IN just a matter of three days the long anticipated 2015 elections would have been under way. What took several years of arduous planning and billions of tax payers’ money that both the government and the election planners may never be able to account for would have come. Six weeks ago Nigerians felt ready for the elections before top members of the Jonathan administration engineered a shift in the electoral date.
That shift has afforded the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) time to put its house in order and better prepare for the task before it. The delay allowed for wider distribution of the Permanent Voters’ Cards and test running of the contentious card readers.
But more than all of this, the shift in date was a convenient excuse for the Peoples Democratic Party to catch its breath and make desperate plans to forestall a defeat for which it seemed headed had the election gone ahead as planned on February 14. The PDP must by now be congratulating itself for pulling off such a masterstroke decision that has brought it back into electoral reckoning. But whether this is sufficient to ensure victory is something we must all wait to see until the last ballot is cast on Saturday, 28 March.
The decision Nigerians are called upon to make on Saturday is certainly a hard one. It is, however, a decision most probably made many weeks if not months ago. While the six weeks delay may have worked eminently in favour of the PDP, far more than anything the All Progressives Party could hope to gain from it, it is doubtful if it is enough to chip off the substantial part of the apparent lead enjoyed by the APC.
For most of what the PDP has done in the last six weeks amounted to no more than a practical demonstration of the huge war chest it controls by way of hundreds of billions of Naira at its disposal, slush funds it deployed to win the support of already impoverished citizens reduced to subjects by their poverty. Otherwise, not much damage could have been done by the documentaries made on Muhammadu Buhari or, more notably, Bola Tinubu.
While the Buhari documentary was in many instances a poor attempt at working to an answer, manipulating facts to suit premeditated objectives, the Tinubu documentary, although far more on point, was directed at a well-heeled financier/king maker that is not standing in the election. Either way, such attempt at speaking to the intellectual side of the Nigerian voter would have been very effective among a more sophisticated electorate- highly literate, educated and mobilised.
Not one whose reality is determined by the immediate pursuits of non-existent jobs, food, clothing and housing- in short by the material poverty of its existence, poverty the Jonathan administration has on the one hand found no way to ameliorate, and on the other hand been responsible for. The Nigerian voting ethic is governed by the guts, by how well the material needs of voters are met. Ours is politics of the belly now called stomach infrastructure. For the most part of the Jonathan years, the ability of Nigerians to meet their material needs has been seriously downgraded. Which is why this administration’s fate might have been sealed long before now.
But this very fact, that is the pauperisation of the people, may ironically account for whatever gains and inroads the PDP may have made among the voting population whose poverty, like a vicious cycle, has made them more vulnerable to the kind of financial bombardment orchestrated by the PDP in the last few weeks.
Both the poor and the very wealthy across the country have in this instance been laid open to the attack and have been falling all over themselves (as we’ve seen among double-speaking Yoruba leaders and nationalists) to claim their share of the ‘free’ money the PDP (and the APC) has been distributing. Otherwise, Nigeria’s current ruling party is as good as gone. The party or, better put, its flag bearer’s goodwill with the Nigerian people has since gone into overdraft.
Goodluck Jonathan by virtue of his failure to rise to the demands of leadership, surrendering the authority vested in him by the Nigerian people to corrupt and rapacious subordinates, has long lost the respect of many Nigerians.
In spite of the efforts he has put into fighting the insurgents in the north and rolling back the gains they have made in the last five years in just six weeks, there is no certainty that things would change if he is given another chance. Had he done the right thing at the right time there would have been no question about his staying on in office.
But this is cold comfort to Nigerians as their only credible alternative, Mohammadu Buhari, is surrounded by persons whose morality reminds one of a pigsty.
It stinks. At a fundamental level there is very little or nothing to choose between the PDP and the APC. What the PDP is doing at the centre the APC governors are doing in the states they control. Many of them have alienated the electorate who they dumped after using them to gain or return to office.
They owe their workers several months salaries, are insensitive to the needs of the electorate, and have roundly failed and betrayed the people in the same way that the PDP governors and the president have betrayed Nigerians.
Even though General Mohammadu Buhari has done quite a bit to shore up his national and democratic credentials, away from the image of a religious bigot/autocrat, and has by personal example shown he is not particularly moved by material acquisition, he is surrounded by persons of questionable means. All of which makes the decision Nigerians must make even more difficult. Thus both leading presidential candidates in Saturday’s election are snared by their surroundings.
But while Goodluck Jonathan has all but capitulated to the sharks around him and appears reconciled to their predatory logic, running and hunting with them as with a dog or a fox, Mohammadu Buhari seems capable of being his own man.
It is for this reason that he may prove the leader Nigeria needs for now. But far more importantly, it will be in the long time interest of Nigeria’s democracy for the PDP to lose this election for beyond its sense of entitlement that has gone beyond toleration, its defeat would be proof that sovereignty resides still with the people and that the purpose and goal of public office is service and not power. It is a lesson Nigeria needs now more than ever. But wherever the pendulum swings, whoever emerges victorious in the election, let peace reign.
