Nigeria by being the champion of social media. You don't
win by renting crowds to fill up your rallies. You don't win
by putting up your billboards everywhere while tearing
down those of your opponents. You don't win by master-
minding in the media a false sense of the inevitability of
your victory. When you do all this successfully, you simply
end up deceiving yourself.
You win elections by mounting an effective ground-game
at the grassroots level; designed to bring out the people on
Election Day to vote for you. Instead, APC strategy was to
stampede the electorate into victory. The design was to
proclaim victory even before the election, laying grounds
for protests and acrimony in event of defeat.
Attempted coup d'état
The APC blueprint is see-through. Present a new
refurbished, suit-wearing and church-visiting Buhari to the
electorate chanting a mantra of "change." Give him a
Teflon-coated Redeemed pastor as vice-presidential
running-mate. Shield him from public scrutiny and
debates to hide his weaknesses and absent-mindedness.
Gloss over his objectionable past and pedigree. Mount an
aggressive image-laundering social media campaign.
So doing, before the PDP and the public would be up to
your game, the election would be over. Nigerians would
wake up on February 15th to discover to our cost that we
had been hoodwinked into handing over power to Buhari
and the Tinubu cabal.
The APC mechanism for perfecting this plan entailed
bullying the PDP into defeat. In the North, PDP supporters
were threatened and harassed. Some quickly packed their
bag and baggage and left town.
Even Goodluck Jonathan's convoy was stoned by APC
"democrats." In Gombe, a suicide bomber paid a courtesy
call on the president's campaign rally.
But the killer-punch was to be the disenfranchisement of
literally millions of PDP voters. With the complicity of
Jega's INEC, APC strongholds were supplied with PVCs:
while PDP strongholds were denied them.
Ghost-voters came out of the woodwork by their
hundreds of thousands in unlikely places like the war-torn
North-east to collect their PVCs. However, in peaceful
higher-population places like Lagos and Kano, non-
indigenes were denied their PVCs, suspected of being likely
PDP supporters.
It is telling that, in all the ensuing brouhaha over 23 million
people not yet receiving their PVCs seven days to D-Day,
APC remained resolute that the election should go ahead
nevertheless. This indicates that it knew the missing PVCs
belonged disproportionately to PDP supporters.
The denouement
However, the entire strategy of the APC met its Waterloo
with the postponement of the election. With the
postponement, the Buhari election-train came to a
screeching halt. Some have argued that the postponement
was a military coup by Jonathan and the PDP.
However, a more truthful assessment is that the
postponement scuttled the APC plan to win the election by
subterfuge.
APC blundered because it refused to entertain the
possibility that the election could actually be postponed.
As a result, it did not plan for that eventuality. In this gaffe,
it was carried away by its own hyperbole. APC big-guns
shouted themselves hoarse warning all and sundry that the
election must not be postponed, or else.
Worse still, they believed their own rhetoric.
APC is used to making threatening noises. It is all stuff and
bluster. If it loses, the dogs and the baboons would be
soaked in blood. If it loses it would form a parallel
government. If the election is postponed, Nigerians would
not stand for it. Therefore, it expended all its political and
financial capital on a 14th February election. When it
finally dawned on it that the election might be postponed,
Buhari made an unusual visit to the Council of State to
mount a pathetic eleventh-hour resistance.
But alas, the APC was completely outplayed. INEC
succumbed to the inevitable and the election was
postponed, and for six weeks no less. As a result, the APC
stampede came to an end. The orchestrated Buhari
momentum came to a screeching halt. Since then, APC
pundits have been in shock; scratching their heads
because, in all their impetuosity, they had no Plan B.
The APC was banking on the element of surprise. That is
now gone with the postponement. It was hoping to win the
election by disenfranchising PDP voters. That is no longer
possible. It is now confronted with fighting an election it
always knew it cannot win because it does not have the
appropriate structure on the ground at the grassroots
level.
PDP fight back
Sixteen years in power had made the PDP over-confident.
It seemed to have been caught unawares by the scripted
APC nomination of Buhari and the gimmickry of choosing
a Redeemed pastor as his running-mate. As a result, an
election that should have been a cake-walk for it suddenly
turned into a tight race. Part of this was self-inflicted. PDP
had a bad set of primaries; creating considerable
dissension within its ranks. Moreover, the PDP was bested
in the public relations department; allowing the APC to
define the narrative of the election on social media.
Had the election gone on as scheduled on 14th February, it
would have been close but Jonathan would still have won.
But with six weeks delay, the election will not even be
close. Even though it was ebbing discernibly, APC had
momentum for the 14th February election. By 28th
March, that momentum would have dissipated and
disappeared. Even now, the momentum is no longer there.
Buhari is in London on a dubious visit. APC has run out of
breath.
Make no mistake about it; the six week postponement of
the election has effectively crippled the APC. It is no
wonder then that the party has been grumbling non-stop.
In the meantime, PDP has been able to get a full measure
of the APC. Putting all its eggs in the 14th February date,
which it insisted cannot and must not be changed; the APC
played all its cards. It put all its eggs in one basket.
However, PDP held some in reserve, banking on the
postponement of the election.
APC's confusion
What happens now? APC is confused. It is stretched for
funds. It has lost its mojo, scrambling in panic mode to
raise additional 50 billion naira from donors. Speaking to
APC stakeholders at the party secretariat in Lagos, Bola
Tinubu said: "We have to re-strategise; all of you should go
back to your various constituencies starting from
tomorrow." This is a belated acknowledgment that the
party now likely to win the election is the one best able to
mount an aggressive and effective nationwide grassroots
campaign.
In that department, the APC is clearly second-best. The
party best positioned to mount an effective ground-game
and mobilize votes at the grassroots level is the PDP. It has
been around for 16 years. PDP local government
councilors account for nearly 70 per cent of all councilors
in Nigeria, comprising 6,521 members, making it a truly
grassroots-based political party.
The APC, on the other hand, does not have the nationwide
political structure to win the coming election. To date, it is
a newspaper and television political party. It has yet to
build a formidable grassroots support. It is a JJC party, a
little over a year old.
With all the noise about Buhari, it should not be forgotten
that the man chronically lacks skills at building political
party structures. In the APC presidential primaries,
Northern delegates did not even vote for him; preferring
instead Kwankwaso and Atiku. He was elected primarily on
the strength of ACN votes. PDP strength on the ground
everywhere in Nigeria explains why Jonathan was able to
win 37% of the vote even in Buhari's home-state of Katsina
in the 2011 election.
While APC was busy stoking up the press to create its air of
inevitable victory, PDP was busy mobilizing its local
government councilors. Its Presidential Campaign
Organisation brought all its elected and appointed
councilors from all over Nigeria to Abuja to mobilize them
to secure victory for the party at the grassroots level. In
what was captioned "Operation Deliver Your Ward,"
Professor Jerry Gana re-fashioned them as political foot-
soldiers and grassroots mobilisers for the PDP, split into
six groups according to their geopolitical zones.
Resurgent PDP
Since the postponement, Jonathan is no longer the issue. It
is once again Buhari; the coup-plotting former dictator
and alleged ethnic and religious jingoist. Thanks to the
postponement, Nigerians can no longer be panicked into
voting for Buhari. We now have enough time to appreciate
that he is old, and completely bereft of ideas as to what to
do when in power. It is not enough to shout "change,
change." The question is: change to what? To this question,
Buhari provides a deafening silence.
In the meantime, the true message of Jonathan's
considerable achievements in office is now resonating.
With the commissioning of new power-plants, we are now
generating 5,500 megawatts of electricity: a new Nigerian
record. We now know from PricewaterhouseCoopers that
the allegation that $20 billion is missing from NNPC
accounts is one big fat APC lie. The army is now fully-
equipped for battle.
For the first time in a long time, the Nigerian air force has
come into the fray. The Boko Haram is being bombed to
smithereens up North. There is even talk of capturing
Abubakar Shekau alive.
Within the next six weeks, all that is left is for the PDP to
put its house in order and APC will be toast. Since Buhari
has whipped up himself and his supporters into an
unrealistic psychological frenzy in this election cycle, it is
certain he will end up at the tribunal, when it finally dawns
on him that, in spite of all the bluster, he has lost again.
The fate awaiting Buhari brings to mind that of Mitt
Romney who was so deceived into believing he would be
elected America's next president in 2012, he had only a
victory speech on election night when he was roundly
defeated.
When the history of the 2015 presidential election is finally
written, it will be recalled that the postponement of the
election for six weeks was the final nail in the coffin of the
APC
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