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.
Read more at Vanguard, click here:
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