By Shehu Bashir Esq.
I have been reading a lot of articles and opinions by many opinion moulders and political analysts alike. The emotions expressed in some of these writings are generated by the sentiment of the writers ethnicity, religion and perceived political ostracism as the hidden frame of the narrative.
In some of those writings, the predictions for the president to win or lose depends largely on two key variables (1) the principal candidate of the principal opposition party (2) the region where such candidate of the opposition comes from as against the region of the incumbent president.
The saddest thing about this particular oppositions (coalition) blueprint is that it is written with the ink of conspiracy and not strategy. Conspiracy rarely win, strategy does. Conspiracy is often powered by emotion which makes it difficult to control its excesses until it slips into frustration.
Those who are chanting the praises of the coalition and the optimism of its imagined victory are doing so only to the fantasized assurance that the candidate MUST come from a certain region the most emotional dissension has been expressed largely by the opposition members who are of the core north extraction.
The chief opposition figure and the serial presidential contestant, the leader of the coalition pack has been spreading this sentiment to discredit the incumbent on the basis of his (the presidents) tribe. As it, there is zero discussion on issues of policy based on fact, practical and pragmatic realities. If any, it is just a cover up of their emotions.
This is the first red flag of the imminent failure of the opposition as it were the centre of course cannot hold simply because the fight for political placement on the ground of bigotry is going to be the first hammer to shred the coalition into fragments. No one should use the diversity of our existence to create division.
To all the campaigners of calumny against the incumbent government, the best and the most easier way to lose to Tinubu in the 2027 presidential election is to turn the contest into a regional, ethnic, tribal or religious competition.
There is no need to forewarn anyone. The lesson of 2023 for those who used Muslim-Muslim ticket as the cause of their cross should have taught anyone else a lesson.
Tinubus support base is not fragmented by any of such sentiment. The spread is national. The opposition knows this. They are just being deliberately mischievous. They are not just resting on this ethnocentric sentiment to campaign to win Nigerians votes, they are doing so to heat up the polity and incite violence when they eventually lose.
What the coalition is bringing to the table is not the impeccability of their integrity but the inflammation of their wild sentiment. The most formidable strategy of the opposition is grandstanding and incitement.
This sentiment, when driven too far, will turn out to be the basis of sympathy for President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu . This has happened before. Candidate Tinubu might not have been certain of the support he had before the 2023 presidential election until the orchestrated Naira manipulation conspiracy.
Many people who later decided to support him then did so because they did not like the way the system was turned upside down, to create hardship for innocent citizens just because the system was desperate to ensure that Tinubu did not win. The rest is history and it has been properly documented in the book of history.
So, all the agents of sendition, whose basis of campaign to seek for votes is to pitch the candidate of the west against the candidate of the north, to create a picture of the north versus the west, I urge you to desist before you sacrifice the peace of this nation. Your ambition is not worth the life of any Nigerian let alone our national security. Stop the desperation.
No northern presidential candidate has ever won the presidency without the inputs of the south and no southern presidential candidate has ever won the seat without the numbers from the north. The constitutional provision has made every region and state so important that failure to secure the required percentage cannot guarantee victory.
It must also be sounded like a caveat that the worst manner to campaign for the president for anybody from the south, south west especially, is to make it look like the north is against him because he is not of the north. No such bait should be consumed by the progressives.
The best way to have a clean, decisive and victorious contest is to stay within the context of policy issues, current and future gains with assurances of improvement on the immediate challenges.
Most importantly, the smartest way to brace it up is to play politics of inclusiveness where everyone is not only carried along but also assured of future presence and fair representation. There is no room for complacency.
*GOD IS HERE.*