In just a matter of three days the long anticipated 2015 elections would have been under way. What took several years of arduous planning and billions of tax payers’ money that both the government and the election planners may never be able to account for would have come. Six weeks ago Nigerians felt ready for the elections before top members of the Jonathan administration engineered a shift in the electoral date.
That shift has afforded the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) time to put its house in order and better prepare for the task before it. The delay allowed for wider distribution of the Permanent Voters’ Card and test running of the contentious card readers. But more than all of this, the shift in date was a convenient excuse for the Peoples Democratic Party to catch its breath and make desperate plans to forestall a defeat for which it seemed headed had the election gone ahead as planned on February 14.
The PDP must by now be congratulating itself for pulling off such a masterstroke decision that has brought it back into electoral reckoning. But whether this is sufficient to ensure victory is something we must all wait to see until the last ballot is cast on Saturday, 28 March.
The decision Nigerians are called upon to make on Saturday is certainly a hard one. It is, however, a decision most probably made many weeks if not months ago. While the six weeks delay may have worked eminently in favour of the PDP, far more than anything the All Progressives Party could hope to gain from it, it is doubtful if it is enough to chip off the substantial part of the apparent lead enjoyed by the APC.
For most of what the PDP has done in the last six weeks amounted to no more than a practical demonstration of the huge war chest it controls by way of hundreds of billions of Naira at its disposal, slush funds it deployed to win the support of already impoverished citizens reduced to subjects by their poverty. Otherwise, not much damage could have been done by the documentaries made on Muhammadu Buhari or, more notably, Bola Tinubu.
While the Buhari documentary was in many instances a poor attempt at working to an answer, manipulating facts to suit premeditated objectives, the Tinubu documentary, although far more on point, was directed at a well-heeled financier/king maker that is not standing in the election. Either way, such attempt at speaking to the intellectual side of the Nigerian voter would have been very effective among a more sophisticated electorate- highly literate, educated and mobilised.
Not one whose reality is determined by the immediate pursuits of non-existent jobs, food, clothing and housing- in short by the material poverty of its existence, poverty the Jonathan administration has on the one hand found no way to ameliorate, and on the other hand been responsible for. The Nigerian voting ethic is governed by the guts, by how well the material needs of voters are met. Ours is politics of the belly now called stomach infrastructure. For the most part of the Jonathan years, the ability of Nigerians to meet their material needs has been seriously downgraded. Which is why this administration’s fate might have been sealed long before now.
But this very fact, that is the pauperisation of the people, may ironically account for whatever gains and inroads the PDP may have made among the voting population whose poverty, like a vicious cycle, has made them more vulnerable to the kind of financial bombardment orchestrated by the PDP in the last few weeks.
Both the poor and the very wealthy across the country have in this instance been laid open to the attack and have been falling all over themselves (as we’ve seen among double-speaking Yoruba leaders and nationalists) to claim their share of the ‘free’ money the PDP (and the APC) has been distributing. Otherwise, Nigeria’s current ruling party is as good as gone. The party or, better put, its flag bearer’s goodwill with the Nigerian people has since gone into overdraft.
Goodluck Jonathan by virtue of his failure to rise to the demands of leadership, surrendering the authority vested in him by the Nigerian people to corrupt and rapacious subordinates, has long lost the respect of many Nigerians. In spite of the efforts he has put into fighting the insurgents in the north and rolling back the gains they have made in the last five years in just six weeks, there is no certainty that things would change if he is given another chance. Had he done the right thing at the right time there would have been no question about his staying on in office.
But this is cold comfort to Nigerians as their only credible alternative , Mohammadu Buhari, is surrounded by persons whose morality reminds one of a pigsty. It stinks. At a fundamental level there is very little or nothing to choose between the PDP and the APC. What the PDP is doing at the centre the APC governors are doing in the states they control. Many of them have alienated the electorate who they dumped after using them to gain or return to office.
They owe their workers several months salaries, are insensitive to the needs of the electorate, and have roundly failed and betrayed the people in the same way that the PDP governors and the president have betrayed Nigerians.
Even though General Mohammadu Buhari has done quite a bit to shore up his national and democratic credentials, away from the image of a religious bigot/autocrat, and has by personal example shown he is not particularly moved by material acquisition, he is surrounded by persons of questionable means. All of which makes the decision Nigerians must make even more difficult. Thus both leading presidential candidates in Saturday’s election are snared by their surroundings.
But while Goodluck Jonathan has all but capitulated to the sharks around him and appears reconciled to their predatory logic, running and hunting with them as with a dog or a fox, Mohammadu Buhari seems capable of being his own man.
It is for this reason that he may prove the leader Nigeria needs for now. But far more importantly, it will be in the long time interest of Nigeria’s democracy for the PDP to lose this election for beyond its sense of entitlement that has gone beyond toleration, its defeat would be proof that sovereignty resides still with the people and that the purpose and goal of public office is service and not power. It is a lesson Nigeria needs now more than ever. But wherever the pendulum swings, whoever emerges victorious in the election, let peace reign.
VANGUARD
END
Be the first to comment