The shameful phase of campaigns

In a football game the critic is the best player. He has absolutely no respect for the overrated expertise of the coach or the dexterity of the players on the field. With the activation of the laryngeal muscles, the football critic assumes the missed dexterity of the player and the expertise of the coach. Their […]

In a football game the critic is the best player. He has absolutely no respect for the overrated expertise of the coach or the dexterity of the players on the field. With the activation of the laryngeal muscles, the football critic assumes the missed dexterity of the player and the expertise of the coach. Their dribbling skills have not improved since they played with plastic ball or goat’s bile ball, but the mouth of every critic makes them better players than Pele, Ronaldo or Maradona rolled into one. Unfortunately FIFA-ranked scouts did not discover them.
Now you know why even the best teams make the fan’s worse enemy – the best players are on the spectator stand. Politricks is something like that and Naija politricks even more spectacular. A country of 180 million sure has more qualified albeit untested politricians on the sidelines than in the field of play.
Politricks is not for the fainthearted. If your hard-earned reputation is your greatest assets, please take my advice; steer clear of the murky waters of politricks. If your wife monitors your driving to keep your eyes on the road and not on side attractions, steer clear of politricks.
A successful Naija politrical animal is one with the hide of a pachyderm. The Naija politrical bird has the impervious wingspan of a giant turkey; the sturdy feet of an eagle and the alertness of a hawk – needed for impromptu take off and emergency landings. A Naija politrical fish is a hybrid with the weight of the whale and the agility of the sailfish if it is not to be easy dinner for amateur anglers.
Check this out; if someone called my father clueless, they force me to punch like Muhammad Ali and bite like Mike Tyson, but in politricks, it is fair game. It must not rankle a politrician when his wife is called a sheppopotamus. Perhaps this is what has stopped the lily-livered technocrat dead on his tracks, as he dreams of salvaging the nation.
Not all politiricians accept criticism. Sule Lamido and Isa Yuguda had time to tackle Facebook hecklers under their watch. Ibikunle Amosun nearly walked that hall of infamy. In Kenya, Alan Wadi was jailed two years for insulting Uhuru Kenyatta.
The greatest debate on the socio-political horizon today is how to differentiate between what constitutes fair comment and what represents an insult. It is the crux of the debate over the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the Twitter handles it generated and the riots it spawned. People in public spheres are expected to be tolerant of the acerbic tongues of critics who cannot take criticism and the wags of vitriolic opponents.
In Naija politrical circles, foul is fair. Pictures of the General holding an iPad and purportedly tweeting at a Lagos function quickly went viral among Buharists. The icing was the photoshopped contrast of President Jones holding a mouse and starring at a blank screen with his trademark bemusement. You would think that was evil until ingenious Jonathanians superimposed a pornographic image on the General’s iPad scene.
The General’s critics accuse him of not improving himself thirty years after leaving public office and allude to his so-called lack of certificates. They taunt him for not appointing women as proof that he is an Islamist. That was before pictures of Zahra, one of his daughters bombed social media reportedly garnering 3,000 proposals within hours. It wasn’t long when critics questioned how an incorruptible General could send his daughter abroad on a pensioner’s stipend.
In the last weeks of the campaign or complaints as the case may be, it is bound to get muddy and dirtier. Whoever invented the fake cancer report to smear the General went beyond the bounds of decency and decorum of campaigns, but there are worse, the obituary of the General has appeared on some enemy timelines. A newspaper headlined a report alleging that he had gone abroad for treatment when he was at a campaign rally – no retraction.
The nation belongs to all, the ruiner and the aspirant are bona fide citizens qualified to battle for our hearts and minds. They publicly embrace each other with laughter while supporters are breaking treasured friendships in their names. Some are willing to kill rather than live for their candidate. Truth is, except you’re a soldier confronting Boko Haram, no candidate is worth either killing or dying for.  If INEC is the FIFA of politricks, it should not shy away from using either the yellow or the red card as occasion demands. Our country would thank them for a job well done when all this is over. Without issues as campaign points, Fela yabbis is in.