GMB must at every stop remind Nigerians that while GEJ was very swift in removing the oil subsidy he has been travelling at a slower than snail speed in apprehending his friends who stole the N2 trillion plus in oil subsidy. He should put the stolen amount into perspective by telling voters that it is about 50% of the country’s entire budget. He can further flesh out the monstrosity of this fraud by explaining to the voters that his youth employment program under which his government plans to hire 20,000 young people from each state of the federation and 720,000 nationwide will cost N172.8 Billion a year if each person receives a salary of N20,000 a month. The total cost is less than 10% of the money stolen by GEJ’s friends.
Corruption is the cancer of Nigerian politics. It is the reason nothing gets done in the country and it has come to take the center stage in the forthcoming presidential elections. No institution and person personifies corruption in Nigeria today as much as the PDP and the Goodluck Jonathan (GEJ) led government. In the last six years as president of this country he has left no one in doubt that that he loves corruption and will do anything to promote corruption and protect the corrupt. Whether by design or his sheer incompetence and cluelessness GEJ is now entangled in corruption from head to toe. It is not a subject he likes to talk about because he is corrupt. He has become a prisoner of corruption. And in GEJ’s corruption entanglement lies the game changer for General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB) in this election.
Nigerians, who have always been willing to tolerate some level of official corruption appear to have had enough of it. This maybe because corruption has become more blatant, and has exploded in geometric proportions under GEJ. Not only is GEJ unable to tame the monster, he has made it known that he believes “stealing is not corruption.” There are signs everywhere that the voters are prepared to take a sledge hammer to corruption in this election particularly at the presidential level. GMB must avail himself of this opportunity by suffocating any message that GEJ’s may have with his anti-corruption crusade. He should put GEJ and PDP on the defensive by forcing them to defend their records in fighting corruption and in the process making it impossible for him to deliver any message he may have concocted to deceive the electorates. An analogy from a distant political terrain will help shed light on this approach.
In 2008, John McCain, who later became President Barack Obama’s opponent in that year’s presidential election pandered to the right of the Republican party in order to win the support of conservatives and members of the Tea Party during the primaries. The modus operandi he chose in proving his conservative credential was to tell the conservatives that he had voted 100% in support of the outgoing and unpopular, but conservative George Bush. John McCain would later regret this claim because Barack Obama and his campaign team made sure it hung from his neck like the sword of Damocles throughout the campaign.
George Bush was unpopular due to the combined effects of the Iraq war and a faltering economy. American voters blamed him for everything that was wrong with the country and did not want anything to do with anyone who agreed with him; and John McCain said he did 100%. At every campaign stop Obama reminded voters that John McCain agreed with George Bush 100% and that a vote for him would be tantamount to a vote for continuation of George Bush’ policies. Try as he could John McCain could not shake off the “just like Bush” tag and he went on to lose the election.
Before continuing let me provide a brief snippet of some of the corruption scandals that have bedeviled GEJ’s six years old presidency.
• $20 Billion dollars of oil revenue missing and no concrete and rational explanation provided to date;
• N2 trillion plus stolen in oil subsidy scandal by people close to the president, including the son of former PDP chairman Bamanga Tukur and no single individual has been convicted to date for this monumental fraud;
• Billions of Naira stolen in pension funds under GEJ’s watch and the perpetrators given a slap in the wrist;
• N200 million plus Stella Oduah BMW scandal for which PDP tried to reward her with nomination for a senatorial seat;
• Billions of Naira stolen by bank executives under GEJ’s watch and government stepping in with public funds to stabilize the banks;
• Diezani Alison-Madueke’s multi billion Naira fraud relating to the purchase and servicing of NNPC aircraft;
• The minister who oversaw the immigration recruitment exercise that resulted in death of tens of jobseekers across the country is still sitting in GEJ government while keeping the over N6 billion collected from desperate applicants;
• Billions of Naira lost through fraudulent import waiver scheme benefiting the friends of GEJ
The list goes on. The scale of corruption under GEJ is mind boggling and GMB must make it a point to name instances of corruption at every campaign stop and force GEJ into defending himself and his government, leaving him unable to deliver his campaign messages of concocted lies and distortions. Some of these instances of corruption annoy some segment of the voters more than others. The youths/students/graduates who constitute the majority of voters in this election must be reminded often how their colleagues lost their lives because of a fraudulent immigration recruitment exercise. Additionally, rather than order a refund of the application fees and fire the minister, GEJ stood by the minister while the N6 billion plus application fees was never refunded. He has to get this group of voters upset and pumped up to vote GEJ out.
GMB must at every stop remind Nigerians that while GEJ was very swift in removing the oil subsidy he has been travelling at a slower than snail speed in apprehending his friends who stole the N2 trillion plus in oil subsidy. He should put the stolen amount into perspective by telling voters that it is about 50% of the country’s entire budget. He can further flesh out the monstrosity of this fraud by explaining to the voters that his youth employment program under which his government plans to hire 20,000 young people from each state of the federation and 720,000 nationwide will cost N172.8 Billion a year if each person receives a salary of N20,000 a month. The total cost is less than 10% of the money stolen by GEJ’s friends. He should let the voters know that the over N2 trillion stolen by GEJ’s friends and some of it later donated to him as campaign funds will pay the salaries of 7.5 million Nigerians a year if each person receives a salary of N20,000. These are damning figures and I believe they will send GEJ and his campaign team into disarray.
GMB must at every campaign stop remind voters that GEJ and his PDP led government continue to steal from Nigerians on a daily basis through the refusal to reduce the price of petrol to at least N50 per liter in line with the 55% drop in the price of oil. And that until the appropriate reduction is in place, the stealing from voters continues.
GMB must remind voters that it has taken GEJ $30 billion to deliver the epileptic electricity supply in the country and that at that rate it will take eternity and cost trillions of dollars to achieve regular power supply in the country. But that even at that, GEJ and his friends will steal the money.
As an aside and as a way of reminding voters of GEJ’s incompetence in securing the lives and property of Nigerians, GMB must remind voters of the numerous Maitatsine riots that took place all over northern Nigeria from early to mid-eightiesand how it was his responsibility to deal with them either as the GOC or as the head of state and how swiftly he dealt with them. He must remind voters that when Chadian soldiers invaded Borno in 1983, he did not only chase them out of Nigeria, he chased them into Chad. This will give the voters a platform for comparing his ability to bring security to the country against GEJ’s “all talk and no action” policy.
GEJ is putting up a brave face but he is in the political fight of his life. While his spin doctors like Femi Fani-Kayode and Doyin Okupe resort to the absurd to convince Nigerians that everything is going well, his body language and resort to pouring invectives on his opponent speaks volume - my professor once told me that when the facts and the law are against you just yell. Like a boxer GEJ is lying on the ropes right now and GMB must launch the necessary combination punches to finish him off. By making it apparent that GEJ is a losing proposition in this election GMB will spark an exodus of his fair weather friends from PDP. His friends and political associates are already keeping him at a distance while their attempts to secretly donate to GMB’s campaign funds have been rejected by the Buhari. GEJ must be seen to be defeated by the electorates before he is actually defeated in the upcoming St. Valentine Day Revolution.
Peace and God Bless Nigeria!!