WRITTEN BY NIYI BELLO OF GUARDIAN BUHARIS STRTEGISES, MARCHES ON IN Save Ondo State COUNTDOWN to the 2015 general elections, the political fortune of the former military Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari, has been growing in leaps and bounds in Ondo State. This in sharp contrast to what obtained during the build-up to the 2011 presidential election in the state, when, as the candidate of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the retired general could not raise a crowd big enough to be addressed at a rally in Akure, the capital city of the state. Then, a scheduled rally to showcase the strength of Buhari and provide a platform for him to address the people of the state on his ambition was cancelled at the last minute because the organisers were able to mobilise only a handful of CPC faithful, not even enough to constitute a welcome party at the airport. At that time, the picture of Buhari in the mind of an average Ondo voter was that of a callous dictator, who supervised a draconian regime that jailed many Second Republic politicians, including the highly revered former governor of Ondo and statesman, the late Chief Adekunle Ajasin. These politicians were put behind bars not because they were corrupt but that they enriched their political platforms, an action that has become the norm rather than the exception in the current democratic dispensation. The average Ondo voter had been receptive to negative campaigns against the Buhari person by the state’s opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling Labour Party (LP), which, incidentally publicly endorsed the candidacy of President Goodluck Jonathan. The two bodies shrouded the retired general as a religious extremist who may likely be connected with the emerging insurgency in the northern part of the country. Also responsible for the low opinion by which the Ondo people had of Buhari was the weak platform of the CPC in the state. The party could not boast of any big player in the political field and to most electorate, the party was at best non-existent. The party could only boast of a non-functional office in Akure and no visible presence in the 18 local councils to coordinate the activities of a handful of aspirants that contested on its platform. However, in the last few weeks, the table has turned in favour of the former military leader and gradually, new tunes are being sung about him, as most people see in him the positive light of a Messiah that could change the fortunes of the country for the better. Buhari is also riding on the crest of a new popularity occasioned partly by the dwindling rating of the incumbent president, as seen in the failures of government in various sectors and the changing environment of Ondo politics in which the state governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, seems to have lost considerable support base in the grassroots. Besides, compared to his CPC days, Buhari, a strong contender in the All Progressives Congress (APC), is on a relatively strong platform. Although the party has some leadership challenges and structural weaknesses, as some minuses that have been militating against its expansion, it boasts of an entrenched structure in the entire Southwest zone. The APC also derives its strength from its expected historical role in the first experiment of an unprecedented alliance between the North and the Southwest — a new coalition that many see as capable of turning a refreshingly new leaf for the politics of the country. The fact that Buhari has not scaled the hurdle of picking the presidential ticket of the APC appears to be a non-issue to his ever-growing base of followers, who observers see as gradually turning fanatical in their quest. In taxi cabs and drinking joints, markets and gatherings of people, the slogan among discussants is “Sai Buhari” with the accompanying chorus of “Change”. The former picture has been supplanted with that of a no-nonsense soldier, who has zero tolerance for corruption and whose contribution to making Nigeria a disciplined society reverberates more than 30 years after he left office in the monthly sanitation programme that many states in the country still observe. His growing army of supporters concur that with a Buhari at the helm of affairs, the country would be turned into a disciplined society and that with his military background — an attribute he shared with former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who many believe would have dealt a decisive blow on the Boko Haram insurgency — terrorism would, in no time, be a thing of the past. A new awareness has also overtaken his alleged religious bigotry, as many, particularly among the educated class, have embarked on the task of enlightening the citizenry on why the religious belief of a president should not deny Nigerians of the opportunity to have the best material, as long as the constitutionally-guaranteed religious secularity of the country would be respected. And because of the fact that many see corruption as the major bane of the country’s development and the need to put things in a new order instead of the business-as-usual posture of the current dispensation, a lot of Buhari’s emergency disciples are already creating a halo of an incorruptible leader that would deal decisively with members of the corrupt class, no matter how highly placed. Interestingly, Buhari draws his support from the ordinary man on the streets of major towns in the state because, compared to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, another foremost contender to the APC ticket, the retired general has no publicly-known political associate or close friend among the state’s elite. Atiku is known to be very close to the Asiwaju of Owo, Otunba Oyewole Fasawe, his mutual friend and that of his erstwhile boss, former President Obasanjo. Early this year, the Turakin Adamawa was in Akure, as a guest at the burial of the father of the State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Eyitayo Jegede, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), who was based in Yola, the capital of Atiku’s home state of Adamawa, before his appointment. NOTWITHSTANDING, the most important factor responsible for