MUHAMMADU BUHARI- SALIENT LESSONS FROM THE 2015 POLLS

By Vwede Overah

The 2015 Nigerian presidential and National Assembly elections have been lost and won, but memories of events before, during and after the elections still lingers.

Like in every sphere of human endeavor, these particular elections, especially the presidential election, came with, and left behind several lessons for all. Lessons learnt include but not limited to the the one enumerated below:

Giving up should not be an option:

“It is not over until God say so”. This is one popular mantra usually associated with proactive and inspirational persons.

 I guess this was one thing General Muhammadu Buhari never considered when he gave up his quest, after three attempts at the presidency, in 2011. He believed it was over for him, hence he quitted. With strong emotion he called a press conference to announce his decision not to contest in future elections. In tears, he took the decision and left.

Three to four years afterwards, he had cause to start having a re-think. Most probably after persons who believe in the popular mantra met with him; made him believe in himself and maybe offered to partner with him to achieve his objective(s). The rest is known to all and now a part of history.

Not just in politics, but in our everyday life, giving should not be an option; especially in endeavors in which one has so much passion, trust or belief. “It is never over until God say so”.

Team-work is key:

One acronym I find interesting is: T.E.A.M (Together Everyone Achieve More). 

The years 2003 and 2007 say the president –elect, General Muhammadu Buhari sought to realize his presidential ambitions on the platform of the ANPP (All Nigeria People’s Party). Effort of the party was not good enough to see him clinch the presidency in 2003, neither was it formidable enough in 2007.

Suspecting some internal political foul play, the General decided to float his own CPC (Congress for Progressive Change). Again, albeit receiving accolades for the great level of party followership with a very short life-span, the General returned unelected. 

Here, it appeared the general in him gave way.  He gave up the fight. This third failure was it.

As widely believed, doing the same thing over and over again in the same way and manner will not bring a different result.

The 2015 elections have shown how team-work turned fortunes around for him. It is now known how his party the CPC (Congress for Progressive Change), ANPP (All Nigeria’s People’s Party), ACN (Action Congress of Nigeria) and a faction of APGA (All Progressive Grand Alliance) merged to form a mega-party (All Progressive Congress, APC) that incidentally elected him as their presidential candidate.

While the CPC came with massive northern followership, the ACN deployed all political machinery to ensure that their leadership position in the west is intact for the APC elections. APGA came with some level of eastern support and ANPP teamed up with some northern states what was left of the party. Their coming together created a formidable opposition that ended up choking and defeating the ruling party, PDP (People’s Democratic Party).

In our everyday life, one should imbibe the spirit of team-work especially in tackling and surmounting difficult tasks and assignments. One should always remember that “no man is an island”.

Over-Confidence

This was a major albatross of the PDP (People’s Democratic Party).

As we grew up from children to adolescents, then adults, our parents, guardians and senior relations told interesting folktales, especially those with animal characters. All these tales taught us different lessons: from contentment, steadfastness, greed to industry, unity and cooperation, over-confidence, etc.

The PDP for many years dominated elective positions at the federal level and in over seventy percent of the states. While this dominance lasted, the leadership seemed to relent in consolidation efforts. Instead, they spent time reminding the whole world that PDP was the biggest political party in Africa and would remain in power for at least sixty years.

This over-confidence posture ate deep into the internal structure of the party to the extent that they lost focus and allowed the opposition APC to dominant and carry the day.

This reminds one of the popular folktale about the race between the tortoise and the dog. While the dog, knowing its capabilities and that of its opponent, boasted all day the tortoise painstakingly planned his success and ended up victorious.

People power and Resilience:

One simple definition of Democracy: it is a government of the people, for the people and by the people. This definition simply implies that the people are powerful, especially in determining political leadership.

Having being in power for over fifteen years, the PDP seem to believe that their dominance will continue indefinitely. They appeared to govern with impunity, ignored the welfare of people to a great extent, reneged on many initial electoral promises and underrated the capability of the main oppositions.

Among other things, Nigerians wanted constant power supply, improved infrastructure, jobs, and affordable healthcare and education.

For the first time, the people were determined to effect a change in leadership. They stayed up all night, endured the rains and other natural elements to ensure their votes counts.

Aside politics, at different times in our upbringing we were taught that in every aspect of human life: “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.