Many Nigerians expected an immediate frenzy on the campaign train as soon as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) lifted the ban on campaigns ahead of the 2019 elections. All the formalities as to presentation and substitution of candidates ended on December 17, according to INEC’s timelines. So campaigns for the February 16, 2019 elections, including the Presidential and National Assembly elections are to officially flag off on December 18.
But Nigerians had to practically wait for another week before they witness action from the campaign soapbox. And it was the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that kick-started the train. The party, with its presidential hopeful, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, had picked out Sokoto, the capital of Sokoto State in the North West of Nigeria to kick off the campaigns. The choice of the location was instructive. President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) hails from that zone. It was as if the PDP had taken the battle to Buhari’s main courtyard and they were expected to receive some cold shoulders from supporters of the “son of the soil.” This thinking flows from the experience of the PDP in that zone during the last presidential contest in 2015.
The campaign train led by former President Goodluck Jonathan had a torrid time navigating through a hail of pebbles and stones hauled at it in some Northern capitals. It was a show of anger by those who showed their support to the then main challenger to the presidential seat and now incumbent President Buhari. Though a number of commentators criticised the open animosity against Jonathan’s campaign as opposition taken too far, the practice got replicated at different centres.
At the kickoff of the 2019 campaign, however, the experience was a wide difference. The crowd that welcomed Atiku Abubakar and the PDP to Sokoto for the North-West zonal rally was unprecedented. The crowd jolted even members of the ruling APC, who sought to downplay its essence.
Apparently seeking to undermine whatever gains the opposition party might have recorded at the Sokoto rally, outspoken Governor of Kaduna state, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai alleged that the PDP had rented its crowd from Niger Republic.
He said: “The 2019 general election is a poll between trustworthy people and thieves, between patriotic leaders and those who went to Abuja to loot our treasury.
“So we have to stand up and show them that Kaduna is not a state that will allow them cheat the people and the masses. What we have done in Kaduna State in the last three years has shown that APC as a party is the one that loves the masses and assists the masses, not a party that will take public fund and share among the rich. That is why we want you people to go out and tell the people to vote President Muhammadu Buhari again.
“Thieves have ganged up against President Muhammadu Buhari. Yesterday (Monday), they were in Sokoto, and they rented crowd from Niger Republic just to show people that they have supporters, because Sokoto people refused to come out. So when it is time to launch President Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign in Kaduna, people should come for the whole world to see that it is not Niger Republic people that are disguising as Nigerians.”
In a quick social media riposte, the former governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Sule Lamido, took el-Rufai to the cleaners saying that if he called the PDP loyalists thieves, he must be a son of a thief since he spent 12 years in the PDP, which sired him into partisan politics.
The PDP immediately replied el-Rufai and the APC, insisting that the ruling party was jittery at the successful campaigns it held in Sokoto. In a statement by the Director of Media and Publicity of the Presidential campaign, Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP said that the huge crowd that attended the rally was an acceptance of its presidential candidate and a rejection of President Buhari.
The PDP said: “The campaign council appreciates and commends the courage and show of patriotism by the people of the North-West in rejecting President Buhari and sectional politics to support Atiku Abubakar, in keeping with the collective quest to unify our nation and revamp our ailing economy.
“Atiku Abubakar’s acceptance by the North-West establishes the common feeling among Nigerians that he embodies a practical solution to the myriad of problems brought upon our nation by Muhammadu Buhari’s incompetent, divisive, repressive and insensitive administration.
“The massive reception expresses the confidence of the North-West in Atiku Abubakar’s proven pro-poor stance; his standing affinity with the down-trodden and his demonstrated competence, capacity and political will to revamp our economy, end starvation, sectional acrimony, human rights abuse and humongous corruption, which the Buhari administration has unleashed on our nation in the last three and half years.
“The PDP campaign council, therefore, urges the people of the North-West and Nigerians in general, to continue to stand in unity in their resolution to vote for Atiku Abubakar as the next President and free our nation from the clutches of his misrule.”
While at the Sokoto, Atiku worshipped at the tomb of the revered Othman Dan Fodio, spoke the local language and declared himself a ‘son of the soil.’ He asked the people to refused being deceived adding that he was one person who knows how to lift them from poverty.
