Power versus money: Nigeria’s insidious presidential contest By Segun Adediran 

Well-informed Nigerians are watching with keen interest how the forces of power and money are playing out toward the 2023 presidential election. Which one wins: power or money?

For some of us, there is nothing strange about the unfolding events in the country. When it comes to the politics of who wields the supreme power, authority, and legitimacy in a diverse society like Nigeria, you should expect that all forces, open and discreet, celestial and terrestrial, primordial and enlightened, selfish and altruistic will be rolled out.

Let me quickly mention this. Nigeria’s presidency is not about who can govern best, it’s about who can protect and promote certain self-interests, individual or collective, in the polity.

I, therefore, agree that the currency redesign crisis (please note, it’s not a currency swap) and the lingering fuel scarcity are part of the game plan in the presidential politics of today. Make no mistake about it,  politics is war by other means. And anything and everything is fair in war. Nicollo Machiavelli, the author of The Prince, puts it crudely, “The end justifies the means”.

This month’s presidential election is being fought not only among political parties (though Nigerian parties are not political parties in the strictest use of the phrase) but within political parties. For obvious reasons, this is most pronounced within the ruling All Progressive Party where the forces backing the party’s presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, and the forces standing against him are squaring up in an epic battle for the soul of Nigeria. The Peoples Democratic Party has its headache, the Wike-led G-5 Governors. But it’s the ruling party that much attention should be paid to because it has both the knife and the yam. How will it use the knife to cut the yam?  One group, the Aso Rock mafia, has the rein of government power while the Tinubu gang is ensconced in an incredible power of money.

Both can’t win! A house divided against itself, as the saying goes, cannot stand. The victory of the Aso Rock mafia will be gained for any of the two opposition candidates, Abubakar Atiku or Peter Obi. If Tinubu & co wins, the victory will be the first of its kind in Nigerian politics where an individual (Tinubu) single-handedly led a squad to defeat a strategic power bloc in the Presidency. If Atiku wins, the regional or ethnic card may be used to incite the public.

But unlike M.K.O Abiola’s June 12, 1993 crisis,  most Nigerians may not be ready to go blindly to war in support of the loser. It’s all about a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.

From the foregoing, it will be simplistic to infer that the high stake politics surrounding the currency redesign is all about monetary and fiscal efficiency. Or the lingering fuel scarcity is the normal one Nigerians are used to. No. They are both instruments in a war chess game between the Aso Rock mafia and the Tinubu gang.

Where is the public interest in all this? Well, the public can only benefit from the positive fallout of this political war of attrition and lose abysmally from the negative implications. Who wins? Power or money? Let’s wait till 25th February 2023.