LAST weekend, precisely on Saturday, October 24, Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, launched his campaign for re-election in the January 16, 2027 polls. Kaduna, in Kaduna state, was chosen for the launch. There are reasons for the choice of that city and the state. But two reasons stand out. First, Kaduna was the capital of the defunct Northern region, noted for being home to the northern elite and their conspiracies of the past and even the present. Readers who are old enough would recall the myth or the reality of the feared, notorious, or famous ‘’Kaduna Mafia’’. The second reason for Kaduna could be the believe that it is one of the ‘K’ states – along with Kano and Katsina – in the north west where votes are routinely harvested in quantum by politicians to determine the outcome or direction of national elections, especially the presidency. The other states widely regarded as vote banks are Lagos in the south west, and Rivers in the southsouth, both in the southern part of the country.
The third reason for the choice of Kaduna by Tinubu to kick-off his limited-by-choice campaign programme ahead of 2027 was more ominous. He and his handlers know that the north feels betrayed by the Muslim-Muslim administration which they helped to put into office in 2023 in the belief that it would favour them. The thinking may have been that by starting the re-election campaign in the former capital of the former Northern region, the people of the area would be appeased. However, the events that preceded the launch of Tinubu’s campaign certainly showed that the appeasement did not win him and his team any favours. In the lead up to the event for which billions of Naira were reportedly mapped out, the dominant headline news out of Kaduna was not about the preparations for what the organisers may have regarded as the ‘mother of all rallies and campaign launches’. What emerged from Kaduna was foreboding and should send a chill down the spines of the president and his APC co-travellers on their prospects in next year’s presidential election. If the APC does not feel anything, it would only be because they are not banking on the votes of Nigerians for victory.
Obviously flushed with staggering stolen cash including probably the N800 billion stolen by APC governors from the coffers of their states for the elections, the organisers of the campaign launch worked socks off to change the face of the city of Kaduna. Of course, knowing the foibles of Tinubu and his love for applause, validation, and for being worshipped, the grovelling organisers ensured that no stops were pulled. Festoons littered the nooks and crannies of the city. His posters and billboards occupied every inch of the spaces in Kaduna. But the ordinary folks of the state sent a very strong and loud message – Tinubu would be an unwelcomed guest and their counter preparations about ‘Tinubu Must Go’, a vexatious slogan in the ears of regime apologists. How did they pass their message? They worked even doubly hard, certainly harder than the organisers, by removing the festoons, defacing Tinubu’s posters, and pulling down his billboards as fast as they were pasted and erected. The anti-Tinubu and anti-APC Nigerians were determined and unrelenting in their opposition to the attempt to spit in their faces by a regime that had subjected them to severe privations in the past three and half years.
To be sure, APC saw this coming, or should have seen it coming, except for the arrogance of its leaders. And their assumed invincibility bouyed by their blackmailing of ostensibly corrupt opposition parties’ state governors to join their ranks in return for their not being probed. A state governor who initially resisted the urge to jump ship accused the ruling party of offering him billions of Naira to defect. Officially the APC has 31 of the 36 state governors in its fold, and 33 governors or more by association, and then the minister of the federal capital territory [FCT] who belongs to the amputated People’s Democratic Party [PDP]. For clarity, PDP was the ruling party between 1999-2015. In spite of the armada, Tinubu is still scared of his prospects in the upcoming election, and the APC is paranoid. The boasting by the party leaders is designed to mask their fears. It has certainly dawned on the president and the ruling [really ruining] party that they would have the majority of Nigerians to contend with at the ballot box next year.
The images from Kaduna that would haunt the APC in the run-up to the elections in 2027 are the ones that preceded their campaign launch last Saturday. The images that went viral were those of police vehicles and police men/women stationed beneath all the campaign billboards of Tinubu in that ancient city. It was even clear from their nonchallant postures that some of the police personnel were there because of the obligation of duty, and the fear of being punished for disloyalty to the authorities. Were it to be voluntary, we wager that a majority of those officers deployed to guard Tinubu’s billboards and posters, and prevent them from being defaced and pulled down by hungry and angry Nigerians, would have declined the demeaning duty. Whatever they might have been paid for the billboard/poster security job would pale into insignificance were they freed to mount their normal road blocks in parts of the metropolis for the number of days they were guarding the billboards made unsafe by the anger of the people.
Meanwhile the billboards/posters’ police ‘maiguards’ assignments raises a number of troubling questions. This country is wracked by pervasive insecurity in the north and in the south. There has been a rolling insurgency in the north. We are contending with kidnapping for ransome all over the country, but again, especially in the north. There is still the issue of terrorism, including the terrorising of farmers by herders who wield menacing automatic assault rifles. The terrorism by herders has lingered and proven intractable because the APC regime of the affliction of Nigeria, the late Maj.Gen. Muhammadu Buhari [2015-2023], deliberately and wickedly labelled it as herders-farmers clashes. How could it have been clashes when armed herders invaded farmlands to main, rape, kill and displace farmers from their places of business and their ancestral lands? The cruel Buhari regime successfully sold that narrative to the Nigerian media which ran with it. We raised our voice here to no effect. Without evidence we cannot say that the media was bought.
