Two previous attempts to transfer power to civilians, in 1993 and in 1998, both ended in fiasco, due to attempts by the ruling military clique either to remain in power or to manipulate the process. This time around, the government of General Abdussalam Abubakar has eschewed interference in the running of the country's Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Twenty nine political associations were given provisional registration to contest elections, organized as part of the transition to civil rule program. Registration was to be confirmed for any party that could win ten percent of the votes in 24 of Nigeria's 36 states and the federal capital territory, Abuja, in the December 5, 1998, local government elections.

As it happened, only the peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the All People's Party (APP) and the Alliance for Democracy (AD) were registered, (after the rules were bent by the INEC to register the AD, by reducing the share of the vote from 10 to five percent in 24 states). The PDP secured 61% of the chairman seats in nation's 774 local government areas (LGAs) and 55.8% of councillors; the APP 25.4% and 29.6%; while the AD got 13.4% and 12.7% respectively. The PDP showed itself to be strong in the South East, South, all parts of the North and a few parts of the South West; the APP showed a similar national spread of influence, if a little weaker. However the AD, the almagamation of the regional opposition groups that sprang up during the years of political crisis, remains confined to its ethnic Yoruba enclave of the South West.

In the January 9, 1999, gubernatorial polls, the PDP confirmed its strength by capturing 20 states in the North and South East; the APP got 11 with the same spread while the AD retained its six South west states. Because of long years of military misrule and large scale mismanagement of the Nigerian nation by the military and their civilian collaborators from all parts of Nigeria, the political parties are running on promises of reform; the personalities of the candidates and, where possible, their past records in government.

>The race for the presidency

There are several special features of the political landscape that may help to clarify the forces at work, leading up to selection of presidential candidates of the parties. First, there is the perceived injustice done to Chief Moshood Abiola, when General Ibrahim Babangida annuled the presidential election Abiola was on his way to winning on 12 June 1993. Abiola was a Muslim from the South West, where the Yoruba ethnic group predominate. Second, of the six heads of state that ruled Nigeria since General Obasanjo handed over power to civilians in 1979, only one, Chief Ernest Shonekan who headed a shaky transition government after the annulment, was from the South; five were from the North including the incumbent military ruler.

Perhaps because of these reasons, and the veiled threat by the largely South Western groups like NADECO and the ethnic-chauvinist Afenifere (which today make up the AD) to break away from the federation, politicians from the North in the PDP and APP seemed to have conceded the presidential ticket to the South.

Leading presidential contenders in the PDP are: from the South west, retired Olusegun Obasanjo, a former head of state; from the South East, Chief Alex Ekwueme, former deputy to President Shehu Shagari during the second Republic (1979-83) under the National Party of Nigeria (NPN); and from the North, Abubakar Rimi, the charismatic and highly articulate former governor of the commercial state of Kano, who has perhaps one of the best records of achievements of his generation. Rimi has categorically maintained that any notion of power shift is undemocratic, and would only lead to mediocrity.

In the APP, there are eight, the leading ones being: from the South west, Dr Bode Olajumoke; from North Central Dr Olasola Saraki, one time Senate majority leader of the NPN in the second republic; from the South East, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, a business tycoon with interests in many sectors of the economy and Joseph Wayas, former speaker of the National Assembly, from South South.

The AD had four: Chief Bola Ige, Chief Olu Falae, Dr Tunji Ogbeha and Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeife from the South East. Olu Falae has since been selected to be the AD's flag bearer at the party's primaries on 27 January.

An alliance of desperation?

Given PDP's profile, the APP and AD have entered into a desperate alliance. On paper they have pledged themselves to "restructuring" the Nigerin federation, whatever that may mean. They also pledge to revise the revenue allocation formula, to weaken the central government by giving the states more resources. But it is plain that their aim is simply to forestall an Obasanjo presidency or prevent a PDP victory. This return to the ugly politics of "power at all cost", is a sign that Nigerian politicians have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing in all the years of military rule. Or they have forgotten all they learnt with the certainty that power is now within their grasp. Leaders of the two parties had contemplated forming a single party, but the ethnic Yoruba broke away to form the AD, citing incompatibility of ideas. Their return together underlines the primacy of self-interest in Nigerian politics. The AD (a rump of the former Yoruba Unity Party of Nigeria during the second Republic), have not forgiven Obasanjo for handing over to Shagari, the winner of the 1979 election, instead of their leader, Obafemi Awolowo, who placed second, and had contested the results in the courts and lost.

INEC, feeling betrayed by the APP/AD alliance, said the two parties cannot field a single candidate. The only way they could do it, according to INEC, was for one party to be subsumed by the other. As it now stands, the APP has by far a more national acceptance of the two, and the AD may well be between a rock and a hard place: if it is subsumed under the APP, its chieftains are back where they started, bedfellows with the the very people they spent all their year in the political wilderness reviling. If they insist on providing the presidential candidate, and the APP is subsumed under the AD - a case of the river swallowing the sea - the alliance could fail woefully as protest votes from the APP rank and file [that already accuse Mahmud Waziri, their chairman of selling their interests by entering into the alliance without any consultation] will bring about the PDP victory the alliance was meant to prevent.

At the onset General Obasanjo's candidacy in the PDP was assumed to be a forgone conclusion. But the dominance of the AD in the South West which ensured that the PDP lost in his ward, local council and state of Ogun dealt the first blow to his bid, even though no non-Yoruba party ever scored higher than the PDP in any election in the region, indicating that his participation has made an impact. Second, his backtracking on accepting financial support from the likes of retired General Babangida, after initially pledging to donate $2.4m to the party weakened his campaign machinery compared to other candidates who have massive war chests. Third, his principled refusal to pledge unalloyed loyalty to and be a poodle of a national cabal of the old NPN, as a condition for their starategic support, has resulted in the desertion of his camp by these experienced and well connected old-timers.

The fact that the South East massively supported the PDP and Alex Ekueme's antecedents in the NPN, plus a wel1 funded campaign has in the last few weeks raised the spectre of a straight fight between the two Southern candidates. However against Obasanjo's national acceptance and his principled opposition to corruption, Ekueme has, in sharp contrast, a tainted past, his lack of assertiveness in the face of corruption and a well known agenda to create regional armies out of the Nigeria army, a recipe for a Yugoslavia style break up of Nigeria. This will of course be a re-run of the ill fated Biafra. This last reason is raising concerns within the newbreed young politicians in the North and the higher echelons of the army and may well be his achilles heel. Northerners who kick against "annulling" the democratic majority of their region also point to Cameroun as an object lesson in naivete: late Ahmadu Ahidjo was such a nationalist he handed over power to a Southerner, who went on to exclude other Southern tribes and especially the North from political power eversince.

In case the alliance of the AD and APP fails to work out, there are interesting possibilities: an Olusola Saraki / Iwanyawu ticket or Joseph Wayas / Umaru Shinkafi ticket could sweep the polls if the South West votes for an AD candidate, where Ekueme to carry the party flag for the PDP instead of Obasanjo and the Southern minority who have the highest record of voter turn out to support the APP. Whatever happens, 27 February is Nigeria's date with destiny.

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