little wonder his associate, Dino Melaye, took a hit at Tinubu’s Muslim grade.
Atiku civil but miscalculated comment on the gruesome murder of Deborah Samuel in Sokoto serves as an eternal reminder of the divide between votes and a candidate’s convictions. But Atiku is not alone.
His political colleagues know, too, the cost of votes in Northern Nigeria. Atiku had tweeted a rebuke for the killing of a school girl in Sokoto in May 2022 but he deleted the tweet after threats of losing Northern votes.
He then made another tweet in the local Hausa language dissociating himself from the content of the deleted tweet - “a post was made that doesn’t agree with my orders” he wrote.
Atiku’s aborted humanism could be considered heroic compared to his other vote-thirsty colleagues from all the 3 major parties, the PDP, the APC, and the LP.
“Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, former Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu, former Anambra State Governor Peter Obi, Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike, Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello, and other presidential hopefuls have kept sealed lips despite the outrage that greeted the murder of the female student”, the Niche reported.
To finish the race at Aso Rock, Atiku needs to recover all lost Muslim votes in the northwest and northeast of the country.
In the first instance of the elections, he must appeal to his Muslim grade to beat Tinubu halfway. He is then to appeal to his Middle ground (choice of a southern Christian Igbo running mate) to beat Tinubu altogether in the second round.
Unfortunately, that’s a hard call.
In the end, three paths lead to the seat of power in Aso Rock this time - Atiku’s underground Manoeuvres, Tinubu’s understanding of Maths, or Obi’s undeniable Miracle.
Editor’s Note: “This report has been updated to reflect corrections to the name of a source”