PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

NN24 Presidential Debate – An Insider’s Story (II)

ndajika@yahoo.com

The NN24 presidential debate has come and gone but the controversy that has surrounded it on account of the refusal of the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to participate in it has refused to die down, not least because of the defensive, sometimes contradictory, excuses offered by several of the president’s men.

All the officials have insinuated that NN24, an African affiliate of CNN, is foreign, never mind the fact that the location of its headquarters in Lagos and its ownership, programming, management and staff are as Nigerian as any of our local television stations. Never mind also the fact that the foreignness of many a media organisation has never stopped our officials from patronising it. 

Beyond the insinuations that NN24 is foreign, the officials have generally given conflicting, even contradictory, excuses in defending the absence of Vice-President Namadi Sambo from the penultimate Friday’s vice-presidential debate and that of President Goodluck Jonathan himself from last Friday’s.

First, one of the officials, Malam Abba Dabo, speaking for the presidential campaign committee, said, among other things, that the PDP was not properly invited. Then Oronto Douglas, speaking as a special adviser to the president, said the presidency had received too many invitations and was only taking its time to choose the best platform.

Next, Ima Niboro, the president’s spokesman, came along with the explanation that there was indeed only one proper platform for the presidential debate and that was the one “under the recognised auspices of the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON).”

Arrangements, he said in one breath, were underway for the debate on that platform “before the April elections.”  In the next breath, however, he sounded not so sure that the debate will take place in the end.

“President Jonathan and his vice,” he said, “are more than ready to debate on this national platform which has well-established procedures and rules of engagement AND LOOK FORWARD TO RECEIVING AN INVITATION FROM THE ORGANISERS.” This clearly contradicted Dabo who had spoken of “improper invitations” to the presidency and also contradicted Douglas who had said his principal had received too many invitations, including one from BON.

Perhaps the president was, as Niboro has said, more than ready to debate the opposition. The truth, however, was that few of his aides were prepared to risk the possibility, even probability, of the president, hardly famous for having his way with words, bombing the debate. The only guarantee that he might not do so was if he had the specific questions to be asked in advance and he received proper coaching ahead of the debate.

As I said last week, some of the president’s men indeed requested for such but on this the organisers refused to budge for the obvious reason that doing so would have amounted to complicity in exam malpractice.

Among the few of the president’s men who apparently thought the risk of their principal bombing the debate was worth taking was his National Security Adviser, General Azazi. Early last week Azazi invited the NN24 Chief Executive Officer, the youthful Tony Dara, for discussions on the possibility of the president appearing at last Friday’s debate. Apparently the general was worried that PDP’s refusal to participate in the debate had created the impression that the president and his men were contemptuous of public opinion.

Needless to say such an impression could hardly augur well for the president if he sincerely meant his mantra about making each vote count in the April elections.

The NSA may have done his best to get the president to come for last Friday’s debate. No formal word ever came to the organisers on whether the president had agreed or not to come. However, right up to the last minute whispers came filtering in that, with the NSA seemingly in support, the man will, in the end, come.

The whispers were reinforced by the pronounced presence of armed mobile police all over the venue of the debate, the Transcope Hilton, Abuja, and also by the equally pronounced presence of members of the bomb disposal squad and security agents to sweep the Congress Hall of the hotel where the debate actually took place, several hours before it started at 7pm.

For me, at least, this was enough sign that the man will come. So convinced was I that I even texted a friend who had expressed disappointment with what he insinuated was my gullibility in the good faith of the president’s men in ever thinking, as I did on these pages last week, that they would allow their principal to appear in a debate in which he was not guaranteed to look good.

I had texted what I believed was my vindication to my friend because I thought his earlier text was unduly harsh on the president much as I shared his position that the man does have a problem with both his style and substance.

“Haba Mallam,” he’d said in his text, “do you honestly think GEJ (President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan) will attend any debate? It will be a huge surprise. With due respect, GEJ’s greatest appeal to his promoters is his low level intelligence. A debate will further expose the ploy of the puppeteers to have a dumb president as they rape Nigeria.”

The debate was hardly over when my friend sent another text to say, I told you so. “I said it would have been a HUGE surprise,” he said, “if he did (appear at the debate)...They know the product they are selling to Nigerians is not good enough but will only suit their purpose.”

I had no answer to my friend’s position.

I had a mind to remind him that the man performed well above expectations in his speech at the primaries of the PDP even though he was speaking from a prepared script. I also wanted to tell him that a debate could be full of surprises as the Friday presidential debate proved when the relatively unknown Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, the Kano State governor and the All Nigeria Peoples Party presidential candidate, emerged a clear winner with his eloquence, a calm disposition and an apparent grasp of policy issues, against his more fancied opponents, former Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari, and former EFCC boss, Malam Nuhu Ribadu.

In the end I did not bother to reply my friend because I knew I would merely be engaging in idle speculation. The president failed to appear in spite of what for me were the best efforts of one of his closest confidants. It was as simple as that. I knew it would be the height of credulity to argue that he did not come out of anything but the fear by his handlers of taking even the smallest risk of arming the man’s critics with even the slightest evidence that their man was hardly up to the job.

Correction

A few weeks back when I wrote about how government was budgeting the country into poverty I said Senator Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi was chairman of the Senate banking committee.  My attention has since been drawn to the fact that he is the chairman of the finance committee. My apologies to the senator and to the chairperson of the banking committee.