This is the season of desperation, lies, fallacies and monumental propaganda for the ruling PDP. In its frantic bid to stalk the current popularity and widespread acceptability of the presidential candidate of the APC, General Muhammadu Buhari, the ruling party is frenetically embarking on a disparaging smear campaign on his personality.
The PDP, which initially proclaimed sticking to an issue-based campaign, now hinges the bastion of its campaign solely on the demonization of the character of the people’s General. If it is not about Buhari’s certificate today, tomorrow it is about his gapped tooth or even his height or his light skin or his wife. For the PDP, things have become so precariously degenerate!
Of all the lies being peddled by the PDP to blotch the personality of General Buhari, labelling him a religious bigot is most particularly damning and fraudulent. At the slightest opportunity, the PDP and its cronies resort to the religious card as part of the ploy to portend General Buhari in bad light. At the core of this finicky irreverent fabrication is the deception that Buhari has a mission to Islamize the country. What the PDP is yet to tell Nigerians is how a man who ruled the nation as a military dictator and didn’t Islamize the country would do same as a civilian president, with all the democratic checks and balances in place.
The truth of the matter is that Buhari is a practising Muslim and there is actually nothing wrong with this. The Nigerian constitution permits every Nigerian to practise the religion that he/ she believes in and in the way he chooses to. President Goodluck Jonathan has been worshiping from one church to the other across the country. He was once in Jerusalem with some Christian leaders and a few Christian members of his cabinet and party. He is actually free to do this as guaranteed by the country’s constitution, but then, why is General Buhari being unnecessarily vilified for his faith? Till date, no one could actually lay claim to any instance when the General has acted in ways that hinder others from practising their religions. As it is often said, opinions are free but facts are sacred. When General Buhari took over as the military head of state in 1984, out of the 19 military governors, he appointed, 11 of them were Christians.
The record is there for whoever cares to corroborate.
To demonstrate his dispassionate disposition to adherents of other faiths, General Buhari chose a popular Pentecostal Pastor, Tunde Bakare, as his running mate in the 2011 presidential election. Buhari’s choice of running mate rubbished the picture of a religion extremist being painted of him. Yet again, General Buhari has demonstrated his liberal position concerning religion by going for another committed and faithful Christian pastor, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), as his running mate. How could a supposedly Islamic fanatic opt for a pastor as running mate? A religion chauvinist wouldn’t do that! In choosing Osinbajo as his running mate, what Buhari has clearly shown is that he is ready to partner with any Nigerian, irrespective of the ethnic and religion divide, to move the country forward. So, what we have seen in Buhari, through this, is a statesman and a patriot who holds the unity of the country so dearly at heart.
The fear of the PDP as expressed by the Mr. President that Buhari would send some Nigerians to jail for corruption as soon as he becomes the president is no surprise. His government court’s corruption, and deserves nobody’s sympathy, a corrupt public officers and their accomplices belong nowhere but jail houses. However, the truth this time under democracy and the rule of law, due process will be guiding principle. If the General, like any rational leader, is going to fight corruption, he would have to do that within the confines of the law. Nigeria is not a banana republic. The constitution remains the guiding document of faith in the country. It is true Dr. Jonathan has been treating this sacred document with impunity, and believes this would be the same under Buhari, the answer is no.
Buhari had been military head of state, Minister of Petroleum Resources, military governor of Borno State and chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), which was then the cash basket of the country. However, there has not been even an accusation of him using those positions to corruptly enrich himself. This is extraordinary. The PDP should come out to denounce the fact that all former leaders are entitled to N23 million monthly, but only Buhari chooses to earn N2.3 million.
What stands Buhari apart today is the very element that is lacking in the current crop of leadership we have in this nation – INTEGRITY! There is, therefore, no amount of the campaign of calumny that can stop the Wind of Change. It has gathered momentum. The mass of the people are already on board. GMB is the man!
Lateef Raji,
Lagos
