Nigerians are still not discussing the manifestoes of presidential candidates despite that elections are 39 days away.
As usual, citizens are caught in the web of issues that have little to do with candidates’ capacity to govern and their programmes for the people, as the electorate join politicians in fiddling while Rome burns.
One of the issues that have dominated discourse in the last one month is whether President Muhammadu Buhari is actually the Buhari Nigerians voted for in 2015 or one Jubril Aminu Al-Sudani from Sudan. This claim, which is being vehemently projected by leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu, has taken the centre stage in the last one month, shifting the electorate’s attention away from manifestoes presented by presidential candidates in November.
Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s vice president and the All Progressives Congress (APC) vice presidential candidate, recently came up with a rather weird and diversionary tactic of asking the South-West to vote for him and his principal so that the region will have another chance of ruling Nigeria in 2023.
“Yoruba have a crucial role to play in the 2019 elections so ensure that APC wins. We are looking at 2023. If we don’t do well in 2019, the opportunity might evade us. We should be forward-looking and not spoil our future by allowing those who had plundered our nation to come back to government. They have been coalescing again to continue the plunder but God shall not allow them. If one is building a house, he has to construct a very solid foundation. The foundation might not be easily noticed but when it is built on, the house will emerge,” Osinbajo said when he visited the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi, in his palace on December 23.
Two months earlier, Babatunde Fashola, minister for power, works and housing, had asked the South West to vote for President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 elections to guarantee a return of power to the region in 2023.
The News Agency of Nigeria reported that Lai Mohammed, the minister of information and culture, had led three other ministers including Fashola, ministers of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi and water resources, Suleiman Adamu, to a town hall meeting.
“A vote for Buhari in 2019 means a return of power to the South West in 2023. I am sure you will vote wisely,” Fashola was reported as saying.
The two separate comments generated a number of reactions, turning into the usual tribal jibes.
After these events, APC members from the South-East and those sympathetic with the region turned against Buhari And Osinbajo for offering two regions the same ticket in 2023.
In its reaction, the Buhari Support Group issued a communiqué saying that 2023 will be the turn of the South-East.
“The rotation convention is meant to erase the fears of marginalisation of any ethnic nationality, hence implant sense of belonging to all Nigerians. We are also witnesses on how His Excellency, Dr Alex Ekwueme of blessed memory was shoved aside from a party he co-founded, in order to appease the South West, and His Excellency Ogboniya Onu was also in the same manner shoved aside, hence the commencement of the rotation of president from the South West in 1999,” the communiqué issued by the BSO Southeast coordinator, Stanley Ohajuruka and its acting secretary, Godwin Onwusi, said.
On all social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, ethnic champions who were not even sure of being alive in 2023 exchanged diatribe and belittled each other on an issue that would clearly be defined by time.
As of now, no one is talking about Atiku Abubakar’s capacity to deliver on his Eldorado promises on education and health, which is something that should have been happening by now. Buhari’s Next Level matters little to a people hard hit by hunger, high unemployment and security chaos.
“Every election, newspapers and commentators advocate ‘issue-based campaign’. They call for messages containing ideas that the candidates want the voters to support. Yet, just about 40 days before Nigeria’s presidential election, the ideas of the two main candidates, President Muhammadu Buhari and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, are hardly the subject of media analysis or public discussion, despite sharp differences in their messages,” Olu Fasan, international trade negotiator and visiting fellow at the International Relations Department of the London School of Economics (LSE), said on his Monday column on BusinessDay.
The Nigerian electorate seem to be going to the presidential election without knowing what Buhari’s Next Level entails or Atiku’s Plan means.
Currently, there are several diversionary plans by the two main parties and the electorate are not able to see where this is leading to.
In 2016 United States presidential election, Candidate Donald Trump’s positions were clear: Build the Wall against Mexico; do away with Obamacare, and America First policy, among others. Americans discussed issues based on what Trump or Hilary Clinton, who wanted a continuation of Obama’s policies, had.
“But you rather hear a lot of frivolities.,” said Sam Agbodia, a political commentator.
“The challenge again is that people are not concerned about it. They are more concerned about religion and regions but they will complain the moment anybody wins and starts doing what they like,” he added.
For Fasan, “Next month’s presidential election will not be about issues.”
Recently, Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, Kaduna State governor, called Peter Obi, PDP vice presidential candidate, a tribal bigot.
‘Peter Obi is a tribal bigot. He was widely quoted on national television that the SSS was right to detain me for 48 hours in an hotel in 2014 on the grounds that ”El-Rufai has no business being in Anambra State as it is not Katsina State. I sued the SSS and awarded N4m damages.”
This, as usual, attracted the attention of many Nigerians but took the electorate away from the bigger issues.
ODINAKA ANUDU
