Between GEJ and GMB

For once, political waters flowed uphill as losers embraced the winner and pledged to work with him. It was General Muhammadu Buhari’s glorious day. Now that Buhari has emerged as APC’s candidate for the presidency, the picture of what the 2015 campaigns and elections will look like is beginning to appear in sharper relief. If, […]

For once, political waters flowed uphill as losers embraced the winner and pledged to work with him. It was General Muhammadu Buhari’s glorious day.
Now that Buhari has emerged as APC’s candidate for the presidency, the picture of what the 2015 campaigns and elections will look like is beginning to appear in sharper relief. If, like me, you are spectating from the reassuring safety of your office or home, a Jonathan/Buhari contest is the dream of which prize-fights are made. For good or for ill, no other two politicians excite so much extreme passions as these two.
Among the populace, those who want Jonathan to continue in office are so consumed by their passion that they can’t envision a Nigeria without the incumbent president at the helm. On the other hand, pro-Buhari activists are screaming from the rooftops that the taciturn general is just what the doctor recommended to save ailing Nigeria from socio-political and economic ruination.
While the two camps are welcome to sell their preferred candidate and party, I don’t think it should be an excuse to further whip up divisive sentiments of religion and ethnicity. Already the whispering campaign of hate has ballooned to a sing-song. Those who peddle the dangerous sentiments can’t be bothered to consider the logical result of such a campaign. The Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda did not just wake up one day to start slaughtering each other; their leaders had sown seeds of hate which germinated and bore fruits among the people. That was how what began as a spark ended up as a conflagration that almost consumed the entire country until the rest of the world intervened.
What Nigerians expect of the two leading presidential candidates now is a detailed programme of what they hope to do with our mandate and how they hope to do it. In my books, any candidate who uses religion and ethnicity as campaign tools has nothing to offer. Don’t tell me to vote for you just because we profess the same religion. That is utter rubbish. Ask Olaudah Equiano (1745 – 31 March 1797), the slave boy who was kidnapped at the age of 11 from Eastern Nigeria and taken to the West Indies and then named Gustavus Vassa by the slave masters. He eventually became a Christian, bought his freedom and ended up as a successful sailor and merchant.
What piqued Equiano most was the thought that all his enslavers were fellow Christians – or so they described themselves. In abject dejection he wrote the now famous lines: “O, ye nominal Christians! Might not an African ask you — Learned you this from your God, who says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you? … Why are parents to lose their children, brothers their sisters, or husbands their wives? Surely, this is a new refinement in cruelty …”
Those same questions can be asked of those nominal Muslims who gleefully slaughter fellow human beings in the name of Islam. We have the authority of the leading lights of Islam to insist that their religion does not endorse their bestial proclivities made more horrendous by their claim to some satanic version of savagery-laced piety broadcast on social media as the ultimate tribute to their god of violence.
Religion is always combustible. That is why wise multi-faith nations separate it from state. Karl Marx called it the opium of the masses. People would do anything in the belief that they are serving their God. Politics, in the same vein, is volatile. It is about influencing other people to attain position of governance based on a worldview or set of principles. Politics is about the distribution of power and resources within a state and how the constituent parts inter-relate. It ought not to be about hate-mongering.
I want to know what Jonathan and Buhari have in store for their nation if either of them should win the 2015 presidential elections. Nigerians have suffered so much deprivation that they will consider it insulting if anyone tries to campaign against Jonathan on the basis of some cooked up prejudice against his Ijaw ethnic group or his Christian faith. Also, anyone who tries to use Buhari’s Fulani ethnic group or his being a Muslim against him will find out that he has shot himself in the foot. Mark my words, many of the hate dispensers will find out too late that they’ve wasted the opportunity they had to sell their candidate.
I expect the foot soldiers of PDP and APC to answer the following questions with regard to the candidature of Jonathan and Buhari: What is the track record of your candidate? Is your man credible? What is the moral standing of your candidate? What are your party’s programmes and how does your candidate intend to achieve stated goals? What is your candidate’s vision for Nigeria? Do you think your candidate has the competence to tackle the myriad problems confronting Nigeria at this moment — especially the wave of terrorism threatening to redraw the country’s map?
Of course, there are many more questions. But let them start with the issues. The motley crowd of attack dogs most of who are intellectually indolent should for once think up intelligent responses to issue-based questions instead of rehashing the same tired lines of tribe and tongue and religion ad nauseam.
It is indeed remarkable that the two major parties have managed to produce their presidential candidates without spilling blood. We know that it took some political engineering to make Jonathan the sole candidate of the PDP and keep Namadi Sambo as his running mate. In the case of the APC, the convention that threw up Buhari was a model in transparency; his running mate will be known in the next few days. Many names are being bandied about: Governor Rotimi Amaechi, Senator Olorunnimbe Mamora, Governor Babatunde Fashola, Dr Kayode Fayemi, Governor Adams Oshiomhole, and Prof Yemi Osinbajo among others.
We are living in interesting times. It is good to be alive to see what direction we choose at this forked junction — this way, PDP’s GEJ; that way, APC’s GMB. Which shall it be? Whatever our eventual choice, let me invoke Chinua Achebe: “Let the hawk perch, let the eagle perch; and if one tells the other not to perch, may his wing break!”