A few weeks ago, a friend asked if I thought the 2015 elections would bring General Muhammadu Buhari to the highest office in the land for the second time. I should know, this friend said, as I was for Buhari in 2011 when it was not fashionable to support him. I told him that Buhari has everything going for him this time around but winning was dependent on the way he runs his campaign. Buhari must step away from being Buhari to win. He must hire professionals to manage him and his campaign.
Unfortunately, Nigerian political class does not know that there is a science to running a campaign. This makes the problem not Buhari’s alone, but the problem has a greater consequence now more than ever as people are saying that we have a good chance to stop Nigeria from tipping over and falling over the precipice.
Nigerian Political class in general would pay for thugs, find musicians to sing their praises as political jingles and do a dance on stages in the market squares in a dozen capital cities and return to await good results. When some of them fail and the party in power wins, they blame rigging and incumbency factors as the reason for their failures rather than incompetence in managing their campaigns. This is not to say that there are no riggings during elections, but rigging takes place mostly where an opposition candidate is unpopular. The best antidote against rigging is to run a good campaign to make you popular among the electorate.
Let us look at the political scene. Good luck Jonathan of the PDP has been campaigning for this election in the last four years. He even had a group going round the country ostensibly to pressure him to run again. At every stop, they told Nigerians that Jonathan has been the best thing to come to Nigeria. The President and the cabinet have been using every opportunity to tell the people of how this current administration has been performing wonders. From Okonjo-Iweala to Maku, there has been no shortage of Federal government functionaries to sing the President’s praises. This is aside from the usual hatchet jobs performed by the duos of Doyin Okupe and Reuben Abati on the opposition. Okupe and Abati seem to have forgotten that they are spokesmen for the President of Nigeria and not for PDP. In all these, the oppositions were statute barred from campaigning. INEC must declare the coast free for electioneering campaigns at least 90 days before the election.
It means that the President has had a monopoly of sending messages to the people. Muhammadu Buhari on the other hand, is loved by his followers because of his integrity. Even that took Buhari three Presidential runs and an alliance with three other regional parties before his integrity become known to people outside his political influence.
Few people including the candidate of APC understand modern method of campaigning. There is no organized campaign team that wakes up to think about the campaign. Rather a potpourri of failed aspirants and favored party operatives are handpicked to be in a campaign team. These new campaign staffers are at best strangers to the candidates and are more interested in competing for positions after the election has been won. The Candidate is therefore left to rely on familiar former associates who are mostly errand boys who are happy to be close to him. There are no critical thought given to their actions. They do what has to be done. They obtain forms and fill them out using information perfunctorily supplied by their principals. Such is the situation surrounding the current certificate question that is threating the Buhari campaign.
If there is any one behind the wheels of the Buhari campaign, can anyone explain the purpose of the affidavit that Buhari swore to that says:
“I am the above-named person and deponent to this affidavit therein. “All my academic qualifications, documents as filled in my presidential form, President APC/001/2015, are currently with the Secretary, Military Board as of the time of presenting this affidavit. The affidavit is made in good faith and for record purpose,”
My take on this is that Buhari cannot locate his original certificate and he is saying the Secretary of the Army would have a copy. If I were running Buhari campaign, I would have dispatch a letter to the army Secretary asking for a copy. The affidavit to the INEC would have stated the fact that my secondary school certificate has been lost and that effort was being made to obtain a copy from my former employer.
The worst offence of the Buhari campaign is that it allows this non-issue to continue for a long time thereby eclipsing all other efforts to launch any new ideas it may have. Lai Mohammed who normally speaks for the party ruefully intoned to a pressman that the PDP was being disingenuous by denigrating a former Head of State. Would anyone think Muhammad Buhari did not have a school certificate before he became a general in the army? He asked.
Those are not the issue. The issue is that the law says you need a proof of school attendance up to school certicate or equivalent and you have to show proof. The campaign has been silent prompting the Jonathan crowd to wax eloquent. One man on social media needed Buhari to answer if in fact he attended a Quoranic school before joining the army.
The undertone of the argument of those pressing for answers is clear as anything. Yes, Buhari was a former Head of State after a military coup. Nobody ever came up during those heady days of the army to say General Buhari’s certificate has been checked. His colleagues merely said he has been made the Head of State. Three times in the past he has run for the same office but during those three times, his prospect has never been brighter, so we need to check his certificate now. The Southwest which is seen as providing the swing vote to a victorious candidate in this election have the majority of its voters as youths under the age of 35 years. Those age groups are more swayed by educational attainment and in fact are apt to equate educational attainment to competence. In response, a supporter of Buhari has robed President Jonathan in an ill-fitting academic gown with a label – Igbo made Ph.D. – a euphemism for an inferior, counterfeit and worthess product.
The silence from the Buhari camp is now being interpreted as the usual Buhari contempt for constituted authority and the law of the land. To buttress this point, the Jonathan camp are saying that both Babangida and Buhari spurned several attempts to testify at the Oputa panel set up by the Obasanjo administration. While it is true that Buhari , Babangida and Abubarkar did not attend the Oputa Panel, they relied on the decision of the Irekefe Panel set up on the missing $2.8 million fund by the Shagari administration. Obasanjo had refused to personally show up at the panel to answer questions. He successfully defended his action through his lawyer Chief Rotimi Williams. Chief Williams argued and the Panel headed by Mr. Justice Irekefe agreed that Obasanjo because he was a former Head of State, had become an institution and therefore could not be questioned regarding the decisions he took while in office.
It is clear that by not showing up at the Oputa panel, Buhari, Babangida and Abubarkar were merely availing themselves of the protection of the court granted them through Obasanjo. Shall we now say Buhari has willfully contravened the law as the Jonathan people are quietly circulating? I must admit that Buhari is not being prosecuted in the court of law but in the court of public opinion. The only way to answer them is through his campaign team. As it turns out, Buhari has to wait for his party propaganda machine to work for him. That may fail him.
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*** Banji Ayiloge, a political strategist, was a former State Commissioner for Information and former State Chairman of CPC in Ondo State. He has served in various strategic capacities in major political campaigns.
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