 Published
February 15th, 2011
Ordinarily, one could pardon occasional verbal slips of
President Goodluck Jonathan when he mounts the political
campaign podium to canvas for the hard- to- get support for
the Peoples Democratic Party come April 2011 General
elections. The reason is not far- fetched: the President had
hardly been the arrow-head of any rigorous campaign for
political office since the beginning of his political
ascendancy. Providentially, someone had to do it for him as
a Deputy-Governor turned Governor and later Vice- President
turned President.
But with the onus of bearing the Presidential flag of the
beleaguered PDP thrust on him, the President should now know
that electioneering campaign and strategy is an art in
itself. Every word, body language and composure on the
podium matter as they go a long way in getting an intending
political office holder closer to his goal or far away from
it.
The recent utterance of President Jonathan in Ibadan, during
the flag off of his campaign in the South West does not
only underscore Mr President’s minus in the use of words,
but also knocked the bottom off the optimism that gutter
snipping and mudslinging would for once be reduced in the
nation’s political campaign strategy. Jonathan was reported
to have affirmed PDP’s readiness to recover the states of
Lagos, Ekiti, Osun and Ondo States from “rascals”. Although
the strategy the party intended to utilise in achieving this
uphill task was not yet revealed by the PDP flag bearer, one
could insinuate that this may not exclude the “do or die”
approach of his political God father, President(General)
Olusegun Obasanjo four years ago .How this will happen in a
free and fair election in the South West still remains a
logic understandable only to the PDP, as citizens of almost
of all those states referred to by President for capture are
already basking in the air of freedom from the PDP strangle
holds which had taken them backwards for at least 10 years.
It still remains a puzzle why Jonathan, supposedly cerebral,
would refer to the Governors in charge of his target states
as rascals. How can Mimiko, a Medical Doctor; Fashola, an
accomplished Senior Advocate of Nigeria; Aregbesola, an
Engineer, and Fayemi, a PhD holder like Jonathan himself, as
well as a successful academic be qualified with the
adjective of a “rascal” by Jonathan in his vociferous thirst
for votes in the South West. If the adjective of Jonathan
has exact description of these great and resourceful
Governors, then one could submit that the entire South West
is actually in need of more of these “positive rascals” to
return the entire region to the pride of place that it was
ab initio. At the moment, Nigerians could see with their
eyes what has become of the remaining two states- Oyo and
Ogun- under the control of the PDP. The citizens there are
groaning for change from the high level social, economic and
infrastructural regression they are made to live under in
the last eight years.
Well, even if we pardon Jonathan’s malapropism on the ground
that such action usually characterises the dilemma of a
public speaker struggling to convey a burning heart desire
or burden in the right words, the fact that is deductible is
that the entire South West is in dire need of “positive
rascals” to salvage the region from the political
cankerworms holding sway and help it re-affirm its pride of
place as the most vibrant sub- region in Nigeria.
Tope Adaramola
Is a public affairs commentator
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