 Published
March 2nd, 2011
With the
conclusion of the party primaries in which the presidential
candidates of the various political parties were either
elected or adopted as “consensus candidates” as the case may
be, and with elections barely two months away in April, it
doesn’t require much political wisdom to expect that the
candidates would hit the ground running in their
electioneering campaigns to sell themselves and their
programs to the electorate. After all, elections are all
about the candidates and their development programs in
relation to the others.
Thus it is
not enough to develop blueprints and go to sleep on them.
The blueprints must be presented and sold to the electorate
because competition is the operative word in a multi-party
democracy. And electioneering campaigns are the most viable
and time honored means by which candidates interact with the
electorate which thus affords the electorate the opportunity
to assess the competence and suitability of the candidate
and his development blueprint for the particular office he’s
competing for while at the same time affording the candidate
the chance to market himself and his programs to the
electorate.
It’s a
symbiotic relationship and a two-way traffic that benefits
both parties to the bargain. And that’s why campaign rallies
have stood the test of time in all democracies and no
democracy can do without them least of all the candidates
themselves. Traditionally, campaigns involve physical
presence of the candidate at rallies where he is seen and
heard and interacted with in flesh and blood by the people.
And while modern multi-media props have readily come in aid
of political campaign operations as adjuncts, there is as
yet no diminution in the value of the traditional form of
campaign rallies which remains the hallmark of political
campaigns regardless of the several intrusions of
modernity.
However,
while political rallies are undoubtedly the lifeblood of
electioneering they are understandably very expensive and
time consuming unlike the modern multi-media intrusions.
While, for example, a candidate could toss a 10-second
television sound bite or one-page newspaper ad at the
electorate while he goes to bed, a campaign rally requires
not only his physical presence but huge resources and
logistics to put together, and the payoffs could be well
worth it in the end. There is no question that interacting
with the electorate at a personal level in flesh and blood
has huge benefits for the candidates rather than some cold,
impersonal television, internet or newspapers ads arrogantly
and impudently tossed at them with reckless abandon. There
is nothing more galling to the electorate than absentee
candidates who would hide under television and newspaper ads
to reach the people with his message. It is disrespectful
and impolitic on the part of the candidate to refuse to
climb down from his Olympian heights to meet with the people
whose votes he so badly needs to get him office desired.
In a country as big as Nigeria it would undoubtedly take an enormous amount of time and both physical and mental resources from the candidates and their parties to cover the entire field if they want to do serious campaigns to sell their candidacies to the hard-to-sell, hard-to-please, skeptical Nigerian electorate, which had been let down time and again with unfulfilled, sugar coated promises of el dorado by unconscionable politicians out to feather their own nests. And that alone would advise the candidates and their respective parties to hit the ground running as soon as the candidates emerged from their nominal conventions without wasting time. By way of comparison, it takes candidates between 3-4 months in the United States to do the job from the time of their nominations depending, of course, on their party primaries, which could be drawn out like it happened between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton where Obama eventually prevailed and was nominated on August 28th 2008. But he was followed closely by his opponent, US Senator McCain’s nomination by his Republican Party on September 3rd 2008 for the November 4th 2008 presidential elections at the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, even though McCain had, in point of fact, emerged earlier as winner long before Obama.
However, and
this is the point; right from the very day of their
respective nominations both candidates hit the ground
running. In fact, their presidential campaigns were launched
on the day of their nominations at their party conventions
rather seamlessly; no tarrying, no foot dragging, no
dithering. Everything seemed to have been pre-positioned to
kick off their presidential campaigns using both traditional
and modern tools; including but not limited to rallies,
public debates, television appearances, talk shows,
interviews, public lectures, political ads, internet
solicitation and, of course, the “ground game” itself, with
“mop up operations” carried out through phone banks,
mailings and knocking on doors by party foot soldiers. Yep!
It’s all in the ground game!
The whole
world watched how this played out live. While candidate
Obama was drawing huge crowds at rallies all across the
country, McCain, at 72, threw himself into the ring
crisscrossing the nation with his, you guessed right,
“Straight Talk Express” bus countering Obama’s “Yes, we can”
slogan aided by his pesky Alaskan petrel and vice
presidential nominee, former Governor Sarah Palin, who was
hauling insidious and diabolical verbal missiles at Obama,
which have become her trademarks till date.
