WE are now at a point when any chief tenant at the Aso Rock Villa is considered better than its current occupant, President Goodluck Jonathan. It is the All Progressives Congress (APC) that has successfully moved us to this point. Systematically, the party has come from fragments that it was at the beginning of this dispensation, into a unified formidable force capable of terminating PDP’s hegemonic hold on governance as we approach the finishing line.
Even when everybody had expected the APC to disintegrate back to its original elements, it doggedly weathered through. The party’s national convention to elect national officers came and passed and the party still stood gidigba. The arising injuries were nursed and healed in record-time. The primary to elect the party presidential flag bearer also came and passed without life threatening accidents. Now, the APC has gone through the crucible eminently fired and fine-tuned to do battle with the PDP in precisely 48 days, all things being equal.
By the Grace God, all things shall remain equal in spite of Boko Haram. From the way things are going, what may not remain equal is the PDP. There are expectations spurred by anger against the status quo. People are just angry and want something to happen anyhow. Or more appropriately, the opposition APC has managed to make everybody to be angry with the PDP and President Jonathan. The party has created a breath-taking political melodrama in which it presents itself as the haunted hero and the PDP, the villain. And driven by self-righteousness, APC is now on a mission to dispatch the villain and rescue the stretch of humanity called Nigeria from needless destruction.
General Muhammadu Buhari is the hero in the unfolding melodrama. He is the same man who, 30 years ago, stormed the democratic centre stage, chased all the characters to the wings, recreated the set and began his own performance as a military dictator. He is also the man, who has been severally quoted as expressing divisive ethno-religious sentiments that profile him more as a jihadist than as a nationalist or statesman. He is the man, who cannot be associated with any significant endeavour at self-development or national bridge building since his own illegal show was aborted by yet another set of usurpers less than two years after he had begun performance.
But the party is not saying these things because of election and its desire to win. In Nigeria, electoral outings are so much like theatre performances where natural endowments or fault lines may not make or mar the actor. What matters is the ability of an actor/actress to offer the best interpretation of the script on stage and good theatre directors do not have to look beyond this in creating their cast list. Among the lot that expressed interest to bear the APC flag, General Buhari, in the estimation of the APC, is most primed to deliver the best performance come February 14, 2015. What is ahead is a cut-throat competition for a big prize and the party needs to bring on board he that fits the bill.
For this purpose, the man has been rebranded in act and speech to look and sound better than his real self. I hear the General quotes more from the Bible than he does from the Quran these days. He now sees the entire country as a constituency. It is a winning formula. Even his sartorial turnout has been significantly reworked to meet the exigencies of the time. He now spices his characteristic Hausa/Fulani caftans and babariga with well-tailored suits.
This is exactly how to prepare for and win a presidential election. The PDP has got a lot to learn from the APC in this regard. The superb preparations of the APC are further underscored by the curious decision of the PDP to do nothing meaningful even in the face of threat. The APC’s mobilisation is total. In a way that is difficult to explain, the party has successfully co-opted the Nigerian media into its publicity directorate.
These days, every newspaper columnist has good reason to dress-up Buhari in beautiful masks. They present him as the Messiah that will show the way out of the wilderness that the PDP has taken Nigerians. In all instances, there is a strong undertone warning Nigerians to avoid behaving like the Jews who could not recognize their own Messiah when he came and then went ahead to murder him. Enough to say the new Buhari that I have been talking about is largely a creation of the Nigeria media.
Meanwhile, Buhari must not be murdered. He should be given a chance to manifest his agenda which so far, so good, does not look as complex as others before him. It is not in seven parts as Yar ‘Adua’s neither is it so charged with energy as to transform everything on impact. Rather, the man has been singing a simple mission song of stamping out corruption and impunity, which the PDP controlled Federal Government has not been able to do in almost 16 years.
He has not said anything more actually. This automatically streamlines the great issues of the day into one purpose — an epic battle against corruption. Buhari is beginning very well, if you ask me. A good dance is perceived from the drumbeats even at the outskirts of the town. For instance, while President Jonathan got a handful monied Nigerians to dole out a whooping N26 billion towards his re-election bid in 2015, Buhari has come out differently to place the business of his fourth attempt at the presidency in the hands of ordinary Nigerians.
Reports last week said he had raked in N54 million from, perhaps, 54 million Nigerians who might have donated one naira each to the Buhari Campaign Fund. This is the way to demonstrate transparency and make every Nigerian to buy into the Buhari Project as a stakeholder even as he tries to distance himself from filthy rich men and women and remain within his constituency of poor people.
It is not as if there are no rich people around Buhari; there are, but they are clean rich men and women who worked very hard to make their money. The rich men - including Senator Bola Tinubu – around Buhari are proven industrialists who make good money from their sweat and legitimate investments. And so, Buhari is not encumbered like President Jonathan. His campaign is not being run on IOUs issued by corrupt political contractors who shall surely insist on prompt retirement (with high premium) at the appointed time.
If by the Grace of God Buhari becomes President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces come May 29, 2015, he shall strike at all quarters with his two eyes closed. Since the rich people around him are legitimate earners of their stupendous income, he will not be constrained fighting corruption and the Boko Haram insurgency. None of his key men will be injured and like a gallant Elizabethan knight on a horseback, he would charge through all barricades to chart a new path for the rapid development of the country.
If I were Jonathan, I would return those billions to their filthy donors and adopt the Buhari style. When few people sponsor democracy as the PDP is doing, the concept changes character and meaning. It is no longer government of the people by the people and for the people; it becomes something midway between plutocracy (or even kleptocracy) and oligarchy.
Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State and director general of the Buhari Campaign organisation has boasted that the Buhari’s fourth IPO (Initial Public Offer) will be oversubscribed by Nigerians this time around. He added that the shares are constructed in a manner to democratise the equity distribution across board. None is envisaged to emerge as a preferential or majority shareholder. It is going to be like an Orwellian kind of Animal Farm where equality shall rule supreme until, perhaps, further notice.
Seriously, nobody expects Nigerians to ignore this promise of a political Eldorado by Buhari and the APC and stay with President Jonathan and his party. And why should Nigerians even bother about Jonathan and the PDP? After all, till date, they have not been able to successfully tell Nigerians that the known devil some people say they are, is a world better than the unseen angel.
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