APC and Buhari’s strange bedfellows There are politicians and there is Muhammadu Buhari. The people wish that politicians would be like Buhari, and they are not. Politicians wish that Buhari is like them, but he is not. Buhari wants the world to see him as a politician, albeit of a different hue and he is, but the voting world hates him for that. Buhari was born the regimented life and raised like one. The regimented is his quotidian but politics is struggling to share that space. Buhari’s best fans prefer the General and they show it with their hero’s most famous pictures – of him in his starched officer’s khaki. Buhari’s most marketable qualities are his frankness and his integrity, not his oratory. Politicians talk from their heads because they don’t mean a thing they say, Buhari talks from his heart things that reflect his worldview. Politicians can recant on truth if a lie would win them popularity, Buhari can’t. He is as convincingly rigid as a pole. He says it as he sees it and truly means it that is not the attribute of a politician. Today, politicians are attracted to Buhari just like wild pollen attracts wild bees. This is no surprise as psychologists say that opposites attract. Seeking the people’s mandate, Buhari knows he has to make concessions and it is evident he tolerates a antics of the motley crowd hovering around him. The legendary Buhari is unlikely to stand anywhere near most of those who, today eagerly position themselves for a photo-op. They hover because their public service credentials are suspect and in a free and fair election with their own wives and children as voters, they are bound to fail. These genres of political jobbers see Buhari as the sunscreen preventing them from political sunburn. On their own, not only would they be burnt, they would come out of the rays with Kaposi sarcoma. In their photo-ops, shaking hands or measuring heights, a streak of revulsion welts through one’s being because they approach the hallowed temple of Buhari’s integrity with the putrescence of their soiled political baggage. Just like anyone who has tried to turn a pig into a house pet would know, it is usually okay provided the compound is cemented and there is no mire anywhere near. Politicians who got to the pinnacle of their political career with sheer brigandage and subterfuge are hovering around the CPC or is it the APC. There is basically a reason for that. They blew the few chances they had and their illusion of escaping retribution is to hang around the APC. The alternative is to bootlick their way back to their mire or roll in with the PDP. They live in constant fear of a political tsunami akin to the Arab Spring sweeping through the country and consuming thereby preventing them from enjoying the booty they have stashed away all over the place. They call themselves ex-governors, ministers and who is who, but they are true carpetbaggers whose lives and sense of living is sustained by their nouveau association with the man even the Satan of politics credit with unquestioned integrity. If a sweep were to happen, they know that they would have to stupefy Buhari to escape retribution. Openly they call for change, but secretly hope it never happens. This is my take on the cure-all tablet called APC and its ingredients of strange bedfellows. Its creation is a welcome distraction from the annoyance of the ruling clique. If only the political waters had not been so muddied it would have been possible to see through its murky depths. There is no gainsaying that having been short- changed for 13 years by the PDP, this country needs an identifiable face of change. But given the antecedents of most of these hangers’ on, can these leopards change their ingrained spots? With a polarised electorate still living in their ethnic, religious and sundry stereotypes and calcified in their preconceived notions – what is the joker for 2015? Thus far, APC is like a stump, with shrinking foliage. If it were to count for anything in 2015, even with the dynamic disorder in the ruining party, it would need a fast-growing fertilizer for its ideals. It would have to lift itself from the pages of newspapers and opinion writers, cure its teething hiccups and plant itself in the fertile hearts and minds of the electorate. It would have to woo them from the four winds of our nation with the credibility of Buhari clones that can stand on their own integrity and not merely the shadow of the General. There is no time to waste and every second counts. If we miss this train, God help our nation.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 19:58:53 +0000
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