By Femi Odere
One would have thought that the campaigns for the 2023 election, especially, the highest political office in the land, would be more enobling, considering the leadership credentials of the major contenders, especially in light of the fact that all of them, except one, who was a Vice President, had been the chief executive officer, CEOs of their states at one time or another.
Nigerians had expected that the contestants would focus, like a laser beam, on how the country can be saved from the debilitating issues of our time, some of which are not only existential to individual lives, but also to the corporate existence of Nigeria. But the campaigns of the flag bearers of the New Nigerian Peoples Party, NNPP, the Labour Party, LP, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, have been mostly pedestrian, vacuous and comical.
The Atiku/Okowa presidential campaign of the PDP is the main culprit in these uninspiring and lethargic campaigns.
While the All Progressives Congress, APC, Tinubu-Shettima presidential campaign has always taken the higher ground in its issue-based engagements of its ticket with the Nigerian voters and other critical stakeholders in the articulation of their Action Plan, which has been, and will continue to be the modus operandi until the final stretch of the campaign, one may have to, every now and then, assist Kola Ologbondiyan, the spokesperson of the Atiku/Okowa campaign, in turning the comical disposition with which he approaches his job into a teachable moment.
This is in the hope that he can stop chasing Tinubu’s shadows and begin to avail the voters of what Atiku would do differently in the highly unlikely event of being voted for in the next presidential election.
Ologbondiyan’s latest ranting in a press statement that President Muhamadu Buhari should not waste his “precious time campaigning for Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu,” because “it is manifestly clear that Nigerians across board have roundly rejected him,” cannot be any more comical, if not illusory than that.
In his delirium, Mr. Ologbondiyan made more vacuous, jejune and baseless assertions that further speaks to the comicality of his principal’s campaign trajectory when he predicated Tinubu’s so-called rejection on what he described as “narcotics-related,” as he stands “accused of treasury-looting and many other reprehensible acts,” yet wanting to be President of the republic.
It wouldn’t have been necessary any longer to dignify Ologbondiyan’s rants with a response, but because one has it on the highest authority that the Atiku/Okowa campaign strategy is to incessantly hammer on falsehoods about the APC presidential candidate in the hope that some of these falsehoods would wear the believability toga, since they have nothing of substance to campaign on. After all, a lie told several times, and not countered at every turn, has a greater chance of being taken as the truth over time.
It exemplifies a comical disposition, if not indicative of a lethargic mind, that Ologbondiyan would find it important and worthwhile to counsel President Buhari not to waste his “precious time campaigning for Asiwaju Tinubu” if that’s what he said he would do for his party’s flag bearer when the time comes. What’s his business with that?
Can Ologbondiyan tell us in all honesty that former President Olusegun Obasanjo would campaign for his former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, when the time comes? Has the former President not made it known to the world that what the Wazirin Adamawa, as a Northerner and Fulani to boot, did was perfidious, egregious, insensitive and reckless to have hijacked the PDP ticket? This was even apart from the former President’s uncomplimentary, patently criminal remarks made about his erstwhile vicye President.
Tinubu’s forfeiture of $460,000 to the United States government’s treasury while he was living in that country, which Ologbondiyan now termed as “narcotics-related,” was nothing more than a red herring. It has been said severally, and it bears repeating here, that the United States government had written an official letter to this effect as far back as 2006 that Tinubu never had any drug related issues
with US authorities.
The $460,000 forfeiture was on account of the taxes not paid on his hard earned, verifiable income while living in the United States. This amount was therefore the restitution on his tax evasion and nothing remotely close to drugs. This is one of the falsehoods that would continue to be peddled until the very last day of the campaign in the hope that it would do some damage to the electoral chances of the APC presidential candidate.
Ologbondiyan’s assertion that Tinubu is an individual that has been “accused of treasury-looting and many other reprehensible acts” cannot be anything other than a figment of his imagination, if not a manifestation of a confused state of mind.
Perhaps, he’s in a state of selective amnesia, Ologbondiyan must, therefore, be reminded that Tinubu is the most investigated politician in contemporary Nigeria by his enemies when they were at the helm of the country’s affairs. He appeared in the dock, not once but on several occasions, yet he was found not guilty on all the deliberate corruption counts that were thrown at him. He never asked his lawyers to deploy the usual legal rigmaroles in order to delay justice as most of the politically exposed persons are wont to do.
The presentation of another person’s photograph referenced by Ologbondiyan, purported to have been that of Donald Duke, former governor of Cross Rivers State – and reportedly admitted by him that the image in the picture was his – was another false narrative for which the former governor had since apologized.
It is now obvious that saddling Ologbondiyan with the responsibility of pushing back Asiwaju’s imminent victory, by way of issuing empty and unintelligible press statements is beyond his ken. His soul-torturing, heart-rending attempts at looking for anything to throw at the APC presidential candidate with the hope that some would stick, as exemplified by another of his assertion that Tinubu “cannot point to any resounding legacy project he articulated and executed…as governor of Lagos State” can only be dignified with chuckles and giggles, and not any serious response.
One therefore cannot help but conclude, based on the vacuity of the Atiku/Okowa campaign, and aided by the clownish behaviors of Ologbondiyan in his issuance of press statements, that it’s now time to put Alhaji Atiku Abubakar out of his misery in his recurring presidential running to nowhere that has become pathological in the coming February 2023 presidential election.
•Odere, the spokesperson of the Tinubu/Southwest Media Veterans Support Group; and the Head of Media and Publicity, Diaspora Directorate of Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, can be reached at femiodere@gmail.com.