the rise in Buhari’s public acceptability rating is the crisis rocking the Ondo PDP since the defection of the state governor into the party and the mutual mistrust that has permeated the membership layers of the platform. The party has been divided along the line of the old members, who are now known as “the PDP Konigba”, a title that shows their blunt refusal to hand over the machinery of the party to the new Mimiko leadership and “the PDP Gbasibe”, which stands for those of the LP ilk who are popular for mouthing the slogan for which the party got into the people’s consciousness in 2007. A new slogan that depicts another dimension that the state politics is taking is “PDP Change”, a corrupt version of the APC slogan, which shows that a large chunk of PDP faithful has keyed into the APC dream. President Jonathan and the Senate President, David Mark reportedly brokered an agreement in Abuja, ceding the bulk of the elective positions in the PDP to Mimiko. This settlement, detrimental to the old members, who had toiled for years to sustain the platform, has created disenchantment in the camp so thick that it could be physically felt. The most contentious aspect of the agreement, however, is the cancellation of internal democracy of the party, with the selection of candidates, many of who have no support base, in a consensus manner that did not take the feelings of the electorate or the choice of majority of party members into consideration. In almost all cases, unpopular candidates or those already in the black book of the electorate were rammed down the throats of party members in a manner that was strange to the PDP, a party that has a semblance of internal democracy when compared to others. Perhaps, the most absurd in the unilateral picking of candidates is the choice of the senatorial candidate of the Central District, sitting Senator Ayo Akinyelure, who became popular not because of the number of beneficial bills he sponsored on the floor of the Senate or his informed contributions to issues, but for voting in support of child marriage. His constituents were so angered by his support for this obnoxious bill that he shed tears of remorse when he was summoned and threatened with a recall. He explained that he made a mistake in the choice of button to press when voting was going on. Thus, the emergence of Akinyelure, despite the public angst against his current mandate, has shut the doors against the candidature of somebody like Ifedayo Adedipe, a Port Harcourt-based Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), who is believed to be one of the ‘First Eleven’ to aspire to represent the state at the Upper Chamber. With this situation, it is almost certain that the PDP is going to next year’s elections with a divided house where the fear of an Otedola treatment, in which disenchanted members would work against the party’s interest during elections, is very real. In 1992, the division in the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) caused by the rivalry between Chief Dapo Sarumi and Prof. Femi Agbalajobi cost the party the governorship of Lagos State. Apart from the disqualification handed the disputants by the military administration of Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, the aggrieved members of the SDP worked underneath for the success of now late Sir Michael Otedola, the candidate of a less popular National Republican Convention (NRC) in Lagos. Apart from those who are suspected to have decided to remain inside and work for outside interests, in this case, the APC candidates, scores of others have publicly defected to the party from the weak coalition of the PDP/LP. Two sitting legislators in the State House of Assembly, Gbenga Edema of Ilaje 2 constituency and Fola Olasehinde of Ose, have picked their APC membership cards and four others are rumoured to be planning to do same in the next one week. A member of the House of Representatives, Gani Dauda of Akoko North West/East Federal Constituency, has also publicly joined the APC while his counterpart in Irele/Okitipupa Constituency, Albert Akintoye, an old PDP member who lost out in the new post-sharing arrangement once announced his defection to the APC, an action he dropped at the commencement of another round of failed negotiations. On the list of other immensely popular aspirants who may have no choice than to pick their tents in the APC camp are Adedayo Omolafe, a well-loved grassroots politician and former Chairman of Akure South local council who belongs to the old PDP family. Omolafe was already on the course of being a member of the lower house representing Akure South/North before the Mimiko coalition, an aftermath of which threw up a relatively unknown aspirant in the person of one Dare Aliu as the consensus candidate. Sources disclosed to The Guardian that the APC national leadership is already having discussion not only with Omolafe but with the duo of Abayomi Sheba and Agboola Ajayi, two foremost senatorial aspirants in the old PDP in the southern district whose ambitions have been cut short by the ceding of the post to the LP faction and unilateral picking of Yele Omogunwa as the candidate. While many of the rejected but popular aspirants have vowed to continue to fight for their tickets through the law courts, an action that may not yield any positive results at the long run, the APC is waiting in the wings, like a patient Vulture, to feed on the carcases of failed ambition and reap maximally from their support base among the voting population. The candidature of Buhari, if he eventually emerged as the flag-bearer of the APC, is also expected to be buoyed by the traditional support base of the APC in the state and in the fielding of popular candidates by the party in the contest for the National Assembly seats. And because the presidential and National Assembly are scheduled to hold the same day, votes for these candidates would certainly count for the APC flag-bearer and in the view of political analysts, Buhari would certainly get more than the required 25 percent in the election of February 14, 2015 in Ondo State.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 06:28:14 +0000
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