This is one simple question I want every ordinary Nigerian going out to vote this Saturday to answer before leaving home.

When was the last time, the son, daughter, wife, sister or brother of your party leader counted among the dead or the wounded in election fracas?

When was the last time a family member of your party leader’s got arrested at the Occupy Lagos rally? How many of them got burnt down with their huts during one of those wee hour raids of Fulani herdsmen? And when the Beroms, the Agatu or the Southern Zaria people decided to launch retaliatory attacks, how many of the kith and kin of the big men got hit?

If you answer these questions sincerely, it would then dawn on you that, irrespective of whether you support PDP or APC, the only business you have to do this weekend is to go, cast your vote (and, if you would), stay and watch the counting. After that, leave the rest to INEC, the candidates, their party leaderships and the courts. For even if INEC declares a result you strongly feel did not reflect how you voted, you would not get the commission to reverse itself by taking up arms. If they say monkeys and baboons would soak in blood, you’re neither monkey nor baboon, wait and see when the monkeys and baboons would emerge from the bush to bring this about. For if you raise a finger against your fellow Nigerian, you’ve automatically called yourself ‘monkey’ and ‘baboon’.

Clearly, some people have made up their minds not to accept any result that is not in their favour. Some want to blackmail the rest of us to vote one particular way, simply because they feel they have monopoly of violence (you’ll notice I did not mention APC or PDP) and would unleash mayhem on us if we did not vote for them. Some have told us that one particular candidate cannot win unless the election is rigged. They have threatened to resist that ‘rigging’ with the last drop of their blood. Now, that’s the recipe for war.

But the fact remains that not a single one of these war mongers, heating up the polity today can survive one good dirty slap without turning up at the emergency ward.

So, basically, all the noise they are making is in the hope that you and I (the common people) would be activated into riot mode, waiting for them to give the order, whenever it suits them, for us to go on rampage, killing ourselves and destroying whatever is left of our poor infrastructure – and, in the end, giving them the bargaining chips to go and negotiate with themselves, settle themselves and leave us to lick our wounds and bury our dead.

So, isn’t it time we let them deploy their children to fight this war, for once? After all, when they get to office, it is these same sons and wives and daughters and concubines, who end up cornering all the spoils of the office.

Only last night, as I tried in vain to get some sleep, my mind kept drifting off to what lies ahead of us this weekend. I kept painting scenarios of the morning after. What if Buhari does not win? What if Jonathan loses? Who would monitor the election in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa? Would they just sit somewhere and cook up results? What if some people insist on going to vote with their bombs?

I would get so scared that I would intermittently interrupt my thoughts to say a prayer for the country. There is no denying the fact, there is still tension in the land. And much of it is attributable to what the politicians have said, what they have failed to say, and their general body language.

But as I tossed from one corner of my bed to another, I ran a mental check on the families of all the key politicians, who are calling the shots today, heating up the polity and threatening fire and brimstone if the result did not go their way.

Virtually all of them have their families abroad. Their children are all in choice schools in Europe, America and Dubai and South Africa. They only come home to pick up party tickets to run for offices (after their fathers have used our heads to break coconut and clear the way for them). And in the event that they are unpopular (as they always are), it is still those of us here that their fathers would still use to rig the election for them.

And their politician fathers, who stay behind in the country to cause problems have one leg in the country and one leg outside the country. All of them have valid multiple visas on their passports (that is if they all don’t have diplomatic passports). They drive bulletproof vehicles and live in fortified fortresses.

So, even if the violence they daily toy with finally erupts and claims as much as five million lives, there is absolutely no chance that they, or any of their children, would fall victim. But that is just by the way.

Depending on what side of the political divide one is, the last six weeks must have been the longest or shortest six weeks ever. While the PDP wished each week could drag to nine days, the APC wished six weeks could be compressed in to six days.

Now, we’re less tagn 72 hours to March 28. Yes, in a twinkle of the eye, the six weeks, which seemed so long a time has suddenly flown past.

Of course, I would not be saying the whole truth if I fail to acknowledge that the postponement appears to have favoured the PDP more than it did the APC. I would be lying if I fail to recognise the fact that while the APC machine, which seemed to have been primed for February 14 lost steam with the postponement, the PDP train suddenly found its rhythm, gathered momentum and is set now to finish very strongly – stronger than would have been the case if we had gone ahead with the initial February 14 date of the presidential election.

So, was this the real reason for the postponement (and not necessarily the security reasons earlier advanced)? My answer is yes and no. If the ruling party felt that it was heading for an electoral humiliation, it had every right to do all that is constitutional to save itself. Fortunately for it, the shift did not breach any law.

However, I am one of those who believe the postponement was necessary, but not because of insecurity alone. Because, even now that we’ve improved on the security situation in the North East, we still do not have any guarantees for the affected areas in Yobe, Borno and Adamawa.

Rather than security, I was convinced that, irrespective of Prof. Attahiru Jega’s posturing, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was not ready for election. I was convinced INEC was on the verge of cooking up figures, forcing same down our throat and never minding the post-election consequences.

Today, six weeks after, I feel the electoral commission is now ready to an acceptable level. Although I still could not get my PVC, I feel many more people have now got theirs and we have also used the intervening period to draw attention to the anomaly and injustice that Jega seemed determined impose on us all on February 14.

Now, even when one is not satisfied with what is on ground, at least, one is consoled that the abracadabra has been reduced to a level we can comprehend a little bit. Whatever is left, we can always take to the courts and election tribunals after the election – since it is now very clear that we would end up in court, irrespective of where the victory pendulum swings.

