Between the broom and the rake (I): Why are we not all sick?
Sometimes I wonder how people like Garba Shehu, the Buhari Campaign Organisation’s Director of Media, manage to get any sleep at all. It must be difficult handling the job because the General, the gentleman that he is, seems unwilling to allow the sort of dirty-tricks tactics that his opponents, in apparent desperation, seem to have resorted to. Buhari seems to be insisting on the use of the All Progressives Congress (APC’s) “broom” to sweep clean the mess created by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rather than resorting to the use of a rake to indiscriminately drag out all the muck that could be brought out.
Which is as it should be; responding to the Goodluck Jonathan campaign’s smear tactics, funny claims, misrepresentations, innuendoes, and even outright lies would be very easy to do, but would risk bringing people to its pathetic level. Everyone should be focusing on what it has done, or failed to do, over the last six years; and whether or not he deserves another four.
Some of the misinformation would need to be addressed however, even if to clear the space for proper public discourse. I shall focus on two that dominated all the papers last weekend, or at least all those papers that could be “persuaded” to carry the obviously planted stories. One is that Buhari is so sick that he has been flown to the U.S. for medical treatment. The other was that he should account for some N25 billion said to have “disappeared” from the PTF, the task force he chaired for four years to provide some needed social and physical infrastructure from the additional N3 per litre of petrol introduced by the Sani Abacha regime.
I am no doctor, but for a 72 year old to cover an average of two states per day campaigning, I would say that the man is strong and fit enough to rule this country, if leadership is all that is required. If we were looking for a footballer, a boxer or a construction worker, then not even a single PDP chap in the Villa today would qualify. In any case, I watched him live on Channels TV last Saturday campaigning in Lafia, Nasarawa State. I am also aware that he met for about an hour on Sunday afternoon with some Nigerians, when he joined them in a lively exchange about the future of this country. After the meeting, he went out and met with the press, holding copies of the day’s papers that reported he had been flown out for medical treatment. Buhari’s media aides could have responded to these obviously planted rumours with a demand that the Jonathan side be asked