A former Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), Osita Okechukwu, has said that no politician currently seeking to inherit former President Muhammadu Buhari’s famed 12 million vote-bank possesses the moral character or political credentials to do so.
Mr Okechukwu said this in a statement shared with PREMIUM TIMES.
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He said he had earlier asserted this while speaking with journalists after an interdenominational church service in Abuja held in honour of the late former president.
Mr Buhari, who died in a London hospital on 13 July at the age of 82, was buried in his hometown, Daura, Katsina State, two days after.
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Since his burial, there has been debate over who among the political gladiators in the North can inherit his 12 million vote bank.
Some politicians, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Governors Rabiu Kwakwaso, Aminu Tambuwal, and Nasir El-Rufai, have been mentioned in some quarters as persons who could inherit the votes in future elections.
The proverbial 12 million vote-bank
PREMIUM TIMES Mr Buhari, a former military head of state and two-time democratically elected president, had a cult-like following, particularly in the North-west and North-east.
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When he ran for president for the first time in 2003 on the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) platform, he polled 12.7 million votes but lost to President Olusegun Obasanjo.
In 2007, he contested under the same party and got 6.6 million votes. Mr Buhari and some of his political associates floated the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), under which he contested again in 2011 but garnered 12.2 million votes. In 2015, when he ran on the platform of the newly merged APC, the late president scored 12.8 million votes, thus defeating the incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan.
No moral compass
Without referring to any politician, Mr Okechukwu, a former political ally of Mr Buhari, said he could hardly see anyone stepping into the late Nigerian leader’s shoes and inheriting the votes.
“With all due respect to those eyeing Buhari’s political base, none of them has the character strength, integrity, or moral compass the former president embodied.
“Buhari’s 12 million vote-bank is not only about numbers. It was built on over five decades of public service marked by discipline, transparency, and uncommon integrity,” he said.
Mr Okechukwu, a pioneer member of the CPC, said the politicians jostling to inherit the vote bank never campaigned in the past without engaging in vote-buying or facing down corruption like the late president did.
“The masses know the difference,” he said. “They remember how some of these same actors oversaw the dubious privatisation of state-owned enterprises like NEPA, Ajaokuta Steel, and the Aluminium Smelter Company, without delivering tangible results.”
He added that the attempts by some politicians, especially those in the opposition African Democratic Congress (ADC), to tap into Mr Buhari’s northern support base are futile.
“Flying the northern card is a mirage,” he added, noting that the northern electorate is among the most sophisticated in Nigeria.
“They voted for MKO Abiola in 1993 and gave more votes to Bola Tinubu in 2023 than voters in the South,” he said.
The former VON DG stated that any politician banking on ethnic sentiment to harvest Mr Buhari’s vote bank is misguided and risks dividing the country and undermining the informal zoning convention that has helped stabilise Nigeria’s democracy.
Buhari’s political legacy
Mr Okechukwu recalled that Mr Buhari held several high-level positions between 1975 and 2023, including governor of the defunct North-Eastern State, federal commissioner of petroleum resources, chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), and both military and civilian Head of State.
READ ALSO: Senate urges FG to immortalise Buhari with national monument
He noted that the late president’s moral compass was primarily shaped by the late Aminu Kano’s Talakawa (pro-poor) political ideology, to which no current aspirant has demonstrated allegiance.
“None of these people has the discipline or integrity of Buhari. That’s why their efforts to hijack the legacy of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and lure its members into the ADC collapsed — thanks to resistance by former Governors Tanko Al-Makura and Aminu Masari,” he said.
Call for restraint
Mr Okechukwu warned against any attempt to disrupt the North-South power rotation arrangement, which he described as “one of the guardrails of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic and a crucial thread holding the nation together.”
He urged politicians to respect the convention of equity, justice, and fairness and avoid recklessly pursuing political capital from Buhari’s legacy.
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