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From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
To many observers, there is no significant departure from the status quo in terms of campaigns by political parties ahead of the 2023 presidential election. The build up to the poll has remained largely less issue-based with dearth of quality messages but characterized by attacks and mudslinging among opponents.
In the usual tradition, it is still the customary format of assembling crowd, entertaining them with singing and dancing while little or no attention is paid to the campaign messages.
Uniform dress codes, especially for the visiting presidential campaign team officials, are predictably the same. It is still the usual reflection of the cultural identity of the host ethnic region. It remains a replication of the cultural outfits of the geopolitical zone of every state visited.
The 2023 presidential campaign rallies, for example in states like Ondo, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ekiti, and Lagos will predictably illustrate Yoruba attire as dress code, ditto other geopolitical zones where they appear in either ‘Isiagu’ for South East, Ijar outfit for the South-South or flowing agbada for the entire North.
From the commercial angle, it has been a windfall for fabric dealers and tailors as they smile to the bank for supplying and sewing the cultural uniforms popularly called Asoebi. The outfits, to a large extent, identify the host states as thousands of supporters usually storm campaign grounds in cocktails of alluring dresses.
The physical appearances, the financial rewards, and the glamour have been the biggest takeaway for the supporters mobilised for different reasons and missions.
For many of them, it is to make up the numbers and to have a glimpse of the candidates and their entourage of political stalwarts but for some, it is an assigned role to cheer the officials. There are those who play the devil’s role unleashing violence to the political opponents or sing praises of their friends.
Ask an average Nigerian at a campaign rally their takeaway, and it will shockingly be the entertainers in attendance and the generosity of the organisers in parting with peanuts.
Many agree that it is never about the issue raised, the campaign promises or the manifestos of the candidates.
Curiously, the amplification of gaffes by the candidates, depending on the gravity and perhaps the person involved, is a regular feature of the 2023 presidential campaigns. The candidates, instead of adopting issue-based campaigns, rather capitalised on and used the mistakes of one another as instruments of disparaging attacks.
The register of the 2023 poll include such remarks as, “don’t handover sick country to a sick president, don’t mind those spewing fake, dubious statistics without any experience to show; “vote for Hausa, not Yoruba or Igbo candidates.”
Disappointingly, campaign issues are almost a replica of those used in successive republics. Provision of basic amenities like electricity, pipe-borne water, construction of roads, healthcare, food sufficiency through agriculture, economic diversifications, national unity, salary increments, fight against corruption, and lately restructuring, tackling insecurity, forex crisis among many others still remain part of the campaign messages.
And even as Nigeria currently faces countless challenges, particularly widespread insecurity, energy, severe economic crisis, and spiraling inequalities, insults, accusations of corruption, and derogatory name callings among the candidates have been dominant in the build up to the election.
Little or nothing is also heard on sensitive issues like foreign policies, pragmatic solutions to the unending ethnic agitations and threatening issues of farmers-herders conflicts, banditry, insurgency, and state/community policing as the panacea to checkmating the escalating insecurity.
Lamentably, it even assumed a disturbing dimension when the presidential candidates of the frontline political parties delivered a bitter end to the campaign, accused one another of scandalous corruption, called for arrest, prosecution, and withdrawal from the race.
Corruption allegations between the candidates of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar and his All Progressives Congress (APC) counterpart, Bola Tinubu, recently assumed dangerous dimensions as they threw the stench at each other.
Media handlers of both candidates last week heightened the allegations during a separate press briefing and enumerated the unforgivable sins of corruption committed by the candidates, and surprisingly demanded their apologies to Nigerians and immediate withdrawal from the presidential race.
The APC Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) had escalated the allegations by accusing Atiku of fleecing the country with the alleged scandalous revelations of using Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) during his tenure as Vice President.
The spokesperson, Festus Keyamo, who read a press statement jointly signed by the retinue of the PCC media department, among other requests charged relevant security agencies to arrest and prosecute Atiku, over the revelations from a whistle-blower, Michael Achimugu, in what has been trending ‘Atiku gate’.
The APC PCC media crew had claimed that the PDP candidate “colluded with his then boss, Olusegun Obasanjo, to fleece the country and steal public funds using SPVs.
“Those SPVs were companies Atiku admittedly registered upon assumption of office as Vice President (with the approval of President Obasanjo) using ‘trusted allies’ as shareholders and companies as consultants, then paid monies into these companies and used those monies to fund the PDP, their private businesses and family activities,” the APC claimed.
Enumerating possible infractions of law Atiku committed, the APC PCC noted that; “from the oral account of the whistle-blowers, the voice notes and all other supporting documents, Atiku committed offenses against the code of conduct for public officers, money laundering, criminal breach of trust, Section 311 of the Penal Code Law and conspiracy, Section 96 (1) of the Penal Code Act in Nigeria.”
They warned that since Atiku does not enjoy immunity as a presidential candidate, “we understand that the law enforcement agencies may be reluctant to act simply because of the perception of persecution of a presidential candidate that this may evoke.
“However, facts are sacred. The facts so far presented to the world clearly indicate that Atiku has a case to answer. In other climes, when such serious allegations arose in the middle of campaigns, the law-enforcement agencies acted decisively. It is the minimum expected in a constitutional democracy. That is what we call on the authorities to do in the case of Atiku,” they insisted.
The APC PCC, therefore, urged Atiku to apologise and renounce his ambition. “In the light of these very grave revelations, we call on Atiku to immediately tender an unreserved apology to the Nigerian people and step down from the presidential race forthwith, whilst handing himself over to the law enforcement agencies.
