SIR: As we inch closer to the February 14 poll, the media is being inundated with intense campaigns of calumny from desperate quarters working to suppress the storm of change sweeping across Nigeria’s political landscape! The obvious objective of the uncensored media offensives is to discredit the APC presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari and lower his estimation before right-thinking members of the society.
Perhaps the most meretricious of these media contraptions is the television advertorial labeled “The Real Buhari”; which has been airing recurrently on major television stations recently, sponsored by a faceless group of political traducers! The masterminds of the pejorative advert intended to leverage on the Direct Effects Model (a media theory which assumes that audiences passively accepted media messages and would exhibit predictable reactions) to hoodwink the electorate into perceiving the retired general and dogged icon of anti-corruption as the devil’s incarnate; especially the younger generation of Nigerians who may not be conversant with Buhari’s antecedents when he served as Head of State from December 31st 1983 to 27th August, 1985.
They however seem unaware that the Direct Effects Model has a flipside- the Active-Audience Theory (which emphasizes the assertive power of the audience)! Therefore I was not surprised when “the real Buhari” advert fell grossly short of hitting its intended mark. The enlightened citizenry read between the tissues of lies in that montage and rather than impair their perception of Buhari, became irritated at the level of desperation of the sources of the hogwash.
The diversionary intent of the advert, to distract Nigerians from core developmental issues, is one of the usual chicaneries of the PDP and the incumbent PDP-led government. Emphasis over the last four years has been more on politics; or ‘politricks’, than on governance! So when they churn out their tales of Transformation, they tend to make us feel like aliens in our own land!
Think about it, do we really need the minister of agriculture to expend taxpayers’ money in order to inform us via sponsored adverts, of the giant strides in the sector? I believe we are in a position to testify to agricultural transformation when we observe the relative availability of foodstuff across the country, a boost in farmers’ income and commendable reduction in food prices. The Jonathan administration and its multifarious mouthpieces are vocal about power sector transformation, but after over four years, our bulbs are getting dimmer and our communities darker! Industries and small businesses are rapidly closing shop due to epileptic power supply!
So it appears that the arrowheads of the incumbent government and their supporters are living in utopia, completely isolated from current dystopian Nigerian state! A state of ravaging insecurity; where an estimated 50% of employable youths haplessly roam the streets or fend from the salaries or pensions of their parents, pensions which are not regularly forthcoming due to sharp practices at the pension offices. Ingrained corruption and wanton mismanagement has brought Nigeria to the verge of a bottomless pit!
Graduates are currently exposed to the most debilitating conditions in their quests for employment! And just when we thought that employment racketeering was restricted to dubious private sector operators, the public sector gave us a rude shock with the shoddy Nigerian Immigration Service recruitment exercise of March 2014, in which about 18 graduates lost their lives, with scores more injured! Let’s remember that the jobless graduates paid N1,000 each for the recruitment exercise! But till date, not one graduate has been recruited from that slapdash exercise! Not a penny has been refunded to any of the over 600,000 graduates that allegedly applied for the vacancies meant for only about 4,000; yet not a single public official has been sacked, or has voluntarily resigned following the ignominious incident!
Therefore if cleansing the Augean stables qualifies Buhari to be described as a monster, then Nigerians need him now more than ever, to unleash his monstrosity and salvage the nation from the brinks of cataclysm!
- Joshua Otene,
Asokoro, District, Abuja.
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