The United Nations recommends an average ratio of one police operative for 450 citizens. Here we have an estimated population of 230 million people, and a police paper strength of about 380,000 which is a ration of 1:700. The ratio is actually worse because at any given time between 150,000-200,000 police officers are assigned, or indeed assign themselves, to protect political and business elites, government officials, their spouses and children, banks, and sundry private VIPs – so-called very important persons. It is from this meagre pool that some police officers are pulled to protect billboards and posters of President Tinubu. Since we are adept at being copycats, rest assured that the remaining over 30 APC governors, even in places where Tinubu would not campaign would implement the Kaduna template of deploying active duty policemen and women to guard Tinubu’s billboards and posters.
Meanwhile, part of the strategies for stomping on the soapbox would be a resort to scare-mongering. The president has already set the tone when he said that Nigerians would not be allowed to ‘’return to Egypt’’. He can be forgiven because he’s a Muslim [who sadly may not be regarded as such by a typical northern Muslim], and may have a superficial understanding of that passage in the Holy Bible. The fact that his wife is said to be a pastor in the Redeemed church may not compensate for the president’s shallow grasp of the deeper meaning of that instruction. Egypt in that contest was a place of slavery, pain, expropriation and suffering. If that be the case then the President takes responsibility for taking Nigerians to Egypt where our citizens are now languishing in despondency, gnashing of teeth, and desperately in search of a Moses, and ultimately a messiah. In the context of Nigeria today ‘’going back to Egypt’’ could also refer to our own Moses being sent back to Egypt by God to confront Pharaoh and to lead the suffering people of Nigeria out of bondage. In other words and in the larger context of the phrase glibly used by the president, he [Tinubu] could be Nigeria’s modern day Pharaoh.
In comes the Minister of Works, ‘Professor of Practice’ Engr. David [Dave] Nweze Umahi, to be counted among those who would campaign by scare-mongering. His own campaign talking point was that the Lagos – Calabar coastal highway would never be completed and would indeed be abandoned if Nigerians refused to award Tinubu a second term. In our clime, occupants of elective political offices are not expected to earn the renewal of their mandates by the evidence of their performances. They should just be returned simply because there is a provision for another term. The evidence before the majority of Nigerians is that Tinubu has failed in the last almost four years. But Umahi insists that if we do not re-elect Tinubu, we should forget the completion of the alleged 750km highway. Alleged because Umahi and Tinubu do not know the length of the crooked road; they do not know the design; they do not know whether it would actually hug the coast lines; they do not know the cost; they do not know the contents of environmental and social impact cost, assuming there’s any such report; and they do not know the sources of the funding of the ‘’ogbanje’’ or ‘’abiku’’ road. By the way, who told Umahi that that highway is the priority of Nigerians, including those living in the communities where the regime claimed it would pass through? In Ondo the highway is reported to be planning to abandon the coast and move inland. Could this be because of the fear of Mammy Water [water goddess]
The loquacious minister should be told that if anything is urgent about that highway, it’s a comprehensive auditing of the no-bid contract awarded to a business partner of his master, the president, and the unending alignments and realignments of its ultimately phantom route. Whenever the subject of transparency and full disclosure concerning that contract was brought up, Umahi flares up and becomes abusive. Even when some Nigerians invoked the Freedom of Information Act for the release of relevant documents on the highway, Tinubu’s regime hired a battery of senior advocates of Nigeria [SANs], and a dozen other lawyers to stall and kill the demand for disclosure. If the contract is fraud-free, which is highly unlikely, the government should have nothing to fear and to hide.
The Minister of Finance, Taiwo Oyedele and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, is another person of interest in this election season. That one would grant an interview captured in audio and video, and then turn around to deny that he ever said what he said on record. He said this regime has a plan for additional petrol tax, and then denied it. However, to drive home his own version of scare-mongering as an election strategy, he said that if petrol subsidy was restored as a majority of the key presidential candidates have advocated, the Naira would plummet from the prevailing N1,370 to N4,000/$1. He did not bother with the assumptions that undergirded his assertion. His plan was not to illuminate, it was to frighten. For Oyedele, magnitude can simply be established by assertion alone. What a shame for a man who occupies such a high office?
Tinubu’s regime has failed. On Saturday in Kaduna he said that hunger was introduced in Nigeria by his political opponents. He forgets that he has been directly or by association in power for eleven years. He has said as much himself. The other time he said that hunger had been here before he was born. It’s just that Nigerians do not know when he was born. Or where he was born. Or who his parents were. Last week his campaign director general said that if Buhari, a retired general of the Nigerian Army who was Tinubu’s immediate predecessor in the presidency, could not combat insecurity in eight years, why should Nigerians expect Tinubu to solve the problem. We have been told that this president is incapable of delivering on any of his promises. But Nigerians are free, in spite of repeated admonition by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, to reinforce failure by returning Tinubu to office, or by allowing him to return himself to the presidency.
AUTHOR: UGO ONUOHA
Articles published in our Graffiti section are strictly the opinion of the writers and do not represent the views of Ripples Nigeria or its editorial stand.
The post OPINION: Re-election campaign by scare-mongering appeared first on Latest Nigeria News | Top Stories from Ripples Nigeria.
English (US) ·