He said: “I’m a Jack of all trades. I did almost all the businesses in this world. I’m a farmer, a businessman and a civil servant,” he said. “I did everything in search of wealth, for this reason, among the presidential candidates; no one can help the youth better than me.
“My great grandparents are from Wurno, Sokoto State. I can prove myself by speaking Fulfulde to you now. I am Atiku Abubakar, your brother, a Fulani man. I present to you myself. I’m seeking to be Nigerian president, please vote for me. Don’t trust anybody to come and deceive you.”
He fired a shot at the direction of his main opponent when he said that the 2019 election would be about fighting poverty, hunger, unemployment and disunity among Nigerians and said:
“Don’t let those whose cows for years are only 150 come and lie to you. My cows are more than thousands,” he said. “Be mindful of those deceivers, liars and cheats, there’s nothing Nigeria needs more than to make sure that the youth and the poor are empowered.”
On December 5, the campaign train was off to Ilorin, Kwara State, which hosted the North-Central zonal campaign and on December 6, the train birthed at the capital of Oyo State for the South-West version of the rally.
In Ibadan, Atiku told the crowd that he would kick-start the restructuring of Nigeria within six months of getting to office. He also promised to get Nigeria working again by providing jobs for the jobless and elevating the standards of living.
In appraising the Ibadan rally, the PDP campaign Organisation said that the unprecedented crowd that received Atiku and the campaign train is an “undisputable pointer that the region has abandoned President Muhammadu Buhari and his vice, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, ahead of the 2019 general elections.”
The PDP said that the people of South-West had demonstrated their readiness to align with other parts of the country to rescue the country “from the stranglehold of the incompetent, corrupt and anti-people Buhari administration.”
The PDP further said: “The South-West people have shown that nobody can buy their conscience with N10, 000 or sway them with ethnic preachments, especially the same persons who have been exploiting them and diverting their resources to enrich themselves and family members.
“As a geopolitical zone that plays leading role in most of the critical sectors of our national life and which has the highest convergence of all sections and interests across our nation, the decision to align with Atiku Abubakar signals the consolidation of the national consensus to vote him as the next president of Nigeria, come 2019.
“By this, Nigerians in the South West have reinforced the quit notice which the North-West, North-Central and other zones had already served on President Buhari.”
Though the ruling All Progressives Congress is yet to kick-off its campaign, its leaders are ensuring that they have a voice in the booming PDP campaign.
At a function in Nyanya axis of Abuja, a suburb of the Federal capital, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo and the former governor of Lagos State took direct shots at the PDP and its presidential candidate. While Osinbajo echoed el-Rufai to indicate that some persons are ganging up against Buhari because he has dealt with “grand corruption,” Tinubu tagged Atiku a “directionless politician.”
While the PDP remains the only party to have hit the campaign train so far, some of the contenders are however picking their events and strategies, while putting forward the days of their open campaigns.
Presidential candidate of the Peoples Trust (PT), Mr. Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, also got busy on the sidelines of the soap box during the first week of campaigns. He had hosted a programme every other day since November 18 flag off of presidential campaigns. At a media function, he told newsmen that the time has come for Nigerians to vote for well-educated candidates who could interpret the dynamics of 21st century economy.
He said that it was an irony that while a barely educated Nigerian population in the pre-independence and immediate post-independence era voted for well -educated leaders, Nigerians of today, who have acquired more degrees than their forebears were yearning to be led by uneducated persons.
Though Olawepo-Hashim himself has not mounted the soap box after the lifting of the ban on open campaigns, his campaign organisation has been busy with activities.
His party marked the first anniversary of the National Intervention Movement (NIM), which is the organ used to midwife a coalition for the political vehicle, PT. he also held a stakeholders consultative assembly of the PT as well as social media engagements in aid of the campaign.
Speaking at the stakeholders’ forum, Olawepo-Hashim said that a government of PT would ensure living minimum wage of N50, 0000 for Nigerian workers adding that his government is committed to raising the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country from $510 billion to $4 trillion.
On Thursday, the Olawepo-Hashim campaign organisation revealed the data from a compilation of social media engagements of presidential candidates showing he had shot into the second position among presidential hopefuls on the Facebook.
