By Mideno Bayagbon

This Saturday Nigerians will be trooping to the polls to elect the one, they think, should succeed President Muhammadu Buhari as President. After that, it is going to be a nail biting experience, as they wait for the announcement of who has emerged as President between Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, Mr Peter Obi of Labour Party and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC. It is a three horse race with an appendage. NNPP’s Rabiu Kwankwaso would have played a significant role had he teamed up with any of the three top contenders. But ego and the undying, but misplaced, belief by politicians that they will eventually be victorious even in the face of glaring defeat, is set to make this election a cliffhanger.

But I have my guess how the game will eventually pan out and a winner emerge. It will be a mixture of guesswork and facts on the ground. As we all know, though politics pretends to be a branch of science, human behaviour in any given situation is usually, as the economists would say, a game of, on the one hand or the other. It rests on many strands, human variables which can most times defy predictions.

So here is what I think will happen. It might be very difficult for a winner to emerge on the first ballot this Saturday. There is likely to be a run-off, like many including myself, have said severally. But by the standing of the three major contenders, as at today, Atiku Abubakar is definitely not in the position he would have been had Peter Obi not emerged to shake the tables, so badly. Were the contest to be between Atiku and Tinubu, PDP versus APC alone, given so many variables which we would come to soon, it would have been a clear walk in the park for the PDP candidate. And this is why: most Nigerians are today disgruntled and are vengefully baying for blood, having been impoverished by the grossly incompetent, clannish, and better forgotten government of Major General Muhammadu Buhari. The economy is in ruins. Poverty walks on skeletal feet. Despair rules the affairs of the land.

Add to this the many observable failings of the candidate of the APC, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Add to that the fact that there is an ongoing war currently leading into the elections in the APC. For most Nigerians, Tinubu, who could have been considered a very good candidate, five, ten years ago is today a shadow of himself. Frail, stuttering, forgetful and unable to hold an intelligent conversation for two minutes without major gaffes, Nigerians shudder to think that they will have an evidently unwell President succeed the outgoing one who spent the last eight years, junketing from one hospital to the other in Europe, especially, the United Kingdom.

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