PDP, APC and abusive election

Oyegun - Muazu

“Never was ability so much below mediocrity so well rewarded, not, not even when Caligula’s horse was made a consul,” said John Randolph on Richard Rush in the early days of the United States Congress. He could very well have been talking about President Goodluck Jonathan. But since the All Progressives Congress (APC) has sworn not to focus on the person of Dr Jonathan, though his person could not be divorced from his modest accomplishments, we may be deprived of great invectives directed against the president. Indeed, insults have from time immemorial been an integral part of politics, and memorable putdowns have served to excite, engage and humour the electorate. As an influence on voting pattern, however, their utility is doubtful. Nonetheless, in 2015, Nigeria seems nostalgically to be returning to the virulent past, a past that never really left us.

In more than four statements in the past three weeks, the APC has wisely decided its presidential campaign will centre on issues instead of abuse, on facts rather than fiction, and on perspectives rather than persons. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on the other hand has cleverly impressed it on everyone, including party leaders and unwary voters, that its campaign will focus almost exclusively on vitriolic abuse. The reason is clear: on the exigent issues of the day, the PDP is at its wit’s end, unable to offer explanations for its failures and incapable of envisioning a glorious future. The ruling party will therefore do its damnedest to restrict the campaign to abuse and its focus to persons. If the APC is smart, it will recognise it is unlikely to match the PDP in abuse, and must therefore do its level best to stick to issues, where it will be able to prove with little or no effort how woefully the ruling party had performed, and how inept it had become in remedying the grave issues of the day and the mortal dangers of the near future.

It is often hard to detach abuse from politics, especially because it constitutes an irresistible part of the dialectics of political campaign. But never in the history of Nigeria has any government proved so derelict of achievements as the President Goodluck Jonathan government, consequent upon which it seems unrepentantly set on avoiding campaigning on records. Indeed, it has already kick-started the campaign of abuse, and is pursuing it unabashedly and with all ferocity. In the past two weeks, two top officials of the PDP have dredged the sewers of abuse so openly it is unmistakable what their objectives are. National chairman of the PDP, Adamu Muazu, drew the first blood when, through his assistant, he described the APC candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, as idiosyncratically combative and anti-democratic, traits he concluded would be introduced into APC governance should the opposition party win the presidential election in 2015. It was scaremongering at its worst, but strictly speaking, since it was not libellous, Alhaji Muazu felt confident to make his opinion public.

If Alhaji Muazu’s misplaced description of Gen Buhari as a warlord was not bad enough, the ruling party’s national secretary, Prof Adewale Oladipo, descended a notch lower by describing the APC presidential candidate as semiliterate, a reference to the fact that he has no university degree. Dr Jonathan on the other hand had a PhD, said the PDP official, irrespective of what he had done, or is capable of doing, with it. The 2015 presidential poll, Prof Oladipo gloated, “is going to be between darkness and light, it is going to be between a cosmopolitan, highly focused PhD holder and a semiliterate jackboot.” The problem with invectives is that they don’t have to bear any semblance to truth or reality. If not, there is hardly any Nigerian who does not know that Gen Buhari exudes gravitas as opposed to Dr Jonathan’s boyish simplicity, honesty as opposed to the president’s manifest and offensive untruths, forthrightness as opposed to the president’s prevarications, energy as opposed to the president’s lassitude, and cultured outlook as opposed to the president’s provocative provincialism.

Even if we cavil at the PDP’s style of campaign, the party seems to have little or no alternative. There are no spectacular roads rebuilt on a significant scale to flaunt, and no rail network of high-speed trains to boast of. The PDP government has established more universities, but that is not what Nigeria needs, for the government is unable to maintain the existing ones. The hospitals are a little better than consulting clinics, and whole communities and long stretches of roads are unsafe. Kidnappers run riot, abducted schoolgirls are raped and killed, and schoolboys are massacred at will. The government has become so impotent that it seems there is no government in law and in fact.

To avoid emphasis on these embarrassing facts, the PDP will focus attention on the persons of the APC leadership and candidates. If they are tired of focusing on Gen Buhari, and cannot focus on his running mate, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, they will seize some of the party’s national leaders, especially Bola Ahmed Tinubu, their favourite customer, to denigrate. In short, no matter what anyone says, and no matter what the APC does, the PDP will stubbornly remain glued to a campaign of calumny because of its tantalising opportunities. That is its lifeline; that is its last straw to clutch at. That is the engine of its presidential campaign; that in fact is the culmination of its 2015 campaign. It can do no other thing.

The electorate will be left to judge in the final analysis who has run the most effective campaign between the PDP and APC, and which is the most persuasive, campaign of issues or campaign of abuse. The voters will be left to judge whether describing Gen Buhari as semiliterate resonates as powerfully as portraying the impotence of Dr Jonathan in rescuing the 219 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram; or whether labelling the general a warlord is not a compliment in the face of Dr Jonathan’s proven failure in taking the battle to the rampaging Boko Haram, a terror group that has caused so much catastrophe in the country and schism, disquiet and restiveness in the Nigerian military.

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