The Certainty Of Jonathan's Victory

With the presidential elections four weeks away, Nigerians are
set for a spectacular déjà vu. The APC, despite the din of its
premature celebrations, is headed for a pasting. The reasons
are obvious. Take the APC hawkers and their ware, to begin
with. An Igbo proverb says that the eye eats before the mouth.
But the leading APC vendors happen to be Alhaji Tinubu and
Chief Obasanjo. Their mention is nothing to do with their
physical appearance. After all, neither created himself. It rather
has everything to do with the ugliness of their politics.

Obasanjo carries on, regardless. But he it was that wiped out
Odi and Zaki Biam with military expeditions, and he also
contrived a futile third term project that set off a hemorrhage
in the nation’s finances. Tinubu, for his unflattering part, is
fronting a campaign against corruption, a topic he has never
referred to in all the verbiage he has deemed fit to harangue
the wary and weary with. How, then, can the duo market a
product from which the masses, who remember, screen their
faces? It was Buhari, the military dictator, who cancelled the
Lagos Metroline Project conceived by Governor Lateef Jakande.
The spiteful action cost Nigeria billions, and continues to cost
Nigerians even greater billions in terms of endless traffic jams
and the daily loss of incalculable man hours. Yet, Alhaji Buhari
has never apologized for that unpatriotic action.

How does one expect this man in whose dictionary the word
compunction does not exist to be the harbinger of change?
Invited to the presidential debate, people hoped Buhari’s
participation would reveal whether or not he has progressed
from the stone-age policy of trade-by-barter (countertrade),
which his junta inflicted on the polity decades ago. He
demurred, citing negative press. People laughed who believe
that he ducked to mask his diffidence. But, where else in the
world would a presidential candidate with pretensions to
seriousness dodge an interlocution with colleagues? Rather,
Buhari headed for London in the teeth of winter, there to
confer with Mr. Tony Blair, a former Prime Minister who
vacated office nearly a decade ago!

Had Buhari’s handlers packaged his UK trip with a modicum of
honesty, some of his less alarming deficits may have been
overlooked. Instead, they posted 2013 pictures of the man in
London, in an untidy effort to deflect charges that he hit the
British capital for health reasons. Not only that, they
excavated pictures taken at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, and
claimed it was Buhari in London granting an interview. It all
brought to mind another of their disingenuous lies – the
posting of the photograph of a mammoth congregation at a
Reinhard Bonnke religious crusade which it named Buhari’s
Kano campaign. Why does the APC believe that Nigerians are
so gullible that they would confuse its penchant for mendacity
with the magic of change?

Despite the raggedness of its product, the APC managed a lot
of traction, it must be acknowledged. How the party contrived
this is not difficult to tell. Using huge sums of money the
source of which it dares not declare, the party engaged
lobbyists in America and Britain who influenced leading
Western publications into dishing out sawdust aimed at
demonizing President Jonathan and discrediting his
administration.

Back in Nigeria, the APC appropriated the social media, using it
to skew polls and promote a façade of Buhari invincibility. In
the wake of the media blitzkrieg, textbook Marxists,
Communists and Socialists around tertiary institutions who
previously speechified students on the fine points of
progressivism, shamelessly lined up behind stationary broom-
wielders with a fake promise of change on their tongue, vowing
to go blindfolded with them into battle! It didn’t occur to the lot
that, in the age of vacuum cleaners, the broom is anachronistic.
It all explains why, without realizing that a lot of these
“revolutionary” characters are actually anticipating another
Yar’Adua-out-Jonathan-in scenario, Buhari claimed victory well
before the first vote was cast! What if he lost, journalists
asked. “I will not answer that question because I cannot lose”,
he responded. But defeat already stares him in the face
because the people have seen through the hypocrisy of the
APC, a party so unpatriotic that it has, so far, contributed
absolutely nothing to the efforts to defeat Boko Haram.

Gallant and youthful Nigerian soldiers, with pluck and
gumption, are dying every day to save the country from the
blight of terrorism. The lines of their widows and the queues of
their orphans are lengthening by the hour. But whereas
Cameroonians, Chadians and Nigeriens are united in their own
countries against Boko Haram, the APC has nothing but
orchestrated blame and censure for the best efforts of our
Commander-in-Chief and our armed forces. That is not the way
to win elections. The APC already danced itself lame while the
music has just started. It since ran out of gas. And the ballot
is still four weeks away.

President Jonathan was asked what will happen if he lost. “I
will hand over power to the victorious candidate” he answered.
That is the real face of democratic change, which is self-
evident in his Transformation Agenda. He will not lose; he has
four more years of selfless service to render to his
appreciative countrymen and women.

By Chuks Iloegbunam.