However,
while many of these tools are available in Nigeria they may
not all be applicable or utilized for the campaigns for the
simple reason that every democracy has its own democratic
culture and campaign styles. However, the traditional
political rallies, media advertisements and grassroots
mobilization are universally applicable, with huge rallies
being the foremost and the most effective of them all as
indicate earlier.
Politics is
not a game for the faint hearted. It consists of grueling
political fireworks for the gritty, sharp witted and
unflappable individuals who believe whole-heartedly in their
missions. And that should be clearly demonstrated by the
candidates themselves and never assumed by the people.
Therefore, candidates who want to be taken seriously by the
electorate should first of all demonstrate seriousness in
their campaign profiles and activities. It’s not enough to
sit in some cozy office somewhere issuing bland statements,
attacking INEC or conjuring up rigging scenarios calculated
to undermine the credibility of the results of
yet-to-be-held elections. People just can’t sit back, relax
in their couches and expect to win elections by some other
means necessary, fair or foul. That is dubious and
unconscionable. And the nation cannot afford to wait on
tardy candidates and their parties, which in and of itself
is evidence of their unpreparedness and ipso facto, lack of
capacity to lead the nation. Rather it is the other way
around. It is the candidates and their parties that wait on
the nation not the nation waiting on candidates to get their
acts together when the whistle has been sounded by the
nation through the electoral agency, the umpire, to begin
the ground game.
Could you
imagine a referee in an athletic competition sounding the
whistle and some of the athletes complaining that they are
not ready to go and expect the referee and the spectators to
wait on them, and if they refuse to do so turn around to
complain of being rigged out of victory and head to court to
litigate their claims? It’s never done. But that precisely
is what has been happening in Nigeria where opposition
candidates wait on the ruling party to campaign and win
elections only for them to head to court to complain of
rigging and in some cases have actually succeeded in
hoodwinking the nation with their propaganda.
It’s perhaps
only in Nigeria that these things happen where the courts
have become the electoral umpires themselves. The fact of
the matter is those who are not ready have already lost the
game even before it begins. It is as simple as that and I
can imagine that happening in Nigeria in the April
elections. While previous elections have not been perfect I
don’t belong to the clan that shouts “rigging!” from their
bedrooms when it is clear as night and day that the
opposition had been sleeping at the wheel throughout the
campaigns as it is doing today. And I don’t care how loud
they scream about rigging and all that crap. Elections are
not won by propaganda on pages of newspapers and television
screens but through hard work on the ground known in my neck
of the wood, as “the ground game”. Is the Nigerian
opposition into the ground game today? The answer is an
absolute no and in my part of the world, that spells
electoral defeat. No two ways about it!
And that
verdict shouldn’t surprise anyone who understands the
vocation of politics, which has rightly been described as
“war by other means” in which the contenders must be seen to
be competitive and well matched as though in a boxing,
wrestling, or soccer tournament. And there is even more to
it: Politics is not just a game of entertainment like
athletics, it governs our lives both as individuals, groups
and nation, without which nothing, absolutely nothing moves
in modern societies. Therefore, only the very serious who
are ready, willing and have the requisite capacities and
wherewithal to do the heavy lifting involved need show up as
presidential candidates; complete with their programs and
campaign plans to hit the ground running when the moment
finally arrives, not pretenders or those who have no
business being in the field of play in the first place. From
the nomination to the election everything should be
pre-planned by the parties rather than adopting ad-hoc
methods while limping about in crutches. And that’s why
parties and candidates have plans “As” “Bs” and “Cs” and
even “Ds” in some cases to take care of surprises or
exigencies that might be flung in their way in the course of
their preparations.
