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By Femi Aribisala
“In 2015, people acknowledged Buhari with “Sai Baba.” In 2016, this became “Why Baba?” In 2017, it became “Chai Baba.” In 2018, it is now “Kai! Baba.” Come 2019, it will be “Bye Baba.”
The genie is now well and truly out of the bottle. All the signs now indicate that APC is running scared about its prospects in the 2019 elections. There can also no longer be any doubt that the party is absolutely determined to win by hook and crook. It has served notice to Nigeria that it will leave no stone unturned in rigging the forthcoming presidential elections of 2019.
Struggle for Kano
The party developed high-blood pressure when its nPDP elements, who guaranteed its victory in 2015, turned the tables on it and suddenly decided to go back to the PDP. One strategic factor in this development was Rabiu Kwankwaso, former governor of Kano. His defection from APC back to PDP brought Kano back into play for PDP. This spelt imminent disaster for APC.
In 2015, fictitious Kano was APC’s trump card. The Kano results were kept in reserve until late in the game. When they were finally declared, there was an earthquake. A whopping 2.3 million people were said to have voted in Kano out of which 1.9 million allegedly voted for APC. Given Kwankwaso’s popularity in Kano as a native-son, the question becomes what would happen to the APC in Kano in 2019, now that Kwankwaso has decamped to the PDP?
This new realpolitik has sent jitters down the spine of the APC and the party has responded in the only way it seems to know how: with deceit and falsehood. First, Kano State governor, Abdullahi Ganduje declared that Kano would provide APC with 5 million votes in the 2019 presidential election, a magical increase of over 100% from 2015. Then, a few days ago, APC declared that Buhari received 2.9 million votes in Kano during the APC presidential primaries.
This is quite simply one big lie. It is a lie that serves notice of APC intentions in 2019. Buhari cannot possibly get one million more votes in the Kano from only APC voters than he did in the entire election of 2015. If, with only APC stalwarts voting, and in an inconsequential election with only Buhari as candidate, Buhari gets 2.9 million votes; it is not implausible to conclude that come 2019, during the election proper, Buhari alone will be said to obtain as much as 12 million votes from Kano alone; more indeed, than all the people in the state.
Desperadoes
This shows how desperate the APC has become. Everybody knows the mythical Buhari of 2015 has been thoroughly demystified as a result of his lackluster performance as president. Accordingly, while in 2015, people may have acknowledged Buhari with “Sai Baba,” in 2016, this became “Why Baba?” In 2017, it became “Chai Baba.” In 2018, it is now “Kai! Baba.” Come 2019, it will be “Bye Baba.”
In its new desperation to hold on to power, APC has lost all earlier pretenses to anti-corruption. The party was not even confident Buhari could survive a presidential primary without embarrassment, so it went to great lengths to rig the system against every other possible contestant.
First, it made the registration for the primaries N45 million, ensuring that only those with stolen money that could easily be lost would contest. Then there was the rigmarole of saying, although the president did not have the money, well-wishers raised it for him. (We are yet to be informed as to how the president paid for the N27 million bank loan he claims to have obtained to pay for his registration in 2014).
APC then went ahead to post outrageous figures as representing those who voted for sole candidate Buhari, laying the foundation for the rigmarole it has in store for 2019. That means this corrupt party has decided to take Nigeria back to the days of the military and communist dictatorships where sole presidential candidates in elections are said to obtain fictitiously as many as 99% of the vote.
Jonathan’s legacy
In 2014/2015, Goodluck Jonathan signaled his good intentions by conducting one free and fair elections after the other; in Edo, Anambra, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun. In all these, the ruling party won only one. It then went on, not only to lose the 2015 presidential election, but even more importantly, to accept defeat.
But APC has now let us know that, under no circumstances will it accept defeat. We have seen this now in the governorship election in Ekiti, where rigging was the APC order of the day, with votes bought in broad daylight with anti-corruption money. We have also had a repeat performance in Osun, where an election won outright by the PDP was declared inconclusive. Then all kinds of shenanigans were employed in the rerun, leading to the declaration of APC as the winner.
That is now clearly the APC agenda. In the same manner that it has declared its victory in a state where workers were owed 2 years’ salary, even so will it declare its victory in a country that became to world’s capital of poverty under its watch. This is bound to throw Nigeria into a great deal of turmoil and civil unrest. That is why everything possible must be done to ensure that this rigmarole is stopped dead in its tracks.
It is preposterous for a party of do-nothing and under-achiever politicians, who have presided over the systematic slaughter of Nigerians by Fulani herdsmen, have watched the naira slump from 198 to the dollar to 360, have driven away foreign investors, have moved from one corruption scandal to the other, and have shown utmost disregard for the rule of law, should now insist that their party would obtain a landslide victory in a national election.