{"id":1,"date":"2023-01-04T19:54:44","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T19:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/greycontinent.com\/?p=1"},"modified":"2023-02-12T04:29:02","modified_gmt":"2023-02-12T04:29:02","slug":"hello-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/home-5016083355.webspace-host.com\/wordpress\/2023\/01\/04\/hello-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Insight into the mind of a former president, plus what candidates get up to for Xmas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I trust you all had a safe and uneventful Christmas break, as one can\u2019t imagine there\u2019s anything Nigerians crave more. Like play like play, the elections are no longer next year, but this year. They\u2019re next month, but they\u2019re so close that before you can say sungbalaja<\/em>, we\u2019ll be saying it\u2019s this month. You can almost taste them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Obi<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While you were tucking into your variety of birds and goat meat, many of those who would seek to lead Nigeria kept busy. Labour\u2019s Peter Obi who, even if he doesn’t say it, is banking on the saleability of his virtuousness. Which is not to suggest it\u2019s insincere, it\u2019s merely an observation. And this Christmas he wasn\u2019t at the inn, but in the proverbial manger, spending time with internally displaced people<\/a> in Benue state. This gave the G5 governor, Samuel Ortom, another opportunity to champion Obi\u2019s candidacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bola Tinubu <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bola Tinubu of APC gave a Christmas address, complete with anybody-here-want-to-give-their-life-to-Christ backing piano<\/a> and with a bit of a BTS* chuckle at the end for a dash of extra humanisation of the candidate. The former governor of Lagos is of course a Muslim, with the choice of Kassim Shettima, having made \u201cMuslim-Muslim ticket\u201d a thing. Would such a ticket of two people of the same religion (or even ethnicity) matter if Nigeria were not so riven with ethno-religious division? Shouldn\u2019t their ability to deliver for all<\/em> Nigerians be the important factor, rather than whether they clutch the Roman Catholic rosary or the tasbih? Simply deliver electricity for citizens to worship as they please and water to baptise and ablute as they like. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then, perhaps representation is paramount in a country as pluralistic as Nigeria. What we\u2019d like to know though, who is looking out for the animists and the faithless? It is also worth mentioning that Tinubu\u2019s wife Senator Oluremi Tinubu is a Christian. And not just as a Sunday tonic, she\u2019s a pastor at RCCG. So there\u2019s already a Muslim-Christian ticket of sorts in the Tinubu household. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atiku Abubakar<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atiku Abubakar also delivered a Christmas address, but he went for the traditional<\/a> We Wish You A Merry Christmas <\/em>as backing music. He did miss a trick however, because he could\u2019ve rereleased this gem<\/a> from four years ago. Nigeria is a country bereft of self awareness and shame, which is why such a political leader can release a Christmas x Campaign song. Self awareness and shame are seen as social deterrents to bad behaviour, but I say pushing through self awareness and shame is where greatness lies. Granted, Christmas x Campaign is not a good example of this \u201cgreatness\u201d, but that\u2019s a whole other issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Insight into the mind of former president Olusegun Obasanjo<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By far the biggest story of the Christmas break was former President Olusegun Obasanjo endorsing Peter Obi. OBJ came up with a whole new acronym, TVCP (track record, vision, characters, physical and mental capacity) for judging a candidate. Read the text <\/a> to gain an insight into the mind of a former president. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you can be assured that TVCP will enter the Nigerian political lexicon forever to torment us. Like fencist, national cake, and dividends of democracy, our pages will henceforth be blackened by TVCP. The reaction from the parties was entirely predictable. So if you\u2019d like to test how au fait you are with Nigerian politics, you could think of what an APC, PDP, or Labour spokesperson might say, and check online whether you\u2019re correct. It\u2019ll be one of the easiest tests you ever pass. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And don’t forget Goodluck Jonathan<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the risk of showing bias in favour of one former president, it should be acknowledged that Goodluck Jonathan also had an audience with Peter Obi. There wasn\u2019t so much an endorsement as a milquetoast \u201cone Nigeria\u201d meeting, and he even went out of his way to say he wasn\u2019t giving an endorsement<\/a>. The encounter between Obi and Jonathan, and Obi and Obasanjo, shows the sharp contrast between the two former presidents. One was a Goodluck by name, good luck by nature kumbaya president, who stumbled into the top offices in Bayelsa state and Nigeria by dint of being a deputy at the right time. While fire and brimstone Obasanjo on the other hand wrested the presidency each time he led Nigeria. The endorsements and non-endorsements, quelle surprise, follow the exact same pattern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I trust you all had a safe and uneventful Christmas break, as one can\u2019t imagine there\u2019s anything Nigerians crave more. Like play like play, the elections are no longer next year, but this year. They\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,26],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-nigerian-election-2023","tag-opinion","entry-card--portrait"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ml3ecjxvie7p.i.optimole.com\/cb:tH84.1188a\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/home-5016083355.webspace-host.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/z-sarpong-LHAHOXXUa5g-unsplash-2-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peSi8E-1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/home-5016083355.webspace-host.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/home-5016083355.webspace-host.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/home-5016083355.webspace-host.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home-5016083355.webspace-host.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home-5016083355.webspace-host.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/home-5016083355.webspace-host.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home-5016083355.webspace-host.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/home-5016083355.webspace-host.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home-5016083355.webspace-host.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home-5016083355.webspace-host.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}