PROLOGUE
OUR years ago, Nigeria was in the heat of pivotal politics that would end up being historical as an unheralded assemblage of opposition parties toppled an entrenched ruling party.
Even more significant was the fact that the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan calmly conceded when the trend became clear. It was an uncommon gesture in these parts.
Four years have evaporated since those heady days of the opposition takeover. The erstwhile opposition are now the powers-that-be, while the former incumbents has been awkwardly trying to go through the motions of playing the underdog.
Back then all that Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC) had to offer was an untested vision and alternative to what they had defined as the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) squandering of our commonwealth. The PDP had a record to be derided, the opposition could conveniently offer an Eldorado.
It was so bad for then then ruling party that at some point the mantra in certain quarters was ‘anything but Jonathan.’
Now the tables are turned. Buhari and APC now has a record which the PDP can, and had been attempting to deride. In moments of levity opposition activists joke about ‘changing the change.’
To be sure, a change of government is an option for the electorate come February 16, 2019. The question is for that to happen the PDP must have made the case for change. Its candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has sought to do by rehashing that famous line by which former United States President Ronald Reagan took down his rival in the 1980 election. It came down to a simple question: ‘are you better off today than you were four years ago?’
In an even more recent example, the then challenger Bill Clinton defeated the then incumbent Republican President George W. Bush by repeatedly hammering into the voters consciousness that despite the exploits of US soldiers in the Gulf War, ‘it was the economy, stupid!’ It was a line that stuck.
It may not be clear until Election Day whether the PDP’s attempt to tell people how bad their lot is, has worked. If this line of attack fails to gather traction, it reflects badly on the opposition candidate and the management of his campaign, given that the economy is truly in dire straits. Even Buhari has admitted this to governors.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. Four years ago, Buhari and the APC rolled out a campaign that focused on just three themes: the economy, security and corruption. Speaking at the launch of his party’s presidential campaign in Uyo on Friday, the president said his party would be hammering those same themes again.
Why? Is it that not much has been achieved by the government as the opposition would have us believe? Or that such was the shipwreck left behind by the former administration that salvage work in these areas must continue for a while?
Whatever position you take, what is clear is that the 2019 polls would be an event that changes the country forever. It could throw up an Atiku who follows through on his promise of restructuring among other things.
Or it could result in the validation of the efforts of the Buhari administration in the last four years. Were that to happen, the repercussions could be profound both in the economic and political space.
It would affirm the revulsion that led to the electoral revolt against the PDP four years ago. It would entrench certain policies and alter the way government does business for the foreseeable future. For a generation of political players it would be the end of the road – leaving out the very real prospect of an even weaker opposition in the short term.
A victory for the PDP would suggest that what happened four years ago was actually mistake; a glitch in the normal Nigerian way of doing business and the country has chosen to return to its default political mode.
Truly, the general elections of 2019 would be the polls that set in stone the ‘change’ of 2015, or corrects the course for those who want to ‘change the change.’
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