Buhari
remains the single most popular man in northern Nigeria. Despite
lacking real party structure, Buhari, with CPC in 2011, defeated
Jonathan in Yobe, Borno, 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.
