I HAVE news for APC stalwarts. You don’t win an election in
Nigeria by being the champion of social media. You don’t win by
renting crowds to fill up your rallies. You don’t win by putting
up your billboards everywhere while tearing down those of your
opponents. You don’t win by master-minding in the media a
false sense of the inevitability of your victory. When you do all
this successfully, you simply end up deceiving yourself.
You win elections by mounting an effective ground-game at the
grassroots level; designed to bring out the people on Election
Day to vote for you. Instead, APC strategy was to stampede
the electorate into victory. The design was to proclaim victory
even before the election, laying grounds for protests and
acrimony in event of defeat.
Attempted coup d’état
The APC blueprint is see-through. Present a new refurbished,
suit-wearing and church-visiting Buhari to the electorate
chanting a mantra of “change.” Give him a Teflon-coated
Redeemed pastor as vice-presidential running-mate. Shield him
from public scrutiny and debates to hide his weaknesses and
absent-mindedness. Gloss over his objectionable past and
pedigree. Mount an aggressive image-laundering social media
campaign.
So doing, before the PDP and the public would be up to your
game, the election would be over. Nigerians would wake up on
February 15th to discover to our cost that we had been
hoodwinked into handing over power to Buhari and the Tinubu
cabal.
The APC mechanism for perfecting this plan entailed bullying
the PDP into defeat. In the North, PDP supporters were
threatened and harassed. Some quickly packed their bag and
baggage and left town. Even Goodluck Jonathan’s convoy was
stoned by APC “democrats.” In Gombe, a suicide bomber paid a
courtesy call on the president’s campaign rally.
But the killer-punch was to be the disenfranchisement of
literally millions of PDP voters. With the complicity of Jega’s
INEC, APC strongholds were supplied with PVCs: while PDP
strongholds were denied them. Ghost-voters came out of the
woodwork by their hundreds of thousands in unlikely places
like the war-torn North-east to collect their PVCs. However, in
peaceful higher-population places like Lagos and Kano, non-
indigenes were denied their PVCs, suspected of being likely
PDP supporters.
It is telling that, in all the ensuing brouhaha over 23 million
people not yet receiving their PVCs seven days to D-Day, APC
remained resolute that the election should go ahead
nevertheless. This indicates that it knew the missing PVCs
belonged disproportionately to PDP supporters.
The denouement
However, the entire strategy of the APC met its Waterloo with
the postponement of the election. With the postponement, the
Buhari election-train came to a screeching halt. Some have
argued that the postponement was a military coup by Jonathan
and the PDP. However, a more truthful assessment is that the
postponement scuttled the APC plan to win the election by
subterfuge.
APC blundered because it refused to entertain the possibility
that the election could actually be postponed. As a result, it
did not plan for that eventuality. In this gaffe, it was carried
away by its own hyperbole. APC big-guns shouted themselves
hoarse warning all and sundry that the election must not be
postponed, or else. Worse still, they believed their own
rhetoric.
APC is used to making threatening noises. It is all stuff and
bluster. If it loses, the dogs and the baboons would be soaked
in blood. If it loses it would form a parallel government. If the
election is postponed, Nigerians would not stand for it.
Therefore, it expended all its political and financial capital on a
14th February election. When it finally dawned on it that the
election might be postponed, Buhari made an unusual visit to
the Council of State to mount a pathetic eleventh-hour
resistance.
But alas, the APC was completely outplayed. INEC succumbed
to the inevitable and the election was postponed, and for six
weeks no less. As a result, the APC stampede came to an end.
The orchestrated Buhari momentum came to a screeching halt.
Since then, APC pundits have been in shock; scratching their
heads because, in all their impetuosity, they had no Plan B.
The APC was banking on the element of surprise. That is now
gone with the postponement. It was hoping to win the election
by disenfranchising PDP voters. That is no longer possible. It is
now confronted with fighting an election it always knew it
cannot win because it does not have the appropriate structure
on the ground at the grassroots level.
PDP fight back
Sixteen years in power had made the PDP over-confident. It
seemed to have been caught unawares by the scripted APC
nomination of Buhari and the gimmickry of choosing a
Redeemed pastor as his running-mate. As a result, an election
that should have been a cake-walk for it suddenly turned into
a tight race. Part of this was self-inflicted. PDP had a bad set
of primaries; creating considerable dissension within its ranks.