It’s
unfortunate that unlike athletics where only the very best
and proven materials are fielded, politics, particularly in
Nigeria, has become an all-comers game at the gubernatorial
and presidential levels where charlatans and Lilliputians
press their claims against real contenders and thus make a
complete mockery of the elections. What, for instance, is
Pastor Chris Okotie and his so-called “Fresh” Party doing in
presidential elections in Nigeria when they cannot even win
a local council seat anywhere in the country? What has being
a pastor of a Pentecostal church got to do with presidential
elections? Kris Okotie was there in 2007 and he couldn’t win
even the ward his church is located. He’s symptomatic of the
caricatures that have emerged from mushroom candidates and
political parties purporting to vie for the presidency of
the greatest black nation and democracy on earth.
And those
with the capacities including intellectual and physical
resources to contend in the field of play have gingerly and
earnestly stepped forward to launch their campaigns as and
when due. It is common knowledge that Mr. President and the
PDP presidential candidate, Goodluck Jonathan, has been on a
campaign binge since he won his party’s nomination. Since
then he has been traversing the length and breadth of the
country to sell his candidacy to the various regions and
peoples of the country with no let up. So far he has taken
his electioneering campaigns to the six geo-political zones
in the country and in addition to twelve states the latest
being Delta and Anambra States.
Though he’s
the president having the advantage of incumbency which the
opposition candidates are signally lacking, with
considerable goodwill throughout the land in virtually every
geo-political region of the country, he has nevertheless
thrown himself into the campaigns headlong without taking
anything for granted given the needlessly contrived
controversies surrounding his candidacy. Though he’s the
president bearing the heavy load of governance on his back,
attending to state duties, he has nevertheless found time to
traverse the length and breadth of the nation leaving
nothing to chance and interacted with Nigerians from all
walks of life at huge rallies across the land. This is what
is required not just of Jonathan but of all the presidential
candidates at this time with elections around the corner; no
more, no less, because to whom much is given much is
expected. People cannot sleep on their presidential
nominations and expect to wave some magic wand that would
take them to the presidency on the cheap.
In throwing
submitting himself to the electorate, however, Jonathan
seems to have taken advantage of an open field where there
appears to be no competition against him. He has competitors
alright, at least theoretically, but none of them is in the
field of play at the moment and he seems to be the only
player in the field with his opponent seemingly nipping at
his feet from the sidelines. For reasons that are hard to
fathom, all the opposition candidates seem to have totally
yielded the field to Jonathan who has been bestriding it
like a colossus without a fight, not even a challenge. This
must be extremely puzzling to political watchers to the
extent that Tony Anenih, former PDP BoT Chairman, PDP’s
Women leader, Hajia Inna Ciroma and the acting Chairman of
the party, Bello Haliru Mohammed, have all called out the
opposition whom they have accused of willful indolence in
separate statements.
The PDP
chieftain are pointedly accusing the opposition parties of
doing nothing to win votes and awaiting the PDP to do all
the campaigning to win the forthcoming elections and then
run to court to allege rigging and claim victory through the
back door via the judiciary. It is not altogether difficult
for one to align himself with these accusations given what
the ACN has been doing with the judiciary, which this writer
had long been crying about and the nation is now finally
coming to grips with, with the brewing Justice Ayo Salami
scandal.
Why would it
take such taunting from the PDP for the opposition
candidates and their parties to wake up from their slumber?
Why should they be begged, cajoled, persuaded or mocked
before they launch their campaigns nationally for the
presidential elections in the first place? What are they
waiting for? What else would they be doing but waiting on
the PDP to campaign and win and then head to the Court of
Appeal headed by Ayo Salami to allege irregularities and
challenge the results declared by INEC in the hope of
gaining power through the back door?
It’s an open
field out there but we see only one player in the field and
that is odd, to say the least. Why no presidential candidate
wants to contest the field with Jonathan at this time beats
me hollow. Buhari is busy manipulating gubernatorial
candidacies in his one-man CPC and having running battle
with Muhammed Abacha in Kano who had won the gubernatorial
primary but single-handedly substituted with Buhari’s
favorite who is an ex-general, compelling Abacha to go to
court to reclaim his victory and duly recognized by INEC.
But Buhari wouldn’t take it. He struck back demanding
reversal of Abacha’s recognition by INEC. When INEC would
not bulge at his dictatorial fiat he is crying foul at INEC
and accusing the body of hidden agenda.
Rather than
launch his presidential campaign with rallies as Jonathan is
currently doing Buhari is engaged in petty bickering and has
only succeeded in launching a website and asking Nigerians
to go see it and vote for him because, according to him, he
represents change. Oh, really? I thought he was part of
Nigeria’s despicable past leaderships, first as former Head
of State and secondly, as Sanni Abacha’s trusted right hand
man, who was chairman of Petroleum Trust Fund which had been
rightly accused of pursuing a sectional agenda in its
development activities that favored his part of the country
to the detriment of other parts, including Niger Delta that
produced the oil in the first place, even though one Tayo
Akpata from Niger Delta was the powerless Secretary of the
PTF.
By the way
for those too young to know this because it is a long time
ago, the PTF was Abacha’s slush fund that was outside the
nation’s budgetary surveillance and it was almost equal to
the nation’s budget. Abacha and Buhari alone had access to
the PTF operating outside the budget and answerable to none.
Like the Egyptian army, Buhari was running a parallel
administration in the PTF under Abacha and answerable to
Abacha and Abacha only. Today there are no enduring legacies
of the PTF with its constructed feeder roads washing out
with the first drops of rains especially in the southern
parts of the country. Trillions of naira that were poured
into PTF were washed away with Buhari’s makeshift earth
roads and clinics executed in the name of development. Yet
Buhari fancies himself incorruptible and the change
candidate in Nigeria. He is entitled to his delusions and
Nigerians are entitled to their opinions of him as well. One
who could substitute a winning candidate with a losing
candidate in a party primary cannot claim to be
incorruptible. And one who managed trillions of naira in an
intervention agency as the PTF with nothing to show for it
but earth roads and makeshift clinics cannot claim
incorruptibility or competence either.
And if
Buhari has worthy legacies with PTF, why is he shying away
from launching his campaign and beat his chest about his
legacies? Let him come out and point to any landmark
achievements that the nation can see, touch and feel. Where
are the monuments to Buhari’s leadership? And what exactly
is preventing Muhammadu Buhari from campaigning like
Jonathan is doing? Is it because he is so popular in the
country that he doesn’t need to campaign? Or is it because
he has victory in his pocket already? I don’t get it. I will
not go into other areas of Buhari’s legacies including WAI
and the dehumanization of Nigerians it had brought and, of
course, his infamous Decree 4 which sought to protect
corrupt public officials from the press through which
journalists were jailed. The long and the short of it is
that Buhari is no change candidate, but part of the old
order that the nation is only now beginning to put behind
her through the fresh team of Jonathan/Sambo. And once a
dictator, always a dictator and it shows! Any wonder he
found good company in the late Sanni Abacha, the maximum
ruler in whose death Nigerians were jubilating in the
streets! At a time dictators are being thrown out in parts
of the world, who would wish another dictator on Nigeria?
On his part,
Nuhu Ribadu, the ACN candidate, is having a running battle
with the sole proprietor of ACN, Bola Tinubu, over the
choice of his running mate, which is unfortunate because
unlike Buhari, Ribadu represents a change. True to
character, Tinubu wants to impose his own nominee which
Ribadu has reportedly rejected out of hand pleading that he
should be given a free hand to choose his running mate.
Doesn’t that sound reasonable and prudent? Tinubu appears to
have a different agenda altogether by planting a mole in a
potential Ribadu presidency that he could later use to
undermine the president. That is the truth of the matter
that has torn the ACN apart with Tinubu men reportedly
threatening Ribadu of undisclosed repercussions should he
run against Tinubu’s wishes. Who is Tinubu? A dictator or
godfather? You bet he is both! But he accuses others of the
same thing. He fancies himself the Emperor of Lagos and has
sought to extend his territory to the entire South/West
including even to Ondo state ruled by the Labor Party whose
governor he has reportedly threatened to dethrone for
refusing to decamp to the ACN to extend Tinubu’s reach.
