Had Donald Duke contested the presidency on a credible platform to succeed Obasanjo, he might have left a mark on the race even without winning it. That, I think, is more than can be said for most of those who have made a bid for Aso Rock.Duke was young, had the telegenic thing going for him and there was, for a while, a sense, however overstated in retrospect, that he was some apostle of new thinking. As governor, his government’s focus on agriculture and tourism, which brought us the vaunted pineapple plantations, a revamped Obudu Cattle Ranch, Calabar Carnival and the grand, ultimately doomed Tinapa, gave that impression a shape people could point to.To see him running now is almost 20 years late and on an engine that is more Keke NAPEP than Harley-Davidson. There is something faintly poignant about watching a man attempt a comeback on the strength of a reputation that peaked long before BlackBerry Messenger.Duke remains, I concede, a nice-looking man with steeze. But good looks and steeze left off the political showroom floor for two decades are not a currency easy to trade in. Duke has been off that floor for so long that most of the electorate would need a citation to place him. Whatever soundness there is in what he says at interviews or from the podium will get undermined almost immediately, at least among those old enough to remember him, by the snow-white elephant Tinapa became. Tinapa, well-intentioned, sits out there in Calabar as a giant middle finger to the idea that he was a clear-thinking person.Then there is the small matter of his party. The PRP is less a political platform than a plank floating hopefully in a very large ocean. It’d take being incurably drunk on hope to mistake it for a vehicle capable of reaching beyond the TV studios, let alone Aso Rock.The brutal truth (and Nigerian politics rarely offers anything gentler) is that Duke is returning to a landscape that has packed up and moved on. I suspect that by 2027, 80 per cent of the people who actually turn out to vote will either have foggy recollection of him or any memory of him whatsoever.That implies he is not really running for president. At least, not yet. He is first attempting the far harder job of introducing and reintroducing himself to an electorate that does not know him or has forgotten him. His chances of pulling that off before polling day are not much brighter than mine in a race against elite-level sprinter. To believe he can win takes Olympic-standard lack of self-awareness.
