What Aljazeera Has To Say About Buhari And 2015

                   

Credit: CKN Nigeria

Buhari remains the single most popular man in northern Nigeria. Despite lacking real party structure, Buhari, with CPC in 2011, defeated Jonathan in Yobe, Zamfara, Sokoto, Niger, Kebbi, Katsina, Kano, Kaduna, Gombe and Jigawa. He single-handedly polled a total of 12,214,853 votes, which amounted to 54.3 percent of Jonathan's tally. Riding on the back of APC's nationwide structure backed by 14 governors and their war chest, a Buhari victory in 2015 is quite possible.

Buhari is popular outside the north as well. Four days after he created his Twitter account (@ThisIsBuhari), he had already amassed 45,000 followers. This is testament to Buhari's growing national - not just northern - acceptability, because the north remains Nigeria's least literate zone. The north, therefore, has a sparse population of Internet users, which means that Buhari's crowd of Twitter followers probably come from across the country.

In truth, Buhari cannot take full credit for his popularity outside the north. Full marks should go to Goodluck Jonathan, the man who has unravelled as the antithesis of his opponent's unique selling point.

Presidential spokesman Reuben Abati can deliver the floweriest prose about his boss's aversion to corruption while his colleague Doyin Okupe hurls the foulest words at the opposition and other Nigerians daily puncturing the president's professed incorruptibility. But the majority of Nigerians have come to accept that Jonathan, even if re-elected for 10 terms, will never fight corruption. The courage is lacking, the political will is nonexistent, the desperation for re-election is so consuming that he would not hurt the weakest of his corrupt political allies. So Nigerians are prepared to turn to Buhari, unarguably the least stained presidential aspirant in the eyes of the people.

When APC was formed in February 2013, senior PDP figures dismissed it as a failure-bound union of four parties. Who would blame them? Many were sceptical that this merger would not survive even a year. Yet, in another two months, this merger would be two years old. But that is not the story.

The story is that all APC presidential aspirants defeated by Buhari have offered him their support. Few expected it. Atiku Abubakar, the man most expected to bolt out of APC in the event of a loss, congratulated Buhari the moment the ex-general's vote count overtook his, even though the winner had not yet been officially announced at the time. There is a massive movement for Buhari, which Jonathan didn't face in 2011.

Culled from Aljazeera