Sunday Southerner – Issues in the News
The flag-off of the presidential campaign in Kaduna was supposed to be a show of strength for the All Progressives Congress in a state it once claimed as its stronghold. Instead, it became the most revealing portrait of the diminished value of Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the APC. A sitting President who was hiding in military armoured vehicle to be ferried to the stadium in a country that he leads, and claims he is loved.
In a state with over 7 million people, a sitting President and his party could not fill a 5,000-capacity stadium with people from Kaduna alone. That fact alone is a national disgrace. This is a President who claimed to have won Kaduna in his 2023 election narrative with glitch, who governs the country, and yet cannot command organic support in one of the most politically important states in the North. Police, Army, Dss, Civil Defence and other security agencies were deployed for one week to guide his billboards and intimidate the people out of fear of his countrymen.
Humongous amount was paid in advertisement. Party members were mandated to attend. Uniforms were bought and shared. People were paid cash to attend. Yet Tinubu and the clever AbdulAzeez Yari had to ferry people from other states to come and help fill a stadium. And they have to use Ai manufactured images to patch the outcome.
So what did they do? They resorted to makeup. Facade. Political packaging.
The APC had to gather people from all 36 states to come and make up the population for what was supposed to be a Kaduna rally. I saw some faces and others who came all the way from Abia, Bayelsa, Imo, Enugu and other states to Kaduna to help savage the image of a failed President. I challenge APC apparatchik to deny it and I will say more because I was physically there as an eye witness in line of duty.
When a party has to rent its own crowd from other states to Kaduna, from the far Southeast, South-west and South-south to the far North, just to avoid the disgrace of an empty stadium, it has lost its base and credibility. It’s a pure drama rehearsal.
Billions of Naira were spent to achieve this illusion. Billions spent on transportation, mobilization, renting crowd, accommodation, and stipends just to bring people from other states to come and help fill a small stadium. In a country where Nigerians are suffering under fuel subsidy removal, hunger, and insecurity, that money could have fed communities. Instead it was spent on optics.
This is not campaign. This is damage control. This is the politics of facade.
The people of Kaduna did not come out because they have tasted the APC brand of food. They live with insecurity, they live with the cost of living, they live with the failed promises and deceit. The enthusiasm is gone. The party that used to be popular in Kaduna is now a party that has to rent a crowd to pretend it is still around and matter.
A President who needs to import supporters to his own party’s rally is a President who has lost legitimacy on the ground. A party that needs 36 states to fill one 5,000 capacity stadium in one state is a party that has collapsed at the grassroots and lost touch with reality.
Nigerians can now see the difference between other parties and APC, between real popularity and packaged popularity. One is organic, the other is paid for. What happened in Kaduna was not strength; it was the clearest sign of weakness spiced with ineptitude.
It is a national disgrace for a sitting President to need this kind of makeup to appear accepted. What a mockery of commonsense.
**Muhammad is a commentator on national issues*
