Buhari Still Needs The ‘Wailing Wailers’

“Constituencies that gave me 97% cannot in all honesty be treated
equally, on some issues, with constituencies that gave me 5 %, I think
these are political realities-Muhammadu Buhari.

Recently it was reported in the media that the former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, was in Dubai, United Arab Emirate, with his political think tank to strategise over 2019 presidential election. This development was said to have unsettled the Presidency. The former Vice President must have been bombarded by phone calls for clarification that he quickly issued a statement denying plotting against Buhari and warning the media not to create enmity  between him and the president.

One take away from that story is that it had put paid to the lie that President Muhammadu Buhari would not do a second term. Those who believe that Buhari is a one term president would be disappointed. The same trick was unsuccessfully tried on Chief Olusegun Obasanjo before 2003 election, as purveyors of that trick allegedly sponsored by Atiku Abubakar urged Obasanjo, that he should be a one term president like legendary post apartheid President of South Africa, Dr. Nelson Mandela.

For a man who contested unsuccessfully for president on three occasions, it is difficult to accept that he would do only a term. Aside that, there is a powerful clique, that forced Buhari out of retirement in 2015. Recall that after losing the 2011 presidential election, Muhammadu Buhari announced his retirement from active politics, vowing that he would no longer present himself for elective office. This clique led by governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir el-Rufai, would want a consolidation of their power before Buhari would exit the scene and their hold on power cannot be consolidated in only four years. The other groups are those who provided the financial war chest that made it possible for Buhari to defeat an incumbent president, a rarity in Africa.

Having established that a second term is truly on the card for Buhari, why are his men insulting other Nigerians who did not vote for Buhari, calling them ‘wailing wailers’ anytime they made intervention over the direction the current administration is taking the country? The president may still need the votes of the ‘wailing wailers’.

Perhaps the president and his media aides believe that it was only 5% of Nigerians that did not vote for him in 2015 general election.

President Buhari was captured in a video during his U.S visit last year
saying, “constituencies that gave me 97% cannot in all honesty be treated
equally, on some issues, with constituencies that gave me 5 %, I think
these are political realities, while certainly there will be justice for
everybody, everybody will get his constitutional rights, but while the
party in constituencies that by their sheer hard work they made sure that
they got their people to vote and to ensure their votes count, they must
feel that the government has appreciated the effort they put in putting
the government in place. I see this as really fair.”

For a presidency that is seeking a second term even if they deny it presently, they got their statistic not very correctly on the percentage of those that voted for Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 general election.

In the 2015 presidential election, Muhammadu Buhari got 15million votes, while the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan garnered 12million votes. Given the fact that the numbers of votes gathered by other candidates are statistically insignificant, we can base this analysis on the number of votes by Jonathan and Buhari.

The number of votes between Buhari and Jonathan was 27million votes. Jonathan got 44% of the votes, while Buhari got 56% of the votes. This 44% rejected Buhari and not 5% and thus should be treated with respect so that they could find reason to build their need to be wooed by Buhari, ahead of 2019 elections. Buhari and his media aides must come up with strategy to woo the ‘wailing wailers’ before they are taken over by another emerging force in 2019.