Appraisal of the NN24 Presidential Debate

Appraisal of the NN24 Presidential Debate

By Ibrahim Musa

Let me just start by making it clear that right from my childhood I have been fascinated by debates. The people that made the most impression in my life, up to this moment, are excellent speakers. However, I value substance in every aspect of engagement and as a rule you win my confidence the moment your action tallies with your tongue-modified laryngeal noise.

It is imperative for me to share my view on yesterday’s presidential debate. First, I must congratulate all the participants for respecting our wishes by subjecting themselves to questioning in a nationally televised debate. Many had argued that Shekarau won the debate with his eloquence and composure. I must confess that, that sentiment is relatively true. However who has really won the debate in terms of substance?

NN24 Channel- They have tried but failed to meet the international standard. The program was delayed for almost an hour behind the schedule. The time allocated for most of the questions were rather too short. There were so many breaks in between, filled with adverts. Many a times the screen went off and on, and one is only left with audio version.

Kadaria Ahmed- An editor with the Next newspaper, apparently a western trained journalist (actually a graduate of BUK) who originated from Zamfara state. She spoke very well and exhibited prowess in anchoring the program- but she showed poor understanding of personalities she was tackling and their records. Like many Nigerian journalists, she did not dive enough to bring to the fore the nitty-gritty of the candidates. She quite often interrupted the speakers midway to go on advertorial break. She attacked Malam Nuhu Ribadu on the Lagos doctors’ strike while he is neither the governor of the state nor a party to the ongoing negotiation to resolve the dispute. On the same vein, she forgot to raise the same poser to Governor Shekarau whose state doctors have just called off their 6-week long strike, while the lecturers in the state are still on strike and the Nigerian Labour Congress Kano State branch has followed suit in the strike bandwagon in his state! There were instances where she went out of what the debate should capture by laying emphasis on personal issues that had little or no relevance to the theme on security, economy, education and healthcare. Most of the questions seemed lacking in intellectual scope and obviously not well researched by the professionals. Ordinarily they were just walkover questions but to a large extent they were able to reveal a few general statements lacking in specifics from all the candidates.

Buhari- Largely an introvert with strict military discipline. I personally never expected him to impress the public with oratory skills. Throughout the debate, he proved to be a man of a few words. He was never eloquent but he was coherent. The anchorwoman showed a lot of respect to him and provided chances for him to score excellent goals in the debate. He impressed me with his closing remarks where he made parody of Obama’s statement, and his decorum was to a large extent his greatest legacy. He was very careful with promises as he never yielded to the pressure of giving timeline on solving the perennial power crisis in the country. Most of his comments came as honest. He posited that such problems should not be handled on adhoc basis. He is obviously not a modern president but he has integrity, and his response on taking the issue of state treasury as a public trust went down well with the listeners. Unlike his two opponents, he never tried to undermine anyone of them or tried to flout his past credentials as the other two kept on doing. I believe he is the best man to stop the cancer of corruption from its course of metastasis and by doing so will be able to solve 60% of Nigeria’s problem. As he rightly pointed out, we are not lacking in blue prints but deficient in strong personalities that will make every single kobo counts. The multiplier effect of this will trickle down to every sector of the polity and the system will surely automatically gets working. In my opinion he has more substance in his responses.

Ribadu- Ordinarily, I thought this hyped anti-corruption czar should carry the show considering his vantage position as former member of Obasanjo’s economic team. He opened the debate with fanfare claiming that he is a child of independence. He failed to utilize the privilege he has had of serving in the economic team under the Obasanjo regime, to his advantage at yesterday’s debate. He was not forthcoming with statistics and seemed clueless about the Petroleum sector reforms. He could not decipher the meaning of PIB and had to be bailed out by the moderator. He was visibly jittery acting like an SUG presidential hopeful. He showed disregard for his opponents by saying that while others have been on retirement for the past 25 years he has been in the active service (obviously referring to buhari) and that ‘he is not operating at state level’ (obviously taking a jibe at shekarau). To me he is the biggest loser, because he failed to impress his southwest and diaspora supporters. And in an attempt to play to the gallery, it ended up boomeranging. He claimed that Nigerians are not corrupt and are not indiscipline! He talked some sense on power sector reforms.

Shekarau- If the command of the white-man's language is used as a marker of ability to deliver he would have won with a wide margin. He was very articulate but rather not realistic. His solution to education sector of employing 6000 teachers like he claimed to have done in Kano sounded more like a joke. He promised to use the adaidaitasahu’s model to solve the Jos crisis, which by and large did not click at all. He obviously enjoyed his relative obscurity and escaped the preying eyes of the anchor. He showed shallow grasp of what the National Health Bill sought to address. Except for the eloquence, he was clueless on the solution to the Niger Delta and energy crises in the country. His approach to the security is at best naïve. He went overboard and threw away decorum by attacking Buhari’s ‘War Against Indiscipline,’ claiming that the latter used coercion that was why it failed- but his Adaidaitasahu is the only answer. He did a similar attack on Ribadu by alleging that EFCC is just a glorified police station and ought not to exist. He was full of praises for himself and the success he achieved; in almost every question he was asked. He lied by claiming that his Tamburawa water project is the largest in the West Africa, while Gov Goje had built something similar for quite long without making any noise about it. He was grandiose that his success is unparalleled among his contemporaries. He moved the crowds with his eloquence and composure but lacked substance in his submissions. Most of his answers were mere conjectures and rigmarole.

Overall, the debate will not affect Buhari’s solid support base in the north. At best it has improved Shekarau’s rating among some educated Nigerians and helped in unmasking Nuhu Ribadu. Unlike in the western nations, the voting pattern will not be affected by this outcome. The verdict is that: it is a welcome development in the political scene, which should be nurtured to attain the standard we desire.

NB: I wrote this article in 2011, a day after the NN24 Presidential debate. It was published in a listserv: raayiriga@yahoogroups.com.

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