My friend Mathias Tsado told a story of how at a barbershop he went to cut his hair today in Kaduna North, an older man found no support in the shop for his theory that if Atiku is elected he will sell the country.
According to Mathias, the barber sharply retorted by asking what they have benefitted from the government of Buhari, who has not sold the country. The barber continued that they would prefer for Atiku to win and sell the country so that they would know officially that they had no country, since at present that is what it seems like under Buhari. Everyone in the shop agreed with the barber and the old man left defeated and deflated–no takers for his theory.
The APC people are misjudging and underestimating the level of frustration and desperation out there. They think that they can scare these frustrated people off Atiku with the corruption bogeyman. It is not working, and it won’t work. I argued this in an essay last year. I however understand why that is the thrust of their campaign. Lacking a record to showcase, the only electoral rhetoric available to them is the corruption scarecrow. But they’ve miscalculated as corruption no longer has the electoral purchase it had in 2015.
Only elites and social the media commentariat now care about corruption. For the vast majority of Nigerians it is about survival. In some cases it is literally about life and death, and so they can’t understand why they’re being told to care more about corruption than about their existential anxieties.
For many regular Nigerians the main priority is an economy that works, corruption or no corruption. In fact they would rather have the corruption if some benefits trickle down to them and the economy works.
Buhar’s ineptitude has caused a decisive shift in attitude about corruption among Nigerians. I have written and published an essay on this. He has thus taken corruption off the electoral table.
In fact what his strategists don’t even realize is that Nigerians are not against corruption per se; what they detest is precisely what we have under Buhari: corruption that is restricted to a small circle of people and does not circulate to lubricate the economy while bad policies exacerbate the resulting economic downturn.
If a supposedly non-corrupt (not true) government can impoverish Nigerians more than a corrupt previous one then why should people care about Atiku’s alleged corruption and not gamble their future on him?
Source: Facebook