My only prayer is that we restrict our protestations to the courts and not take them to the streets. That is also the worry of President Barack Obama and the rest of the world. That we never lose sight of the fact that we all still need Nigeria after this election.

Of course, the logical question every reader would now be asking is, where do I stand or who do I think would win. Well, several weeks ago, I argued that President Jonathan would take it by a narrow margin, but all the Buharists came after me, saying my conclusion did not tally with my analysis. So, I am reluctant to say that anybody would win, except to put on record that I have not seen any reason to change my conclusions of several weeks back.

Only last week, I had the opportunity of listening to Buhari in detail. It was the interactive session he had with ‘artisans’ in Lagos. I was listening on my car radio, as I was caught up in an end-time traffic gridlock.

Suffice it to say that I was not impressed with the outing. Buhari seems to have one answer for every question. He found a way of linking everything to corruption and insecurity. He would say: Question six is related to Question one, and he would go on to repeat what he answered for Question one. Everything from the economy to security, agriculture, National Assembly, foreign policy, health and education was reduced into a vague answer of security and corruption.

For someone like me who has since concluded that Buhari is only articulate when he’s on BBC Hausa Service (where he thinks in his mother tongue and delivers with an overdose of emotion and narrow sentiments), the outing in Lagos last week only confirmed that the things he does not understand about running a country are more than the things he understands.

I get this feeling that his handlers have coached him on what to say in public and he has learnt it by rote, and tries not to step out of line.

The few times he has tried to speak off the cuff had always landed them in embarrassing situations, like when he promised to stabilise crude oil prices and lately when he talked about bringing down the exchange rate to one naira to the dollar. Left on his own, he would also talk about retrieving and nationalising privatised public companies.

For me, Buhari’s lack of content is what we are wrongly describing as arrogance. He is not arrogant. He just does not know. He carries on as though his brain was frozen in 1983. That is why Godswill Akpabio and his PDP governors are complaining about the age of Buhari’s ideas.

Of course, the saving grace is that, as president, Buhari would have a lot of smart people around him. But that is the snag: Why punish us with the choice of Buhari when APC could simply have given us one of these its many smart people to run against Jonathan?


Source : http://sunnewsonline.com/new/?p=110711

GEJ till 2019!!!

My bros tell them.

APC Presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari
Gen. Muhammadu Buhari through his utterances, actions and inaction have shown that he's a religious fanatic, tribal bigot, hypocrite, corrupt, deceitful, violent, clueless and knows nothing about global economics. The Holy Bible says "from the bottom of the heart, the mouth speaketh." Buhari has consistently shown who he truly is, as listed below:

1. "I will continue to show openly and inside me the total commitment to the Sharia movement that is sweeping all over Nigeria. God willing, we will not stop the agitation for the total implementation of the Sharia in the country.” - Buhari (News24, August 27, 2001)

2. "If what happened in 2011 should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon will all be soaked in blood." - Buhari (Vanguard May 15, 2012)

3. “The last general election was anything but free and fair. The only political parties that could complain of election rigging are those parties that lacked the resources to rig.” - Buhar (First Speech after Military Coup, 31 December, 1983)


4. "No no no, Abacha did not steal Nigeria's money." - Buhari (10th Anniversary of Abacha's death)

5. "The declaration of state of emergency in three Northern states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe is a grave injustice against the North." - Buhari (Liberty Radio, June 2, 2013)

6. "I live on borrowing. I borrowed from the banks to build the house in Daura and the one in Abuja and Kano. The bank then was Barclays, now Union Bank." - Buhari (The SUN Exclusive Interview, December 24, 2012)

7. “When the Niger Delta militants started their activities in the South-South, they were invited by the late President Umaru Yar’adua. An aircraft was sent to them and their leaders met with the late President in Aso Rock and discussed issues. They were given money and a training scheme was introduced for their members. But when the Boko Haram emerged in the north, members of the sect were killed”. - Buhari (Liberty Radio, Kaduna May 14 2012)

8. "Muslims should only vote those who will promote Islam. We are more than the Christians if you add our Muslim brothers in the West."- Buhari (Liberty Radio Kaduna, 2003)

9. “This campaign is the third and last one for me; since, after it, I will not present myself again for election into office of the president.” – Buhari (April, 2011 at the Int'l Conference Centre, Abuja)

10. "I'll stabilize oil market if elected." - Buhari (Channels TV Interview, 2014)

11. “Why should Christians be concerned when Muslim cut off their limbs? After all, the limbs that are being cut off are Muslim ones and not Christian. So why should Christians bother about it?? – Buhari (Liberty Radio, Kaduna 2003)

12. "I will not have office of the first lady if I'm elected president.” – Buhari (2014)

13. "If There Is a repeat of the Civil War again, I will kill more Igbos to save the country." - Buhari (BBC Hausa Service, 2015)

14. “I can die for the cause of Islam if necessary. We are prepared to fight another civil war. We cannot be blackmailed into killing Sharia.” – Muhammadu Buhari (Freedom House, 2000)

15. I’ll make Naira equal in value to dollar." - Muhammadu Buhari (Vanguard, March 23, 2015) Is this the man you want to waste your votes on? I doubt it. ‪#‎VoteGEJ‬ ‪#‎GEJTill2019‬

As for me, I don recharge my decoder to watch;

1. How General Buhari's Monkey and Baboon will soak themselves in blood.

2. How Patience Jonathan's supporters will stone those who shout CHANGE.