“This is a case of Goliath and David,” says Peter Obi, a long-shot candidate who has unexpectedly taken the lead in the race to become president of Africa’s most populous country and its biggest economy. “The big people are there, but allow this small person to do it. And I know I can do it.”
As public campaigning was about to begin in late September, Nigeria was rocked by the release of three polls showing Mr Obi well ahead of the two candidates representing the main parties that have mis-ruled Nigeria since the restoration of its democracy in 1999. In two of the polls Mr Obi has a lead of more than 15 percentage points over Bola Tinubu, of the incumbent All Progressives Congress (apc), and Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (pdp), the main opposition. What makes this even more extraordinary is that Mr Obi is standing for the Labour Party, whose candidate at the previous presidential election in 2019 won just 5,074 votes out of 28m cast.
Even if the polls are accurate—the large share of undecided voters suggests the outcome is still in flux—Mr Obi will still have to clear several hurdles on the path to becoming president. The first relates to the rules. In order to avoid a run-off, the winning candidate must not only have the most votes. They must also get more than 25% in each of at least two-thirds of the country’s 36 states and capital territory. Doing so, admits Mr Baba-Ahmed, may be challenging, particularly in ten northern states that have tended to swing for northern and Muslim candidates whereas Mr Obi is a Christian from the south.
Mr Shettima, the ruling party’s vice-presidential candidate, is also dismissive of Mr Obi’s chances in the north. The former governor of the northern state of Borno, suggests asking northerners about Mr Obi, saying they will think “he is either a musician or a footballer”. From doing just that it is clear that Mr Shettima is exaggerating. On the streets of Kano, the biggest city in the north, enormous billboards of Mr Tinubu and Mr Abubakar loom large. Mr Obi’s image is all but absent and at his Kano headquarters a broken billboard was leaning against a fence. No one but a toothy guard was present. Despite this, some polls show him running second in the north.
Even so, Kano illustrates a second risk to Mr Obi’s campaign. The Labour Party he represents will not have candidates on dozens of ballots for seats in the Senate and 130 seats in the House of Representatives. This means it will have to convince voters to break with habit and cast their votes “skirt and blouse” (backing one party for president and another for the other races). Moreover, the party has few members, no state governors and just one senator. Usually governors and senators help funnel cash (both legitimately donated and less so) to campaigns and rustle up the tens of thousands of party lackeys who go out to persuade, bully or bribe people to vote for their parties candidate.
The third risk to Mr Obi’s campaign is outright rigging. Mr Obi himself plays down such fears. Recent reforms to the vote-counting process should make ballot-stuffing harder this time. Yet Mr Baba-Ahmed is “not confident” the vote will be free and fair. Some activists share these concerns. Ayisha Osori of the Open Society Foundations, an advocacy and philanthropy group, thinks the ruling apc will try to depress turnout in areas where Mr Obi is strong. Doing so could spark conflict. “If they decide to humiliate [Obi] and have a blatantly rigged, violent election, I’m really worried about what people will do,” she says. Mr Obi himself brushes off the idea his supporters might react angrily to a defeat. He is simply focused on winning. “I’m saying I’m better, I’m saying I can do it better,” he insists. “Trust me.” Right now at least, many do.
