- By UWODE E.J.
Political discuss geared towards making sound extrapolations with realistic outcomes is expected to be distant from ethnic, religious, sentiments and party affiliations which are factors that most times becloud the sense of reasoning of a mediocre political analyst.
With reference to the 2019 presidential election, an intelligent political analysts would have first and foremost gotten a clear understanding of the Nigerian political terrain that bordered around 1) Nature of the politician 2)Federal might 3)power of incumbency and the components inherent in the polity (stakeholders such as the politicians, the electorates, the political umpire (INEC) and institutions ) in order to reach a logical conclusion.
The outcome of the presidential election adjudged from election results, as announced by INEC has unveiled the faces behind the mask. Indeed some prophesies have gone soured, portraying such prophets as people who indulge in tentative guess under the guise of prophecy. Also some perceived godfathers who have held the nation to Ransome through their ordaining of perceived desired candidates on egocentric and unscrupulous ground have also been rendered politically irrelevant.
I want to unequivocally state that there is no point amplifying the mockery of such elements whose anticipations over who becomes Nigeria’s president elect ended euphoria. Even the Almighty U.S predicted national disintegration of Nigeria after the 2015 election and ended up making a foolery of themselves.
Pastors and prophets who can be tagged political oracles should not also feel embittered if their predictions finally made a nonsense of themselves. It was in this country that a senior colleague of theirs saw a woman emerging the president of the U.S while Donald Trump eventually turned out the winner of the presidential contest. It makes no buzz anymore if our top notch prophets indulge in tentative guess just to seek political relevance.
A killer syndrome of good governance in Nigeria has been the pronounced and destructive politics of godfatherism and election rigging. The suspense and the thrillers in this particular election lyes in the relegation of the Almighty Bukola Saraki and the boastful letter writing expert whose anticipations hit the rocks, an indication that there is no God in any man. Hmmmm, How hath thy mighty fallen!!!. This immediately reminds one of the Biblical injunction that one with God is majority and one with humans like saraki, OBJ, T.Y Danjuma and a host of others are minority. Buhari is indeed a game changer, an action driven man and not a noise maker.
To my fellow political analysts who predict outcomes using parameters of campaign crowd and social media support, my advise is for you to discard sentiments and face reality when analysing issues of electoral concerns. Campaign crowd is never a reflection of the realities on ground. Part of the campaign crowd are mostly hired, some have PVC but don’t vote, some don’t have PVCs and some appear just for the financial gains involved and some end up being social media supporters who only have data and no PVC and can give no pragmatic contribution to electoral victory. I guess this was the faulty strategy employed by the anti-Buhari fan in making their predictions that finally hit the rocks. The interplay of this factor explains why oppositions are ever shocked over election outcomes and cry out rigging.
I strongly believe also that the anti-Buhari crew applied the wrong formulae by allowing a money bag politician to become the flag bearer of the PDP when there were credible candidates that could have guaranteed their wider acceptability. Am sure while doing this, they forgot the voting Tsunami comes majorly from the Northerners who can not compromise integrity for social status of which president Buhari possesses such a criterion .
PDP missed it again when party stakeholders chose an Igbo man to deputise Atiku, forgetting also the uncommon hatred for the Igbo tribe by the Northern and western entity.
The voting power of the entire south south and south east can be swept away by just the votes of two major states in the northern part e.g Kano and Kaduna. The heavy reliance of the Atiku fans on the inconsequential vote of the south east and south south was politically suicidal.
The man Atiku finally shot himself in the leg when his campaign objective shifted from restructuring to the proposed sales of NNPC. While doing this, I guess he forgot that Nigerians don’t jettison history in a hurry. I mean how could they have forgotten the draconian impact of the then privatisation policy under the watch of the Obasanjo led administration of which Atiku was part of?.
No doubt the downsizing and rightsizing policies led to the retrenchment of workers in the public sector, which also amounted to the acquisition of such public assets by the Atiku and OBJ as beneficiaries. This alone could not give Nigerians the confidence to entrust the lifeblood of the nation (NNPC) in the hands of some business moguls like Atiku whose intent is adjudged on his previous deeds.
Rigging!! Rigging!! has become the trending chorus from the opposition but I want to state here without prejudice, that even if the free and fairest election is conducted , the losers will sure cry foul.
The February 18th supposed presidential election was postponed and rescheduled on the premise of suspected issues that could compromise the electoral process. On 23rd February 2019, the presidential election was finally conducted under the auspices of the international watch dogs like the U.S , EU who confirmed the election was devoid of sharp practices before the commencement of result announcement by INEC. If the anti-Buhari group feel aggrieved on the ground of rigging, I think they should channel their grievances to the international bodies that observed the process and not my amiable president elect (Buhari).
As president Buhari whisks to Aso Rock with a landslide victory of 15, 191,847 votes, I here by plead with the opposition to exercise the spirit of sportsmanship and work with the president elect to take Nigeria to the next level and get the country working again, made possible through the already politically exile of our suppose godfathers from the polity.
UWODE E.J. can be reached via email; jojoamaniarea@gmail.com.
