Dr. Umar GANDUJE and the Concept of Anti-corruption Propaganda

In 2015 – 2016, I was privileged to be a political consultant to a gubernatorial aspirant in my home state, a fairly unknown individual then. We took the task to digitally market him for over a year before the primaries. We created contents, advertorials, edited speeches, managed invented scandals and propaganda against him, wrote his feasible manifesto…Our constant social media marketing made him a darling of the people but all these was not without some sacrifice from me. I was before then not into partisan politics, I just wrote freely on critical issues: social reforms, justice, philosophy, morals, religion, relationships, truth, trust and other thematic issues that came to me as my own human effort. Some people who followed my writing keenly on the social media inboxed me and told me they were disappointed that I could be consulting for PDP. In as much as I explained to them the reasons, an article was wrought out of me, ‘Persons over Parties.’

In all ramifications, I choose to disagree that parties are basically bad. No, it’s humans that are bad, that are corrupt, that are incompetent, that are soulless, that are clannish, that are without ideas, that without political focus…not necessarily parties. Parties are mere vehicles to gain political positions, just as sleep could be vehicle of death. Should we now say sleep is bad?

The propaganda that no longer sells on our political space today is that PDP was corrupt for 16 years so they should not present a candidate to be voted in even when APC present the a candidate without the minimum certificate to qualify one for such contest. I don’t think that is only illogical, it is a compressed fallacy, I look at as a Post Traumatic Disappointment Disorder, PTDD (my own personal coinage). PTDD to me is a kind of disorder people experience when they are disappointed in those they believe after revealing events.

Now, if we still hold on to the stowaway thought that PDP was corrupt as a party because some members were in the time past, how do we define APC today which has become a temple for fleeing corrupt people and houses, in comfort, abjectly corrupt members like GANDUJE of Kano State? Should we now use the members to define the entire party to be politically correct? This is a governor in APC that has been viewed in three videos by millions of Nigerians taking bribe from contractors, yet without a midget of evidence, they want ‘stupid’ you to believe Alhaji Atiku is the most corrupt Nigerian. How folly can a people be, how controlling.

The fact without doubt remains that the anti-corruption campaign by Buhari was a mere populist propaganda, it has never and it will never work. APC will tell you they are studying the Ganduje video while chasing corrupt shadows. Nothing will ever happen to Ganduje even as we speak he has been summoned by the state assembly over the bribery allegations. He is one of the strongest supporters of Buhari, he cannot afford to allow his man go down over mere dollars he dipped into his babaringa (agbada). Ask me what happened to Babachir Lawal, the professional multi-million Naira grasscutter? Ask yourself what happened to Maina, the pension thief and fugitive. Ask yourself what happened to Baru of NNPC or Abba Kyari of the MTN bribery. Ask yourself where they got the billions to buy votes with police force in Ekiti and Osun States. Ask what would happen to Oshiomole who is asking the courts not to go on trial for corruption. If you ask them these thematic issues, they would tell you Sai Baba till 2023! That vexatious clamour for Simpleton from Simpletons.

During the Obasanjo Era, he haunted corrupt members of PDP and those who were even in his cabinet with EFCC and other unconventional means. He disposed some using their state assemblies to impeach them. Some went on trial and were sentenced according to the law. Even his police chief, Tafa Balogun, was not spared.

Today, even corrupt members of the public are blackmailed to join the incorruptible party with some hallelujah triumphant welcome in the Absence of Shame. The just conducted APC primaries were fraught with corruption and high level fraud. Members of INEC were bribed to conduct primaries in hotel lobbies and personal living rooms and the other rooms shortchanging less connected aspirants. Ask Pat Utomi. These and others are echoes and echoes of Shame and Dishonour.

Elempe Dele