Campaign adverts: Watching what you say

I am yet to arrive at any scientific explanation for this proliferation, but my quick assumptions include the common belief   among politicians about the power of the media in political campaigns, the burning desire of media campaign teams to justify their pay, and the amount of funds at the campaign team’s disposal. If you take […]

I am yet to arrive at any scientific explanation for this proliferation, but my quick assumptions include the common belief   among politicians about the power of the media in political campaigns, the burning desire of media campaign teams to justify their pay, and the amount of funds at the campaign team’s disposal. If you take a   cursory look at the pages of the newspapers, you will easily notice that among the political parties in this   contest, the PDP tops the frequency table of   advert placements, followed by the APC, possibly at the ratio of   4:1.    Of course the PDP started running   massive campaign adverts long before the APC; and as we move closer to the Election Day, I   expect the volume of their adverts to swell and their ingenious attacks on personality to double. APC will try to match its rival   to keep up the tempo, but God knows it can hardly close the yawning gaps cut by the PDP.    Characteristically, these adverts run from acclaims of candidates, defence of candidates against certain allegations and attacks on opponents. Obviously,    substantive   issues are maltreated   in   these adverts; and generally, contents   are petty inane,     bizarre and rabidly offensive as they seek to   hit   below the belt. But this article is not an analysis of the quality of   the adverts; that task should be reserved for another day. At the moment, what interests me are those adverts that  tend to recall  the words and public statements  made  in the past  by one party chieftain  either for or against  the   candidate or party he now   unabashedly finds   awful or wonderful.    
Let us begin with the All Progressives Congress (APC).  But before then, let me quickly point out that where the said comments were made, when, why and how   were not captured in the adverts I reference here, since those to whom these words are   ascribed have not   categorically denied making them; and particularly, since one of the subjects is well known for   hypocrisy, and his video   gone viral   I feel    protected.
In 2007, when Buhari  was the presidential candidate of the All Nigerian Peoples Party  (ANPP), and contested the presidential election with former PDP’s the late Umaru Musa Yar’adua then Lagos State Governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu called him (Buhari)   a “destablisation agent, and  far worse than Obasanjo.”
Similarly, in 2011 when Buhari was the presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), former minister of the Federal Capital Territory, and   now gubernatorial candidate of the APC in Kaduna state, Nasir El-Rufai,  asked Buhari to “retire, it is time for a new generation of leaders.” The aforementioned   comments or innuendoes formed part of the   PDP adverts, in which a query was raised as regards  whether “these men”   could have changed overnight. (Daily Trust, Thursday, February 5, 2015).  
Perhaps by far the most alarming of these comments are those of the PDP’s campaign spokesperson, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, who had said so many terrible things against his present boss and party.  No politician   ever had such notorious penchant for white-washing something he so absolutely condemned just a few minutes ago or vice versa as FFK.  In one of the APC adverts featuring him, chief FFK was quoted as saying:
“The problem that we have is the president (Goodluck Jonathan) himself.”
“When the president is defeated he will declare himself winner, the same way it happened in the NGF. He will try to split the country the same way he did to NGF.”
“In 2015, if the PDP loses to APC and they are trying to plan this kind of game with Nigerians, they will know we all own this country.”
“(PDP is a) self-evident sinking ship.”  It is the same “sinking ship” captained by the same “power-hungry” president that Fani-Kayode now proudly associates with.  I have had the privilege of watching    the video clip and I keep wondering  why the sponsors of that advert failed to include one of the stunning support lines  by FFK for the APC, when he called on Nigerians to rally round Buhari, Tinubu and APC to push the PDP away.  
 At the time these   statements     were  made,  with   haughty insouciance,  I imagine that the speakers  were eager for unrestraint   publicity to be given to them; but now,  political exigencies    have  exposed the  stupidity of their  wisdom, and I think each time they stumble into that advert on the paper,  they   aggressively flip  over the page.     The moral content of most of our modern-day politicians is suspect. It is warped and conditioned by the politics of   “a-loaf-of-bread”.    Whatever will help put food on his table, or give him a sense of recognition and notice-me-now status, the average Nigerian politician embraces with tenacity.  Then, whatever stands in opposition to his cause, he attacks without restraints. This attitude is particularly evident in those who switch parties easily as they see everything unwholesome in their old fraternity and all good in their new world until the table turns again.
A friend once told me the story of a certain   PDP chieftain who   defected to another party a couple of years ago; and at a conference to announce his defection, he had called the PDP   a “party of armed robbers.” A few years later when he was edged out of his new party,    (I can’t remember which, again), he unashamedly returned to the “Umbrella”.  At a press conference, made up of the same newsmen whom he once told the story of the armed robbers in the PDP, he was asked whether he was fully armed with AK 47 or RPG   to defend himself. Our politician  did not understand  the import of this question immediately, until he was reminded that just a couple of   years ago he had  described this party as a nest for  armed robbers, and it was at this point that he flared up questioning where the newsman got the audacity to interrogate him about  such words. This group of politicians are everywhere in our midst; and the sad thing about them is that they don’t feel as much shame as they should when confronted with their hypocrisy.    
On the 2015 campaign trail, there is no doubt that several of such comments are made on daily basis   by our politicians, who feel that what matters is the moment and the fortune it may bring to them. They will say whatever strays to their mind because they want the peoples vote, forgetting that tomorrow will ever come at all. But if they have any   principles, they may be saved from the embarrassing situation that comes with saying something today and not been able to defend it tomorrow.
Habib Yakoob, writes in from University of Abuja.