Moreover, the PDP was bested in the public relations
department; allowing the APC to define the narrative of the
election on social media.
Had the election gone on as scheduled on 14th February, it
would have been close but Jonathan would still have won. But
with six weeks delay, the election will not even be close. Even
though it was ebbing discernibly, APC had momentum for the
14th February election. By 28th March, that momentum would
have dissipated and disappeared. Even now, the momentum is
no longer there. Buhari is in London on a dubious visit. APC has
run out of breath.
Make no mistake about it; the six week postponement of the
election has effectively crippled the APC. It is no wonder then
that the party has been grumbling non-stop. In the meantime,
PDP has been able to get a full measure of the APC. Putting all
its eggs in the 14th February date, which it insisted cannot and
must not be changed; the APC played all its cards. It put all its
eggs in one basket. However, PDP held some in reserve,
banking on the postponement of the election.
APC’s confusion
What happens now? APC is confused. It is stretched for funds.
It has lost its mojo, scrambling in panic mode to raise
additional 50 billion naira from donors. Speaking to APC
stakeholders at the party secretariat in Lagos, Bola Tinubu
said: “We have to re-strategise; all of you should go back to
your various constituencies starting from tomorrow.” This is a
belated acknowledgment that the party now likely to win the
election is the one best able to mount an aggressive and
effective nationwide grassroots campaign.
In that department, the APC is clearly second-best. The party
best positioned to mount an effective ground-game and
mobilize votes at the grassroots level is the PDP. It has been
around for 16 years. PDP local government councilors account
for nearly 70 per cent of all councilors in Nigeria, comprising
6,521 members, making it a truly grassroots-based political
party. The APC, on the other hand, does not have the
nationwide political structure to win the coming election. To
date, it is a newspaper and television political party. It has yet
to build a formidable grassroots support. It is a JJC party, a
little over a year old.
With all the noise about Buhari, it should not be forgotten that
the man chronically lacks skills at building political party
structures. In the APC presidential primaries, Northern
delegates did not even vote for him; preferring instead
Kwankwaso and Atiku. He was elected primarily on the
strength of ACN votes. PDP strength on the ground
everywhere in Nigeria explains why Jonathan was able to win
37% of the vote even in Buhari’s home-state of Katsina in the
2011 election.
While APC was busy stoking up the press to create its air of
inevitable victory, PDP was busy mobilizing its local
government councilors. Its Presidential Campaign Organisation
brought all its elected and appointed councilors from all over
Nigeria to Abuja to mobilize them to secure victory for the
party at the grassroots level. In what was captioned
“Operation Deliver Your Ward,” Professor Jerry Gana re-
fashioned them as political foot-soldiers and grassroots
mobilisers for the PDP, split into six groups according to their
geopolitical zones.
Resurgent PDP
Since the postponement, Jonathan is no longer the issue. It is
once again Buhari; the coup-plotting former dictator and
alleged ethnic and religious jingoist. Thanks to the
postponement, Nigerians can no longer be panicked into voting
for Buhari. We now have enough time to appreciate that he is
old, and completely bereft of ideas as to what to do when in
power. It is not enough to shout “change, change.” The
question is: change to what? To this question, Buhari provides
a deafening silence.
In the meantime, the true message of Jonathan’s considerable
achievements in office is now resonating. With the
commissioning of new power-plants, we are now generating
5,500 megawatts of electricity: a new Nigerian record. We now
know from PricewaterhouseCoopers that the allegation that
$20 billion is missing from NNPC accounts is one big fat APC
lie. The army is now fully-equipped for battle. For the first time
in a long time, the Nigerian air force has come into the fray.
The Boko Haram is being bombed to smithereens up North.
There is even talk of capturing Abubakar Shekau alive.
Within the next six weeks, all that is left is for the PDP to put
its house in order and APC will be toast. Since Buhari has
whipped up himself and his supporters into an unrealistic
psychological frenzy in this election cycle, it is certain he will
end up at the tribunal, when it finally dawns on him that, in
spite of all the bluster, he has lost again. The fate awaiting
Buhari brings to mind that of Mitt Romney who was so
deceived into believing he would be elected America’s next
president in 2012, he had only a victory speech on election
night when he was roundly defeated.
When the history of the 2015 presidential election is finally
written, it will be recalled that the postponement of the
election for six weeks was the final nail in the coffin of the
By Femi Aribisala.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment