A campaign season to forget

This is arguably the most toxic presidential campaign in the history of the country and the reasons are not far-fetched. Some see the election as the last chance for some of the presidential candidates while some attribute the toxicity to the fact that the three major tribes are represented in the election, making people fall back to their ethnic and regional cocoons.

In previous elections, the campaigns usually last for just two to three months but in this election, the campaign period is over six months.

It’s a good and bad thing. Good in the sense that the presidential candidates have enough time to sell their candidature and policies to the electorate. We also saw myths about some candidates shattered. It’s a bad thing in the sense that the presidential candidates have spent more money because of the long campaigns.

Apart from rallies, some of the candidates were organising town hall meetings and meeting different groups like the business community, religious community, and farmers. Unless we want to form “Holier than Thou” as we say in local parlance, we know how politics work in Nigeria. As a presidential candidate, you are expected to drop transport money or refreshments after meeting many of these groups. That is how we roll in this country.

Sadly, in the last two weeks, the campaign of calumny and mudslinging between the camps of the two leading presidential candidates is appalling and reprehensible. The gloves are definitely off between the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress( APC), Bola Tinubu, and the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar.

Both candidates are fighting dirty in the market square. They have accused each other of being a drug baron, thief — you name it. They have also called on the courts to disqualify the other. That’s a joke taken too far. No court in the country at this particular time will disqualify any of the major candidates. That’s an open invitation to anarchy and the country is not ready for the fallout of the crisis. We are still battling bandits, Boko Haram, and unknown gunmen, we don’t need another crisis on our hands.

I think the candidates should call on their goons and capo regimes to order. Fighting in the mud is not helping their cause and both camps should grow up. Apart from making unrealistic promises, they should concentrate on the issues and the how of solving our major problems in the country. Make no mistake about it, no matter who wins the presidential election, the next year will be tough. The removal of fuel subsidy, which all the candidates have agreed must go, will see Nigerians pass through “Hell” on their way to the promised land.

The most popular woman in the political space today is Hajia Naja’atu Bala Muhammad who resigned from her position in the APC presidential council and her membership in the ruling party.

In her resignation letter to the APC national chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, Mohammed said recent developments in the political and democratic space make it impossible for her to continue participating in party politics.

The next day we saw her taking pictures with the presidential candidate of the PDP after saying she is no longer participating in partisan politics.

Since she left the APC, she has been singing like a canary, moving from one media house to another giving tales of her Damascus journey. She is in her Eureka moment and is trying too hard to justify the reasons she left the ruling party. The APC has been running from pillar to post defending the allegations. My opinion about this is if I were an Atiku Abubakar, I won’t trust people like this. When she leaves the Atiku camp tomorrow, she will reveal all his dirty linen to the next party or person. Tactless.

The presidential candidate of the APC, Tinubu, also trended this week when he took his party to the cleaners in Ogun. He spoke out of frustration because he believes some people in his party are trying to sabotage his victory at the polls through the lingering fuel crisis and the Central Bank Of Nigeria’s new policies.

Ogun is fast turning out to be where he vents his frustrations. While it is within his rights to vent when he feels his party members are frustrating him, I also feel he should have been more tactical about it. Fighting your party and the opposition at the moment is not a smart thing just less than a month to the election. The Jagaban should be smarter than this.