PDP’s campaign follies and MASSOB’s grouse with Jega

And that is because there seems to be no end to Nigeria’s many intricate dilemmas and conundrums especially in the political arena in recent times. This is a country whose government professed the desire of earning a spot among the elite group of the twenty most developed economies in the world only to sack its […]

And that is because there seems to be no end to Nigeria’s many intricate dilemmas and conundrums especially in the political arena in recent times.
This is a country whose government professed the desire of earning a spot among the elite group of the twenty most developed economies in the world only to sack its globally respected Governor of the Central Bank for urging prudence in the management of our earnings from our oil exports.
The same government which vowed to fight corruption with studded gloves, somehow, incredibly, summoned the nauseating courage to grant a presidential pardon to a certain Diepreye Alamiesiegha, the convicted serial looter of the treasury of the President’s home state of Bayelsa.
In between all these, the EFCC, which is under the direct supervision of the presidency, pretended it did not see the serial scandals in the Aviation Ministry under its immediate past Minister, or the unprecedented theft of scarce development funds through a dubious fuel subsidy regime to name only a few.
But it is in the run-up to the Presidential elections scheduled to hold in the next two weeks, that Nigerians have witnessed the most bizarre electoral campaign ever, in terms of the strategies and behaviour of the leading political actors from the PDP.
Take the issue of Femi Fani-Kayode the loquacious and inherently impetuous spokesman of the president’s campaign organization for instance: until a few months ago, the same man was a mortal foe of the PDP and its candidate Goodluck Jonathan who he lampooned to the high heavens at any slight opportunity. In one of his many salvos against Jonathan, Fani-Kayode described him as “A President who has abdicated his responsibility, destroyed his own party, divided his own country, alienated his own friends, humiliated his own people, brought ridicule to his own faith, cowers before his own officials, betrayed his own governors, scorns the international community and breaks his solemn oath to protect and defend the Nigerian people.”  
Fani-Kayode went on to describe his current boss as the greatest obstacle confronting the nation, believing him to be someone who had failed to control the numerous “Jezebels” around him – a thinly veiled reference to the women in his kitchen cabinet. Fani-Kayode completed his diatribe against Jonathan with a hint of aristocratic arrogance when he ended with the words “That is what you get when you vote for a man who never wore shoes to school.”
Today, of course, Fani-Kayode wants Nigerians to forget all those choice words he had for the president back then. Today, the same man can afford to look Nigerians straight in the face and accuse the opposition APC for peddling what he called his “renounced” and “outdated” views on the President.
And it is a tragedy of monumental proportions that in current political climate of indecency, corruption and unbridled hate speeches, the same man can afford to be on the offensive. Far from hiding his face in shame, he now also expects to be taken seriously.
Femi Fani-Kayode’s dance of absurdity has become a sad metaphor for the incredible times we now live in. These, indeed, are the interesting times that even the Chinese never contemplated for the share debaucher and crudity of the leading actors in the corridors of power and cronies outside it who seem hell-bent on imposing their will on the majority of hapless Nigerians by any means necessary including barefaced lies against the Moroccan monarch.  
In its desperate bid to retain power at all costs, the PDP repeatedly score own goals without even knowing it. Their serial campaigns of calumny against the APC Presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari will live to haunt them for decades after the 28th of March one can easily sense. Far from weakening the General candidacy, the barefaced lies peddled against him appears to have made Buhari even more popular and difficult to beat.
In the six-week reprieve gained from the sure humiliation that confronted him in the postponed elections, the President actually gave reasons why he should never be returned to power in his belated military campaign to reclaim vital Nigerian real estate lost to Boko Haram in their orgy of violence. The Naira was in a free-fall, while his spouse chose the period to deny him of even more votes with her unguarded comments on the campaign trail. And all these while fuel queues return and Nigerians sweated in darkness due to sustained power outages.
Only President Jonathan can also explain why in the lead-up to the major electoral challenge in his political career, he still chose to surround himself with people of questionable character and still expects to win the polls. Each and every one of his major steps appears to have been taken against the current of public opinion in the land. His decision to return Senator Musliu Obanikoro to the Federal cabinet in spite of what is already in the public domain over his alleged involvement in the rigging of the elections in Ekiti state was a bad move.
Another decision the president is likely to regret very dearly is his close liaisons with the vile and uncouth Governor of Ekiti state Ayodele Fayose who does not appear to know the meaning of decency or decorum in his public utterances. Put together, Fani-Kayode, Fayose and a certain Buruji Kashamu – the current PDP leader in the Southwest who the former president Olusegun Obasanjo described as a ‘known habitual criminal wanted abroad for crime’, have greatly undermined the Jonathan’s status and credibility in the run-up to the elections.
The president also severely diminished himself with his tango with and over-dependence on militant groups in the South whom any decent leader of a federation such as ours should have distanced himself from.  Not only has Jonathan empowered these same groups, an unfortunate impression was also created that he needs them for the purpose of compromising the coming elections.
Now both the Odua People’s Congress (OPC) from the Southwest and the Movement for the Survival of Biafra (MASSOB) have joined the clumsily orchestrated moves against the INEC Chairman Attahiru Jega with the clear intention of getting him removed from office for his instance on the use of card-readers and Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) for the elections. Both are considered vital to the credibility of the elections by local and international observers.   
The laughable thing, here, of course, concerns the involvement of MASSOB – the criminal militant group which has insisted on the validation of the Biafran dream of secession from Nigeria. What then is the motivation for involvement in an issue that concerns elections in the Nigerian state they have rejected?
The involvement of MASSOB is clearly one of the ironies of these perplexing times but in the final analysis there is clearly a method to the crudity and madness Nigerians are confronted with. If the President’s methods have clearly exposed his desperation, his choice of friends clearly expose his folly in the belief that every Nigerian has a price.
The chances are that people will still collect the dollars that are being shared as if the greenback is about to go out of circulation and still vote according to their conscience. But what is the price for MASSOB’s involvement? Where they also promised something? Will Biafra soon become a reality? Something does not add up here; I’m still scratching my head.