Abimbola Adelakun
The touted choice of Pastor Tunde Bakare as the running mate of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari is a smart one even though it shows some pandering to ethnic and religious sentiments. For a man like Buhari, who has been labelled as a Sharia fundamentalist, choosing a pastor and an activist - a relatively younger one for that matter - as his deputy is all he needs to dispel the vicious image.
The Pastor Bakare vice presidency
Not just that, I see the Buhari/Bakare ticket as a repetition of history. During the first coming of Buhari, it was widely believed his non-smiling deputy, Gen. Tunde (another Tunde!) Idiagbon, was the real power behind the throne. Buhari might just be choosing another man, who will do the real job of cleaning Nigeria's murk, while he does what he has been wanting for years: wield executive power. Bakare is fiery, brilliant and understands the issues that afflict our nation. He will be a great boost to Buhari's candidacy whose ambition to be Nigeria's civilian president has been defeated twice.
So, should Pastor Bakare run?All eyes are on him and he says his are on God. Personally, I feel the idea of waiting on God to decide whether to run or not should be completely overhauled. In Nigeria, this is a too familiar line and, has been used in dishonest circumstances by politicians and military rulers.
Another Pastor, Chris Okotie of the FRESH Party, insists his candidature is God-sponsored even though he has repeatedly failed in his 'divine' quest for the presidency.
President Goodluck Jonathan didn't pretend he was waiting on God but implied he would think about it. While doing so, all manner of voices came and impersonated God's. Today, Jonathan is running as president. Nobody in Nigeria, who has ever waited on God, has ever turned down the opportunity to run for a juicy position. For somebody like Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar, who made it clear, very early in his administration, that he was not going to be listening for God's voice and he would hand over to a democratically elected president, 'God' (or his human agents) never erected hoadings or start several associations to whisper 'Run, Son, run' to him. From my experience, once you begin to toy with the desire, God's voice will come saying what you want to hear and the voice of the people becomes the voice of God.
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For Bakare, the questions are legion: So, is that what the Save Nigeria Group and all the activism are all about? Did he become an activist in order to gain political advantage? Is his trenchant denouncement of all the previous and incumbent administrations, self-serving or done in the interest of the public good? The stories of $50,000 by President Jonathan's men will no longer seem like that of a honest man but one who simply wanted to put down a rival.
For somebody who has been a consistent critic of politicians, his new position is no longer that of a critic but a competitor.
There is also the issue of whether Nigerians will trust a critic as a leader. The last time a critic like late Gani Fawehinmi became a politician, for all his goodness of heart and contributions to the Nigeria of our dreams, Nigerians still didn't vote for him en masse. The same Nigerians whose right he fought for on many fronts, was imprisoned several times for and, frightfully, died as a consequence of his prison sufferings didn't think he could be their leader. Come election time that year, more Nigerians, like a woman, who craves an abusive lover, voted for people who had brutalised and plundered their economy.
As an aside, this idea of a Christian/Muslim ticket for political office should be de-emphasised. Anybody, regardless of his religious persuasion or lack of it, should be able to aspire to political leadership without having to pretend to belong to Christianity or Islam. Most leaders, who have come in the name of God, built churches and mosques in the state house have turned out to be largely frauds.
I have heard argument in some quarters that Pastors should not be involved in politics. People, who tow this line of reasoning only say so because they have not been involved in church politics. From my experience, I can say their politicking is as full of intrigue as that of Peoples Democratic Party and Action Congress of Nigeria, if not more sordid. When the leaders of national religious bodies are to be elected, the way they sometimes go about it makes one wonder if God would be given a chance to present His candidate at all. There have been instances when succession crises in churches have been taken to court even though the Bible expressly forbids this.
I followed the Christian Association of Nigerian Presidential election last year and I could not get over the intrigues that attended the process of choosing the leader.
If Bakare wants to take a chance of taking the politics into a more heterogeneous arena, good luck to him as long as he can do it and remain Pastor Bakare.
There are two things that are likely to happen if Bakare should say 'yes, I do' to Buhari: one, they might run and win. Whether Buhari tries or not to run a second term, Bakare might want to be president from that point.
Two, they might lose. The very things that stand as Buhari's advantage are also his disadvantages. He is older (68 and by 2015, will be 72) and he has been trying too hard to be president. In Nigeria, those who desire to be president never seem to make it. As the instances of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, MKO Abiola and lately, Atiku Abubakar have shown us, it takes much more than ambition and good intention to make the presidency. Conversely, those who appeared initially reluctant like Olusegun Obasanjo, Yar'Adua and Jonathan went farther.
Another minus for Buhari is that he was a dictator who was able to achieve some discipline during his first coming because he ruled by military fiat. In a democracy, can he repress people the same way to get them disciplined? I doubt it. He has been out of leadership for 25 years and that is a long time in the life of a nation. But will Pastor Bakare's no-nonsense image boost all the areas in which Buhari's candidature flags? The next 10 weeks will tell.
One good thing is this: Bakare's personality will boost the political arena that is currently flat. Thank God for Atiku, the PDP primaries would not have been worth watching the way Sarah Jibril ended up as a metaphor of one woman one vote. With Pastor Bakare's emergence, the bar will go higher and maybe the other candidates, who have concluded that the presidency is a done deal, might even get more creative and finally begin to talk about issues. In that case, I think Bakare should not just go for VP-ship. It might not be worth the amount of effort he would be putting in the campaign simply to light it up. In fact, if he would be criticised for turning activism to political advantage, he should go all the way and not short change himself by accepting to be a VP. He should go for the presidency instead.
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