Tinubu, Atiku, Obi Use Your Guts, Intuition, and Experience in Choosing a Vice President

As presidential candidates for major political parties, you spend your days and nights worrying about your potential vice president. To you, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Atiku Abubaka of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party, the initial and the final say about who becomes the vice-presidential candidate is solely yours. It must not reside with any of your party leaders, the current President, governors, kinsmen/women, or clerics, even native doctors.

Certainly, it is vital you take into consideration geopolitical zone factors, in terms of numbers, the nation’s unity aspects, regional calculations, and input from your party’s hierarchy and power brokers. However, make sure you like the person, and he or she appeals to the party members.

Choose someone who is not too cool or hot-headed in a society that encourages unnecessary complexes and full of self-inflicted wahalas (problems), so that the person does not directly or indirectly over-project themselves over you, causing silent or knocking headaches or provoking stress-related death in you.

In a country full of people who are known to show juju, Islamic, or Christian sentiments and commitments, you must choose a VP who you will be less suspicious of, as you do not want to be the type who spends so much time watching your cup of water, tea, or coffee as well as your food. President Muhammadu Buhari was super lucky that he settled with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo with his professorial, pastoral, and non-threating physical outlook and imagery.

Even at that, you want to take into calculation a VP that will yield the highest votes from a region, as for Tinubu and Obi, he or she must be a Christian from the north, and a Christian southerner in the case of Atiku.

Even at that, in order to inject regional balance and religious fairness, especially in a stubbornly divisive place like Nigeria, listen to what your gut tells you.

Three of you are not new to Nigeria's type of politics, so let your instinct and your experience help you figure out who will be a good fit for you and who will not be.

You do not want the type of Olusegun Obasanjo-Atiku relationship, as what matters most is what your gut tells you about your potential VP—is he or she decent, honest, likeable, intelligent, sturdy, loyal, and predictable? You may not be as concerned with people's needs, but does this person genuinely care about ordinary people, and can he or she be trusted when times are tough?

Nigerian leaders are known for intimidating and promising each other, you must not fall to any sort of political intimidations, as the Almighty will be your constant guide.

As a presumptive presidential nominee of your party, who ever fills the vice-presidential nomination, make sure you have checked their family and public records, in regard to their speeches and finance as you do not want any surprises nationally and internationally. You do not want to end up with someone who the people see as prone to more corrupt or less corrupt ways that they may feel about you. Remember to choose that person whom your guts tell you will broaden and improve your chances to win in the general election. You have nothing to lose by going with your guts. Good luck.

Prof. Oshodi wrote in via [email protected]