I may be wrong, or may not be very correct. But from my recent observation of happenings inside the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, there has been a steady rise in the timely response and reaction of the party to issues as they affect the polity, governance and the general elections. And the hitherto noisomeness of the spokespersons of the main opposition All Progressives Congress, APC has become largely tamed. Today, the APC has been pushed to the back seat of relevance in public commentaries and visibility.
Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, his Akwa Ibom State colleague, Godswill Akpabio and media head of the PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation, Femi Fani-Kayode as of today form the core troika that are turning things around for the party and President Goodluck Jonathan. Among them, they have consciously or unconsciously constituted the propaganda tripod of the ruling party.
Besides, in the PDP fold today, there are also a handful of ministers that are in the same club of unshakable and unbreakable PDP loyalists like the troika above. Their combined spirit, soul and body are evidently sold out to the vision and mission of the Party. Simply put, these people operate within their assigned beats in the countdown to the general elections to ensure victory for the PDP and President Goodluck Jonathan.
Fayose’s peculiar crusade
Right from his first time out as Governor of Ekiti State, I have always loved the man. His antics, style and strategic posturing as well as his loyalty to any cause are real just as he is for real. Yes, not a few fellow countrymen have nice remarks for his brashness and seemingly crude approach to issues; but his focus on any cause he believes in is legendary as it is compelling. In the politics of today’s Nigeria, Governor Fayose is perhaps one state chief executive from the fold of the PDP that you just cannot fault his loyalty to his party, state and people. And that is once he has made up his mind on any issue.
Although politicians in the mould of PDP chieftain, Senator Ayo Arise will disagree with Governor Fayose on his attacks on the person of Buhari as well as his related crusades against other perceived cogs in PDP’s journey to 2015 glory land, the state governor can be said to be carrying out a peculiar kind of crusade.
Arise, whose stint in the Senate ended in 2011, had the following to say about Fayose in a recent television interview: “Our party has come out strongly to say that Fayose is not speaking for the party. So, I won’t say he is not entitled to his opinion at this level. But left to me as an individual, I disagree with him on this. I believe we don‘t need such in the PDP, all we need is to work hard and campaign for Mr. President to win the election fair and square.”
But who really cares about how Arise feels in these desperate times when the opposition remains heady and unrepentant about the mountains of lies and half truths it spins out against the PDP and President Jonathan every second of the day?
Fayose has a solid fan in me. He forewarned the PDP about what nuisance and embarrassment former President Olusegun Obasanjo was to become. Nobody took him serious. And that prophecy came to pass. Today, after the largely self-serving former President has tied himself with the same rope he intended to tie President Jonathan and the PDP leadership, he shot himself in the leg by making a public show of destroying his party membership card, preferring, in his own words, to be a statesman henceforth. I am still lost on what manner of statesman such a quick-tempered, brash, rash and self-centred former President will be.
Crusader Fayose has however warned that nothing good can come out of Obasanjo; and I believe him.
Enter Buhari. From the first day, Fayose told all that could listen that the presidential candidate of the APC, Muhammadu Buhari was too unfit to hold the nation’s prized office even as he condemned other qualities supposedly going for the former military Head of State. Still, no one listened.
Fayose was unrelenting. He tore to shreds, any claim to any form of educational qualifications by Buhari. Then, to underscore his earlier assertion that the APC candidate was not well enough to run for the public office, Fayose on Monday exposed the mother of all lies that was days earlier sold to Nigerians that Buhari conducted a television interview in London.
APC Presidential Campaign Organisation had last Saturday circulated pictures of Buhari during a purported interview with one Kemi Fajodutimi of the All Eyes on Africa TV Show to debunk claims by Fayose that Buhari is undergoing treatment in the United Kingdom.
But last Monday, inside Abuja’s Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Fayose revealed that the interview was held in one of the rooms on the eighth Floor of the 5-star hotel. He even conducted journalists round the room and relevant pictures were taken. He was damn right; APC and Buhari lied!
Fani Power! Fani Fire!!
Head of the media department of the party’s Presidential campaign organisation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode stands tall as one man whose unique propaganda too has helped in a very huge way to steady the rise and rise of President Jonathan’s rating ahead the crucial March 28 polls. Unlike the busy-as-usual approach to publicity and propaganda that was employed by the party’s media managers in the past that allowed the opposition to practically feast on the ruling party and its candidates, FFK came, saw and is assisting in no small way in putting the Lai Mohammeds of the APC and their dubious and twisted positions on issues in proper check.
And to state that FFK’s power and fire are lethal is to state the obvious. He recently demonstrated this when he joined Fayose on the same page to underscore APC’s lie over the purported interview Buhari allegedly had in London. Hear him: “’It has come to light that the All Progressives Congress lied about the location of General Buhari’s interview with Kemi Fadojutimi of the USA-based TV show ‘All Eyes on Africa’…Moreover, despite desperate attempts by the APC propaganda machinery to coerce newspapers from retracting the fraudulent picture of Buhari’s purported London interview, The Guardian, one of the newspapers that printed the picture on its front page of Sunday, 22nd February, 2015, was quick to publish a regretful retraction on page 2 of the newspaper’s Monday, 23rd February, 2015 edition.
“In the retraction, The Guardian wrote, and I quote: ‘The front page picture of yesterday in The Guardian on Sunday was not taken during the visit of Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) to London as we erroneously stated. The picture was actually taken in Abuja when he was being interviewed by a journalist. The error is regretted’.”
That is FFK for you; punchy, simple and straight to the point!
Uncommon Akpabio
Never deluding and unpretending about his position on issues, Governor Godswill Akpabio remains a veritable one-man propaganda machinery of the PDP. Besides his oratory prowess, the uncommon transformer of Akwa Ibom State is the arrow head of state governors in the PDP fold.
Right from the days of the great betrayal by some PDP governors led by embattled Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State till date, Akpabio has never pretended about his loyalty to his party and Jonathan. Forcefully, he took the battle to the defected state governors; and today he has remained unrelentless in taking the same message of transformation and faith in Jonathan to Nigerians. No antics of the opposition appear to be slowing him down.
When the story of how the 2015 battle for political offices in the land will be written after now, these three personalities should have their names given appropriate mention, for together, the PDP propaganda troika either collectively or independently are proving themselves.
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