The coalition crumbled after only one month due to a catalogue of poor decision making that could have been avoided.
When 18 presidential aspirants got together in July 2018 and resolved to get behind one consensus candidate to contest against President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 presidential election, there was a whole lot of reasons to be hopeful.
The group, named Presidential Aspirants Coming Together (PACT), was made up of some of the most prominent new age politicians taking a stab at the presidency.
Former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Kingsley Moghalu, leadership expert and business consultant, Fela Durotoye, and Sahara Reporters publisher, Omoyele Sowore, were the three most recognisable members of the group who were seen in a video vowing to help one another in the quest to forge a new Nigeria.
Since aspirants have started expressing their intentions to run against the current president next year, many Nigerians have suggested that the politically-inexperienced bunch will have a chance if they pool their resources together instead of adopting a scattergun approach. When PACT surfaced, many were confident that maybe they could pull it off if their steps were ordered and precise.
One month after PACT's first meeting, that hope appears to be dashed and the coalition has turned out to be one of the biggest jokes in Nigerian politics.
On August 30, 2018, Durotoye was elected the consensus candidate by other PACT participants, an event that has torn the group apart and left it with just half of the people it started with.
The new revelations that have surfaced after the group's unraveling have been nothing short of embarrassing for a coalition that was supposed to set the course for the future of the country's politics.
Early grumblings
Before the August election, there had been unconfirmed reports that Sowore had withdrawn from the coalition.
After Durotoye won last week, Sowore disclosed in a video broadcast that he never signed up with the group from the beginning, a claim that has been corroborated by Tope Fasua, another aspirant that was involved with PACT.
Noteworthy among his objections to PACT was the fact that the aspirants themselves were going to be the ones to vote for the consensus candidate even when they could have found a way to invest that mandate in the Nigerian people.
Sowore and a couple of others had also suggested that all the aspirants involved in the coalition should first win their party's ticket before they can decide on a consensus candidate, another suggestion that was shot down.
When the coalition met for its election last week, four other people had already withdrawn and that left only 13 participants. By the time the election was over, there were only nine left.
Durotoye's crown is a poisoned chalice
Durotoye's victory made waves on social media last week because many expressed shock and disappointment at his emergence over Moghalu who had been favoured to be the victor.
After tying on 2 votes in the first round of voting with Moghalu and Mathias Tsado, Durotoye won the second round with four votes to Moghalu's three.
Even though many attempted to fault the process that led to his victory as tainted by fraud, it was adjudged to have been free, fair, and credible according to observers including former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili.
The poll might have been free, fair, and credible, but it stands out mostly for being ridiculously naive in the realm of politics.
For a host of reasons:
The participants
The original pool of participants of PACT belonged to the Young Progressive Party (YPP), Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party (ANRP), Alliance for a New Nigeria (ANN), People's Democratic Party (PDP) and a host of other barely-known parties.
The list of original participants includes: Durotoye, Moghalu, Sowore, Tsado, Fasua, Thomas-Wilson Ikubese, Ahmed Buhari, Elishama Ideh, and Sina Fagbenro-Byron.
Others are Eragbe Anslem, Jaye Gaskia, Victor Ani-Laju, Alistair Soyode, Godstime Sidney Iroabuchi, Clement Jimbo, Ayodele Favor Oluwamuyiwa, Dare Fagbemi and Nicholas Felix.
Outside of Moghalu, Sowore, and Durotoye, many of these other aspirants remain unknown even to the online community of Nigerians that seem to be the only demographic that pays attention to the new crop of politicians.
Many of them, also, are yet to win the presidential ticket of their parties, and have no good chance of even pulling it off.
These people don't have quite the pull to even be valuable enough to emerge a consensus candidate to take on the task set for the group, and this made some of the participants less valuable than others and with less to lose by virtue od participation.
For example, Ahmed Buhari, a participant that has also dropped out, is a member of the PDP hoping to somehow snatch the party's ticket from the reach of political juggernauts like Atiku Abubakar, Bukola Saraki, Rabiu Kwankwaso, Aminu Tambuwal, Ibrahim Dankwambo, because...reasons.
Not only is it the most unlikely thing to happen, his party, the PDP, is already part of the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP), a union of 39 parties committed to also presenting a consensus candidate for the same election.
Since he has no political structure or even any momentum for next year's election, not only did this make Ahmed Buhari an unimportant addition to the coalition, he was harmful to it. And there are a few others like him who signed up to PACT.
PACT is devoid of any party backing
One other thing that makes PACT a ridiculous gathering of political newbies is the fact that they entered the coalition with no committments from their parties.
For example, after Durotoye won the election last week, his party, ANN, was forced to issue a statement distancing itself from PACT.
"We hereby inform our teeming members, supporters and other Nigerians, that ANN is yet to be in any consensus or alliance talk with any political party or group of persons," read a statement by the party's National Publicity Secretary, Akinloye Oyeniyi.
This statement already puts Durotoye in a precarious position as there are already rumblings that he might not even be in the best position to win his party's ticket, especially after boycotting its recent congress.
The fact that commitments made by aspirants to PACT had no backing, whatsoever, from their parties should have been a red flag to anyone with the least bit of political acumen.
What would be Durotoye's move if he loses his party's ticket at a later date? Why would parties of the losers back the winner of a PACT they never signed up for? And more importantly, when those parties seek alternative candidates, from where will these aspirants who no one has heard of, and probably will not remember their names for more than a week, find the level of support and organisation to contribute meaningfully to the ambition of the consensus candidate?
This PACT was set up to fail, and it's no surprise that it has stumbled at its very first major hurdle.
What was the rush?
More than anything, the decision to conduct an election just a month after the first meeting is such a puzzling one that beggars belief.
According to an insider account by Tope Fasua of the ANRP, who pulled out of PACT shortly after the first meeting, there was an apparent desire by the chief drivers of the coalition to avoid an open debate and an inexplicable urge to push through very quickly.
Considering that more than half of PACTers are massively unknown and have what many refer to as absolutely no electoral value, why did the election have to happen so fast?
According to the official timetable of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), party primaries for the election won't end until October 7, 2018.
This gives the coalition at least one full month to gather momentum and make good decisions that could at least put PACT in good stead to understand the task ahead. Instead, the coalition literally put the cart before the horse.
Biggest losers
The biggest loser from this PACT episode has to be Moghalu, and not only because he lost to Durotoye, who many feel he easily outshines, but because of the way he's received the defeat by immediately dropping out of the coalition and questioning the process even though he was well aware of what it was and signed a memo to that effect.
What's astounded many is that Moghalu didn't seem to need the coalition as he's been doing fine on his own, trravelling the country and gaining grounds and momentum more than any of the other participants, even more than many combined. The fact that he was ever part of this PACT has left many confused about his self-publicised excellent decision-making.
Most crucially, it's also left people questioning his integrity with the manner he's disowned PACT only after losing to Durotoye.
While he's expected to shake off the stench of this episode, eventually, Durotoye might still come off the worst when he contests his party's primary election.
If he loses the party's ticket, he ends up with all the eggs squarely on his face. If he does win it, as he expects to, he has a weak PACT to prop him up against an opposition that is cut-throat in the business of politics. You only have to take a look at the list of people left in the coalition.
The trajectory of PACT, from its participants to its processes and its disintegration, has shown everyone involved to be naive players who are unprepared to make it in the big bad world of Nigerian politics.
PACT's catalogue of poor decision making is so amateurish you don't even expect to see such being made in the politics of tertiary institutions' student unions.
The only silver lining of this entire episode is that it will be a learning curve for everyone involved and they can make better decisions from here.
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