BY Chidi Chima
If you are bored, you don’t know what you are missing. Switch on your mobile phone and have fun. Supporters of President Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari are lighting up the cyberspace with some of the wittiest stuffs you can imagine.
Nigeria holds its 8th presidential election — the fifth in the Fourth Republic — on February 14, 2015. The chief combatants are Jonathan, flying the flag of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Buhari, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
It is impossible to keep pace with what the supporters of both candidates are churning out on the social media — Twitter, Facebook, chat groups, Whatsapp, Blackberry Messenger, Instagram and all that — but some are worth mentioning.
One of the most enduring images is that of US President Barack Obama, with a big smile, holding a placard supposedly saying: “Vote for Change Vote Buhari”. The Jonathan campaign replied with the same image but a different message: “GEJ is the only solution in Nigeria.” It carries the PDP umbrella.
In fact, though, the real picture has Obama promoting his health care programme with the message: “#Get Covered because nobody should go broke just because they get sick.” Obama is obviously more interested in promoting his controversial programme which will give the low-income earners medical coverage without the usually expensive health insurance. He cannot be bothered by Buhari or Jonathan.
Meanwhile, before the pro-Jonathan Obama picture surfaced, or at least before it was seen by this writer, the president’s supporters had produced a far more “devastating” doctored picture showing the four APC presidential aspirants holding placards saying: “Vote GEJ”. The aspirants are: Sam Nda-Isaiah, Atiku Abubakar, Rochas Okorocha and — wait for it — Buhari himself!
In the real picture, they were showing off their APC clearance certificates at the party’s secretariat in Abuja after they passed the screening exercise.
How fortunate would Jonathan have been to have the endorsement of four APC aspirants! That would be real good luck. But they had already signed an undertaking before collecting their certificates that they would not defect from APC, no matter the outcome of the presidential primary. Jonathan did not benefit from the fall-out.
But Buhari’s guys would not take that lying low. So they came up with Jonathan holding his own placard saying: “Vote for Change Vote Buhari 2015”.
Jonathan, in bowler hat, is smiling as he “campaigns” for his opponent. It is not his body, apparently, because he hardly wears that kind of dress with a hat. But just imagine how glad Buhari would be to have the backing of the sitting president, if not that they are running against each other again.
There is a cartoon designed to mock Buhari’s understanding of economics, or anything education. Following the falling crude oil prices, a spoof quote was attributed to Buhari to the effect that he could do something about the situation, since petrodollars is the source of Nigeria’s livelihood.
“I will stabilise oil price,” Buhari is quote to have said, to which President Vladmir Putin of Russia, pointing a pen, is imagined to have replied: “Aboki sit down.” A incredulous Obama, laughing so heartily, retorts in Pidgin English: “U be OPEC?” An oil sheikh is laughing at Buhari, saying: “Go skol, u no gree.”
There is another interesting cartoon, which was probably produced more than a year ago. A patient named Nigeria, looking terribly emaciated, in on hospital admission. He is receiving drip (intravenous fluid) marked “APC”. Bola Tinubu is the doctor with stethoscope in his hand, checking the heartbeat. Ibrahim Shekarrau, who was in the APC then before crossing over to the PDP, is also in the cartoon, along with Ogbonnaya Onu, former chairman of ANPP.
Buhari asks Tinubu: “Asiwaju, any pulse?”
Tinubu replies: “He will be OK 2015, he is suffering from umbrella.”
One of the issues in this election is insecurity, so a cartoon on Boko Haram is also in the mix. It shows Buhari wearing an army uniform and his running mate, Yemi Osinbajo, wearing a cassock. The text reads: “The best team against Boko Haram. A general and a pastor for physical and spiritual fight.”
So far so good.
But it is now getting a bit tasty. One cartoon puts Buhari and the Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, together. It says: “End the Bloodbath. Vote Buhari/Shekau for national security. Your vote or your blood.” This would feed into the narrative that Buhari knows something about Boko Haram, a message many Nigerians believed until the militants came after him last year. Buhari escaped unhurt.
One cartoon tries to whip up religious sentiments. It seemed to have originated from Kano in the wake of Shekarau’s defection to the PDP. It shows the former governor of Kano, who is now the minister of education, wearing the Niger Delta bowler hat, with Jonathan placed beside him.
The text says in Hausa: “Nigeria Sai Mara Sallah, inji Shekarau.” Translated, it means Shekarau is asking people to vote for an infidel. Anyone wooed by this sentiment is excepted to vote against Jonathan. Let’s hope it won’t get uglier than this.
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