If the leading opposition party in Nigeria were to make known its innermost wish, it will certainly be to stop the nation’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, from running for the highest office in the land for a second term. The All progressives Congress (APC) elements have not hidden this desire for a moment. They have made this intention not to have Jonathan on the ballot in 2015 known through various means. APC has said this through the many press statements it has issued. Its leaders have granted interviews stating how Jonathan’s second term bid “endangers democracy” without convincing anyone. They have portrayed the man as “weak”, “ineffective” and “running a kindergarten presidency”. Apart from all manner of propaganda that APC and its leaders have arrayed at the Nigerian president to denigrate him before the public, it does not quite hang why APC leadership wants Jonathan, a “weak leader” in their estimation, out of the race in 2015 instead of dealing him a knockout punch at the polls.
Too bad for the opposition: seemingly all the APC propaganda against Goodluck Jonathan and his ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have become counterproductive or have boomeranged, to more appropriately put it. When the leadership of APC started coupling the strange bedfellows that make it up, it failed even to pretend to a nationalistic mission. Instead, the leadership was consumed by an anti-Jonathan emotion and a selfish quest for power at all costs. That was how Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State and known Yoruba irredentist, once named as one of the most corrupt politicians in the country by the former anti-corruption enforcer, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), General Muhammadu Buhari, a former military head of state known more for his anti-democracy antecedents and serial rejection at the polls, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president famed for his inordinate ambition to be president so much so that he fell out with his boss Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, and other desperate politicians massed into the APC – with a sole mission of wresting power from Jonathan and not necessarily the PDP.
Of course, the APC people were willing to spend and spend in the media to blackmail the government and the ruling party. Like every new project, the prospects looked attractive especially with the made-up story of an imploding PDP. Allies of the opposition in a particular section of the media went into an overdrive painting an illusory and delusional picture of the trouncing of the PDP in 2015. Then came the gale of defections of some PDP governors nursing presidential ambition or eying the number two position in the land – together with many of their legislators who, contrary to democratic tenets, are tied to the apron strings of their tyrannical governors.
While all this was happening, the PDP Federal Government was confronting the most difficult security challenge in the land with the terrorist acts of the Boko Haram group whose alleged links with the opposition are now subject of enquiries in some European parliaments. As Boko Haram bombs rock parts of the country charring bodies of our countrymen, women and children, the nation groaned in anguish while the opposition’s body language was almost that of “serves Jonathan right”. The APC propaganda and the leadership of the party never ceased to seize any opportunity of a bomb blast to create an impression of how weak and ineffective the Jonathan presidency was. Yet, this is the same party whose prominent members had threatened to make the nation ungovernable for the Nigerian President if he won the 2011 elections. APC forgot that the Nigerian people are not blind; they were taking notes!
In truth, Nigerians may not be entirely convinced about the PDP. Even then, they are more circumspect about the desperate moves of the opposition and its messianic pretensions. This is more so when the party unleashes one propaganda material after another either to discredit the ruling party or paint an Eldorado picture of the country that would be under its watch. Recourse to foreign image-making consultancy firms and dubious opinion polls came handy also all in attempt to respond to the public criticisms that the party believed in nothing but crass opportunism and power mongering. Thus huge amount of dollars was paid to AKPD Message and Media, an American public relations shop to conjure the deception that more Nigerians would prefer APC over President Jonathan, no matter the candidate it fielded. This is the same APC that, in its hypocrisy, has consistently raised the alarm on how President Jonathan is hiring an imaginary foreign media consultant!
When presidential spokesperson, Reuben Abati, faulted the APC opinion poll on its methodological fallacy and consequently dismissed it as an “exercise in quackery”, maybe not everyone believed. Yet, the outcome of the recently held Ekiti gubernatorial election which showed the emphatic rejection of the APC, the mass defection of APC members to PDP nationwide, and the apparent fidgeting of the leadership of the leading opposition party speak clearly to the long-held notion that APC was building castles in the air. The same people who accused President Jonathan yesterday are contradicting themselves now by painting Jonathan in the colours of Machiavelli. In a statement released by Atiku Abubakar over the impeachment of the former Adamawa State governor, Murtala Nyako, the former vice president accused President Jonathan of “excessive use of power”. And for Odigie Oyegun, the Chairman of APC, Jonathan has become a dictator. Even General Buhari is offering Jonathan a lesson in democracy!
It is indeed unfortunate that the unravelling of the APC came too soon and in a most anti-climactic manner. That is what happens when propaganda and blackmail take the place of truth. Even in the use of propaganda, the basic rule is to ensure that it is laced with some truths here and there. The Nigerian public has seen enough of the shenanigans of the opposition and are not prepared to wait until 2015 to throw it into the trash can. The suspected link of APC with insurgent group, Boko Haram, has more or less finished the party. And with nothing to tell Nigerians, APC leaders are now concentrating on the strategy of trying to elbow Jonathan out of the race in 2015.
What still rankles, however, is why the same APC elements that have labelled Jonathan as weak and ineffective are running away from defeating him at the polls and claiming as well a deserved psychological victory over their opponent? If you are wondering why the APC leadership is obsessed with President Jonathan as the PDP candidate instead of raising a formidable candidate of its own to challenge the PDP, well, the answer is simple: it is safer to discuss the PDP presidential candidate because the very thought of choosing its own presidential candidate may be nunc dimittis for it (APC).
Abimbola Jones contributed this piece from Ikeja, Lagos via Abimbolajones2013@yahoo.com