Thus
Ribadu’s party had been engrossed in a simple matter as
choosing a running mate that it has no time to plan its
presidential campaign. All that has been seen so far other
than verbal salvos fired by its talking head, Lai Mohammed,
at both the PDP and INEC, was the so-called symposium it
organized with some hired talking heads pontificating to
themselves in one hall in Abuja in the name of proffering
solutions to Nigeria’s problems. And you wonder who is
listening to them in a hall. And you wonder also if the
party is only now beginning to diagnose Nigeria’s problems
in a symposium this late in the day when elections are only
a few days away. What has it been doing all this while? Talk
about tardiness. The question is what is preventing Nuhu
Ribadu from hitting the ground running? Is it lack of funds
or lack of preparedness or both? Does he need Bola Tinubu’s
permission to launch his campaign too?
It’s
inconceivable that these folks who have no governmental
duties to attend to but their own party affairs have been
unable to raise their campaign teams and hit the ground
running. While this has been a noticeable pattern with
Buhari in previous elections in which he would not bother to
campaign except in a few places in the North only for him to
claim of being rigged out of victory at the end of the day,
it is hard to fathom why Nuhu Ribadu who is the fresh blood
in this whole business is seemingly unable to find his feet.
Has experience got anything to do with it? If so, why is he
not being helped by more experienced aides in his party? The
ACN loudmouth and serial alarmist, Lai Mohammed, who is
always seeing rigging even in his own shadows would do well
to help his party’s presidential candidate get up to speed
to sell his candidacy to the electorate rather than looking
for excuses for his party’s impending electoral disaster.
The party appears to be preparing for the litigation of the
results of the 2011 presidential elections rather than
working to win the elections. That appears to be its winning
formula—snatching victories through the judiciary with
Justice Ayo Salami of the Appeal Court seemingly at the head
of its judicial operations.
Else, how in
the world is the ACN going to win the presidential election
without at all campaigning and campaigning hard nationally
for that matter? Or is the South/West equivalent to the
nation? Pointedly, is the ACN counting on winning elections
through the judiciary again, courtesy of Justice Ayo Salami
after all the allegations and revelations against him? Is
the ACN investing its capital on subsequent electoral
litigation even before the elections are held or is it
investing its capital on the electorate who alone should
have the final word not the judiciary? Who in Nigeria would
believe again in dubious electoral verdicts procured through
the judiciary behind the people? Like this writer had been
campaigning and the nation has now caught up with, the cat
has been let out of the bag that ACN had been procuring
court “victories” through under handed deals with some
judges even before Justice Salami made his confession of
using special squad in the Court of Appeal to undo some
governors in the nation. ACN should be party enough to mount
the soap box now and slug it out not just in its comfort
zone in the South/West but throughout the six geo-political
zones in the country. Or does it think that propaganda alone
does it?
I don’t want
to waste my time on ANPP that is still waiting on IBB to
come pick up its presidential ticket. Pathetic--isn’t it?
The mere thought of it sickens me. Well that is the color
and character of the Nigeria’s window dressing opposition
for you. They follow the lead of the ruling party they want
to displace in virtually all matters including primaries and
campaigns and call that opposition. It’s all fluff and paper
opposition and nothing else substantive. But hey, wait for
the election results in April and hear them howling and
kicking like deranged horses denied of a good meal by their
riders. Opposition my foot! Like I have always said,
political opposition in Nigeria died with the late sage,
Chief Obafemi Awolowo. He was an embodiment of it not the
caricatures of today who can’t tell their left from their
right. But wait a minute: How about taking a page from APGA
that has realistically and prudently adopted Jonathan for
the presidential elections rather than pretending to go it
alone like the rest of the bunch? Makes sense to me. Both
candidates and their parties should carefully and
realistically weigh their electoral chances before throwing
their hats into the ring in the name of contesting
presidential elections because it is not a game for all
comers. And that doesn’t sound to me like rocket science but
common sense. The people at APGA seem to have plenty of that
good stuff upstairs…perhaps they should share some of it
with ACN, CPC or ANPP!
From the
stable of –Cutting-Edge Analytics—More than a blog—It’s a
learning experience!
Franklin
Otorofani is an Attorney and Public Affairs Analyst.
Contacts:
mudiagaone@yahoo.com,
http://franklinotorofani.wordpress.com/
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