By ANTHONY ECHI

Dear Nigerians, this election is not about Tinubu or Atiku or Obi.

It is not about a Yoruba, Fulani or Igbo candidate.

It is not about Easterners or Westerners or Northerners. No sir. It is about you and I. It is about the urgent need to fix systemic dysfunction brought about by an APC government propelled to power by Bola Ahmed Tinubu who now wants to distance himself from the mess he created.

But we must not be fooled. The incumbent APC government which rode to power on a coalition enabled by Tinubu has been an unmitigated disaster.

Look at the facts.

The naira has taken a pummeling from the dollar and now exchanges at very close to 800 naira to the dollar up from under 200 when Good luck Jonathan handed over power to Muhammadu Buhari.

Blame it on Tinubu and APC.

Today, for the very first time, there is now a naira to naira “exchange rate” and depending on what state you live in you pay 300 or 400 naira for every 10,000 naira.

Blame it on Tinubu and APC.

Our children just returned to school after eight months at home because lecturers did not receive the allowances they were promised.

Blame it on Tinubu and APC.

Fuel is scarce again and a few hundred Nigerians are making money off the fuel subsidy.

Blame it on Tinubu and APC.

Let no one fool you. Tinubu is APC and APC is Tinubu. Tinubu must share in whatever failings the Buhari administration has had. That is the honest truth so when you go out to cast your vote on February 25, 2023, remember that the hardships of the last 16 years have been brought about by PDP and APC, two parties that have consistently juggled its memberships.

Atiku Abubakar and bola Ahmed Tinubu are part and parcel of the colossal failure that PDP and APC governments have been.

This is the truth and something all of us must bear in mind as we go to cast our votes.

A few days ago, while speaking on “This Morning” a news and current affairs programme on Bola Tinubu owned TVC, APC stalwart and Minister of Information and Culture was unequivocal in his statement. Responding to a question, he said “Mr Folarin, Tinubu and Buhari are inseparable. It’s a different thing if he is coming in from another party say Labour then he can now say what he is going to do. If your party has spent eight years in power and you cannot tell what they have done why should I vote for you?”

Dear Nigerians you have heard it from a top ranking member of the APC. If Bola Ahmed Tinubu cannot tell us what APC has done in eight years then why should we vote for him or his party? For context Lai Mohammed worked with Tinubu in his first term as Lagos state governor. He was Tinubu’s Chief of Staff. Today, he is Buhari’s minister of Information and Culture. So if anyone is in a position to make that statement, the person is Lai Mohammed. So, once again let no pone fool you. Tinubu is APC and APC is Tinubu.

The vituperations of Abdullahi Umar Ganduje and Nasir El Rufai, alluding to plans by the Buhari administration to frustrate Tinubu’s candidacy should be seen as no more than bellyaching statements by people whose plans are being frustrated by the day.

After months spent deriding the Labour Party as lacking structure and hoping to exploit their usual modus operandi of using their huge financial war chest to induce voters, they are frustrated by the naira swap initiative and are now lashing out at real and perceived enemies.

For once in Nigeria, we are witnessing members of the ruling party bickering amongst themselves on the eve of a momentous election. From allegations of a cabal controlling Muhammadu Buhari in Aso Rock, the diminutive governor of Kaduna state and his dollar grabbing counterpart from Kano state have come out openly to accuse Buhari of trying to destroy the APC.

A few days back El Rufai gave a state wide address which many have interpreted as treasonable in tenor, in his address, he asked the people of Kaduna state to ignore a presidential directive. His speech was disregarded and the only person being ignored in Kaduna state is El Rufai.

Ganduje on the other hand gave a wide ranging interview in Hausa in which he accused Muhammadu Buhari of achieving nothing after 8 years in office. “Why is he changing the naira now. Why didn’t he do it last year?” he asked.

The reaction of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu campaign and friendly APC governors is concerning especially in the light of the fact that they never reacted so strongly to other contentious policies of the Buhari administration. When the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) was on strike for months, none of these latter day saints of democracy and good governance went to court to compel the federal government to accede to ASUU’s demands.

In the several instances when fuel queues stretched from Ondo to Onitsha, Bauchi to Benue, not once did Tinubu or his friendly governors speak up in condemnation of the fuel queues so why now?

The answer is not difficult to decipher. Politicians who had stashed illegal funds for use during elections are frustrated that they won’t be able to access those funds which they need in order to induce voters. So the jeremiad from El Rufai and Ganduje has nothing to do with ordinary Nigerians, they are self-serving at best.

But the truth is no one should be surprised at El Rufai’s rantings of an ant. What he is doing was predicted a few months back by Bola Ahmed Tinubu when he said in his usual gaffe-ridden manner that El rufai has the uncanny ability to “turn a bad situation into a rotten one".

Nasir El Rufai has turned Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s bad situation into a rotten one.

•Anthony Echi, a public analyst, writes from Lagos.

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