By Bolaji O. Akinyemi
Never in the history of this country has presidential election centered on issues as much as we have seen in this season. All thanks to Pastor Poju Oyemade who provided the Platform on which Peter Obi’s several verbal jabs has become a calling to Nigerians for an ideas driven contest for 2023 presidential election.
Obi’s verbal promises has had no match in intellectual challenge until Tinubu’s headbutt of a Manifesto Documents came public. The documents is trending and all true lovers of Nigeria must be interested in BAT’s articulation if only for the sake of fair play. We can’t be listening to what Obi is saying without considering what Tinubu has written before we make up our mind. Let me make it clear that I have no intention to limit this to BAT and OBI, and will extend this pairing analysis to other candidates in the race before the end of the year.
Manifestos of course are key and critical in advance political engagement in any democracy, but unfortunately counts for little or nothing in our sphere. We can only hope that the verbal jabs of Obi won’t remain mere unction that excites and BAT’s written writ an information just for the record. For either not to happen, we need to place both in the balance and weigh them against their antecedents in view of our expectations. I will advise that we do not simply flip aside a very comprehensive work done by the BAT’s team of writers. However, I will like to warn as a writer myself, though not a professional, but my contribution to political communication in Nigeria today, no one can discountenance. As a beneficiary of Obafemi Awolowo’s national quality education proposal which was denied Nigerians because he wasn’t made the president. Benefit that became my lot because LK Jakande became the Governor of Lagos State and provided me the education that prepared my mind for what am doing effectively or otherwise today, depending on your judgement of a man with nothing official as his qualification more than a School Certificate.
Now to my warning, we must understand that vision is the vehicle on which leadership should travel, fitness of the mind and body its driver. If the brief that informed the documents been touted by APC as BAT manifesto came to his team writers directly from BAT then kudos to him as the “visioner” and the embulient team he hired to express it. But If it’s the imaginary painting of professionals paid to craft a political communication having an understanding of the market and taking advantage of it, then I am afraid to state this could be a deception.
The adventure all Nigerians at home and in diaspora must make their venture now is to decipher, is BAT’s document of engagement a deception or a sincere development chronicle to birth a new Nigeria of our collective aspirations?
An 80 page work comprising 10 major promises and other policy outlines for a greater and better Nigeria is beyond my educational qualifications to make a summary in 2 pages or synoptic in few lines. I will therefore be masses friendly in my advocacy for fairness in our judgement of the documents, providing a detailed compendium of my scrutiny and where necessary provide them in major local languages where the fund for it can be found.
The background will be taken from Buhari’s promise to Nigeria, like the old testament books of the bible it is a shadow of things to come in the new testament promised kingdom of BAT. What has been our experience under Buhari, this should inform how we should receive BAT’s new Testament.
The Document tagged; “Renewed Hope 2023- Action Plan for a Better Nigeria”, sounds to me like a subtle political savage of “emi lokan leyin eyi ti a Abiola sonu”, that is, it’s my turn after MKO Abiola’s lost turn, this for me is an excellent genre that may fly among the Yorubas, Christians, Muslims or Traditionalists. A rescue from traditional tribal war that the earlier simple genre “Emi lokan” is generating.
BAT promised to prioritize National Security, Economy, Agriculture, Power, Oil and Gas and Transportation. He didn’t fail to outline his policy option for needs so critical in Health care, Digital Economy, Women Empowerment, Judicial Reform, Federalism/Decentralization of Power and Foreign Policy.
Federalism/Decentralization of power is a subluxation treatment for a clinical case of actual dislocation, in orthopedic this can only lead to further complications. Please ask the Orthopedic surgeons around you on the application of this for a nation suffering dislocation of joints from her frame in critical points. However the political question this raises for BAT is why a detour from the old testament promise of Restructuring made in 2015 by APC but wasn’t fulfill in 8 years?
Social security received huge hope of investment in Sports, Entertainment and Culture, Youth Empowerment and Enterpreneurship to expand job opportunities for millions of Nigerian Youths in BAT document of engagement.
BAT reminded us of the need not to fail to judge his APC new testament promises on the strength of APC Buhari old testament performance in his statement, promising to continue to expand the MASSIVE Social Investment Programme of the Buhari administration.
In his FOREWORD to the document; a clear proof of the writ been a product of intellectual contractors who no doubt did a good job that merit whatever the amount doled out, Tinubu says his plans were CONCEIVED after travelling the length and breadth of this country and listening to the people from different life strata. Obviously, Southeast is excluded from BAT’s geography of Nigeria, as I am in doubt of any visit he made to the region with respect to his ambition and eventual candidacy concerning 2023. This genuineness is complicated by his medium of traveling, should we accept that BAT travelled the length and breadth of this country, when he flew from Lagos to Abuja over the flood in Kogi without an on the ground experience with the people of Idah who are completely sacked from their community. Can we say that Tinubu listened to the people of southern Kaduna and captured their life experience and got envisioned by it to openly and humbly beg Nasir El-Rufai to prepare to join his government to reverse their rotten experience to bad?
Universal Adult Suffrage is a myth of miscarriage of rights and until we define adulthood beyond age, democracy may never profit us, I am still lost to the result recorded from PDP primary that gave no vote to Aspirant Mazi Sam Ohunabuwa who travelled the length and breadth of this country by road twice in absolute risk to his life engaging with PDP’s delegates on his beautiful promises for a better and greater Nigeria. If those who vote in party primaries are adults by age and not in the ability to receive information and process same to make informed decisions on behalf of their party. Why do we hope to harvest “adult” quality decisions from the hungrier, more deprived masses of our voters to whom the right to make 2023 decisions belong? All well meaning Nigerians must join project iWalk to translate strong public advocacy of “No to vote buying” to strong Community Political Education of saying “No To Vote Selling”. In the strong resolve of the buyers and sellers of votes lies our hope of a better nation.
Tinubu in his foreword touted Lagos as his achievement for which he deserves to be given Nigeria. A critical look at his contribution to today’s Lagos will help us put in perspective this request been made of us. It is imminent on us to fast track the release of a research paper titled; Tinubu’s Lagos and The Greater Nigeria Project.
Idiocracy and stupidity are needed at twists and turns to subsume sense and embrace party supremacy at moments when reasoning beckons in politics. No politician therefore deserves to be simply judged for playing politics or making political statement, not to talk of one, among the founders, a loyal party man, the national leader of a party. As a good party man Tinubu notes, that the TOTAL transformation of Nigeria can be achieved by building on the FOUNDATION laid by the present APC administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, we must therefore ignore hasty conclusion that he is being political and put to test the foundation upon which he is promising to lead us to build. Let me therefore throw a public challenge to undergraduate students of Nigeria higher institutions who are part of Buhari’s 8 year adventure and have been home for 8 month; long enough for political involvement without academic distraction to accept the challenge of placing in the public their personal thought of the way forward for Nigeria by presentation of a paper on; “The Buhari Foundation And The Complex Construction Of A New Nigeria: The Way Forward.
bolajiakinyemi66@gmail.com