According to the statement, Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim overtook Presidential Muhammadu Buhari in social media engagements as monitored via Facebook. The statement revealed that as of the December 6, 2018, Mr. Olawepo-Hashim had pushed President Muhammadu Buhari to a distant third position.
The Facebook analysis of the engagements showed that while the presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar had 25,000 engagements, PT’s candidate Olawepo-Hashim recorded 19,900, leaving Buhari at a distant third position with only 10,400 engagements.
Other details on the analysis showed that Fela Durotoye of the Alliance for New Nigeria, (ANN), and Kingsley Moghalu of YPP had 6,700 and 5,200 engagements respectively. The statement also indicated the Olawepo-Hashim had hosted a meeting of some 20 political parties which held discussions on how to nominate him as a consensus candidate under the PT alliance.
Presidential candidate of the Young Progressive Party (YPP), a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN), Kingsley Moghalu decided to launch the distribution of his campaign material immediately the ban on campaigns were lifted by INEC. The free online copies of the book titled
‘BIG’, an acronym for Build, Innovate, Grow were dished out to Nigerians of all cadres in a road show in Lagos.
He said in a statement: “I have painstakingly outlined my vision for Nigeria in my book. I am the first and dare say only presidential candidate to ever do this. It is not a policy document or just a few years plan, it’s a vision that even my successors can latch onto and continue with. With my book B.I.G, all Nigerians have a real blue print of what to expect from 2019.”
The statement further quoted him as saying. “My presidency will successfully move Nigeria away from an oil dependent economy to one that rewards innovation, creative thinking and hard work. For far too long, we have depended on oil to drive this nation because leadership has been lazy. That will change when I become president. The knowledge economy is what drives nations, not its non-renewable resources. My presidency will end this rent economy we have been running and restore hope to a suffering people. Nigerians deserve better than they have been getting from these two political parties who can’t fix the nation’s problems because they simply do not know better or have the capacity to.”
Perhaps to answer the question of his failure to mount the soap box yet, Moghalu said: “As I kick off my campaign on the platform of the YPP, I want Nigerians not to be carried away by the big political rallies of the establishment candidates and their empty, meaningless promises. I want Nigerians to ignore the concerts these candidates will be assailing them with on the campaign trail. Nigerians should be asking themselves if their lives have been any better under the stewardship of the PDP and APC since 1999. That’s what 2019 is about and not just campaign jingles with no depth to them.”
Besides calling the candidates of the big parties establishment persons, who should be voted out, he also indicated that it was high time Nigerians vote for intellectually stable persons.
Presidential candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, who also held a session on November 19, shortly after the ban on campaigns was lifted said that Nigerians should not lower their standards by voting for either President Muhammadu Buhari or Atiku Abubakar.
Speaking in Abuja on November 19, Ezekwesili said that Nigeria needs a leader a leader like her “to make the country realise its huge potential.”
She accused President Buhari of failing to keep the promises he made in the build up to the 2019 election adding: “I cannot stand it when we choose to accept mediocrity or resign ourselves to lowly standards. Nigeria can do much better.
“I care about Nigeria and Nigerians enough to know that the back-to-back failed leadership has held us back for far too long, and if we do not take a stand and take our country back, they would still be here in years to come, holding back our children and their children. God forbid!”
She further said: “The APC campaigned in 2015 on a manifesto that propagated the doctrine of restructuring. President Buhari went along with it every step of the way because it is all about getting into power for him. He won and then began to renege on his promises, including on restructuring. He suddenly remembered all the reasons why ‘structure is not the problem’ with Nigeria.
“I want to reignite belief in Nigeria’s greatness by leading a government that would make clear promises to citizens and deliver on them, not like the current leadership which spent its first year in office denying all the promises it made to get into that office.”
So far, the first week of the presidential campaign has shown little on the campaign train for most of the 78 candidates slated for the presidential race. That could, however, be understandable in view of the fluid nature of the 2019 politics. Last week, the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) comprising 45 parties announced they have adopted Atiku Abubakar of the PDP as a common candidate. On Friday, the parties met and set target for Atiku’s presentation as the coalition’s candidate.
PT’s Olawepo-Hashim, regarded as the Third Force candidate also announced the hosting of a 20 party coalition that would back his aspiration. With such state of flux in the horizon, the slow pace of the campaigns from parties other than the PDP could be understandable.
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