“Following these revelations, it becomes clear that Atiku has absolutely nothing to campaign on again as the period of 1999 to 2007 that he always relies on can now be described by Nigerians as the ‘SPV years’ when they ran Nigeria aground,” they quipped.
But, as if the allegations were just mere dress rehearsals, the PDP PCC on their own, fired a salvo, insisting that Tinubu lacks the rectitude to go to equity with unclean hands. They insisted that since Tinubu’s diversionary scheme against Atiku had failed; he should tender an unreserved apology.
Returning fire for fire through its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP PCC noted that; “like the age-long aphorism states, those who dig pits for the innocent always fall into them.
“This is the case in the vexatious plots by Tinubu to divert attention from his litany of atrocities by seeking to impugn the impeccable character of our candidate, Atiku Abubakar, with the unfounded controversy of corruption.
“Tinubu, sensing that his many alleged corrupt activities, especially his fleecing of Lagos State with many Special Purpose Vehicle companies were about to come to light, rushed to allegedly hire a serial blackmailer, as he has always done, to foul the public space with fabricated allegations against Atiku.”
They also advised Tinubu to come out clean and speak to the damning money laundering allegations against him. “He should explain to Nigerians how billions of naira belonging to Lagos State and meant for the welfare of the people, reportedly found its way into soft alliance and ended in bits and pieces in foreign currencies into domiciliary accounts allegedly owned by him in commercial banks.
“We also challenge Tinubu to explain to Nigerians how, as Lagos State governor, he awarded the exclusive right of tax collection to his alleged proxy company, Alpha Beta, as well as the allegations that the SPV was used to allegedly siphon over N100 billion belonging to Lagos State.
“If anyone is to be arrested and disqualified from the presidential race on account of corruption, certainly, that person is not Atiku Abubakar but Bola Tinubu,” the PDP PCC emphatically stated.
To most analysts, the corruption allegations crossfire among the two leading presidential candidates, which took disturbing trends recently, have become a bitter pill to swallow with just a month to the poll.
Irritated by the ugly campaign trend, both Labour Party (LP) and the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) have joined in demanding the immediate resignation of both candidates based on lack of credibility and rectitude.
In what could be interpreted as comic relief to the allegations, the spokesperson to the LP presidential candidate, Kenneth Okonkwo, has called for the disqualification of the duo, emphasising that his unblemished principal is the most competently qualified person to be the next President.
His words: “The PDP and APC should go into competition to know who has failed Nigeria more. They are monsters with two heads. Their candidates are equal and opposite. One is an emilokan of the South and the other is an emilokan of the North. Two of them should step down from the race.
“What the APC is talking about PDP is absolutely correct, what PDP is talking about APC is absolutely correct, what APC is talking about itself is absolutely lie, what PDP is talking about itself is absolutely a lie, but I am more shocked about what is coming out from the spokespersons of both PDP and APC.
“Obasanjo described Atiku as a man with a propensity for corruption, a tendency to disloyalty, an inability to speak the truth at all times, a man of poor judgment, who believes in marabouts, who trust in money to buy his way in all situation, a man ready to sacrifice morality, integrity, propriety, truth and national interest for selfish interest.
“We have seen it manifest. What the trending corruption tape means is that Atiku has a national award in corrupting the generation before and after him,” Okonkwo quipped while appearing on a television programme.
On their own, the NNPP did not also spare the candidates of the two parties, requesting that they quit the race following the gravity of the corruption allegations levied against them.
NNPP’s National Publicity Secretary, Major Agbo, in reacting to the corruption claims, noted that the duo lacked the decency to govern the country. “NNPP has urged the presidential candidates of APC to withdraw from the race over serious allegations of corruption and drug peddling that have made a mockery of the 2023 election.
“Nigeria has been brought to ridicule and disrepute before the comity of nations over accusations of high-level corruption and drug peddling against Atiku and Tinubu. He that goes to equity must come with a clean hand.
“NNPP demands the immediate withdrawal of both presidential candidates to answer to charges preferred against them in court. It is justice juxtaposed for them to continue in the presidential race with heavy allegations of wrongdoings on their shoulders,” the NNPP claimed.
According to him, “it is a moral burden for the two candidates to continue in this race at a time Nigerians are looking for a younger and unblemished crop of leaders. There is no moral justification for Atiku and Tinubu to strive to rule the nation until the court decides their fates one way or the other.
“National interest supersedes personal interests, aggrandisement and grandstanding in the quest for a better, greater, progressive, equitable and just democratic nation. Nigerians are tired of recycled politicians who have numerous cases of corruption, drugs, birth/educational certificates, health, and questionable sources of wealth.
“Citizens want men and women of integrity, visionary, purposeful, resourceful, dynamic and transformational leaders to usher them to a new and better Nigeria we all desire and deserve.”
Similarly, an APC chieftain told Daily Sun in confidence recently that; “in saner societies, both Atiku and Tinubu ought to recuse themselves from the race considering the severity of the corruption allegation hanging on their necks.
“But trust Nigerians, the allegation is a secondary consideration while voting for their candidates. The allegations will soon die a natural death. In the end, political leaders will decide the trajectory of the voting, not the issues of corruption or promises made at the campaign grounds,” he argued.
For former APC spokesman, Yekini Nabena, “Tinubu’s candidacy has nationwide acceptance. That is why we see massive support wherever the campaign trail goes. And by God’s grace, victory is certain for the APC. That is why I don’t think we need the support of paperweight PDP G-5 governors. It will be unfair to our leaders in these five states who are working hard and mobilising for our candidate to be relegated for the PDP governors.”
