Electioneering in Nigeria is one that is filled with intrigues. Parties try to discredit one another. Propaganda mode is fully activated and the general public and the electorates are fed with the wrong information all in the name of canvassing votes for their respective candidates at the polls.
But the campaign organisation of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Mohammadu Buhari, has pledged to provide the public with “honest, credible and responsible information” “through the platforms provided by the country’s vibrant media organisations.”
In a statement signed on Sunday by the Director, Media and Communications of Buhari Campaign Organisation, Dele Alake, and made available to Aproko247, the group declared to endorse the Nigerian Media Code of Election Coverage.
The group also vowed to “cooperate with all media stakeholders to ensure that the objectives of the coverage, including the need to educate the people on the electoral process, provide informed choices, treat journalists with respect and understanding, are attained.”
The Buhari Campaign Organisation challenged other political parties to “produce and propagate only the messages that will enlighten and ennoble the process of choosing the president of the world’s most populous black nation.”
It was further stressed in the statement that the group will focus more on “the issues which will qualitatively uplift the average Nigerian from poverty to prosperity and bring hope to a populace seeking refuge from uncertainty.”
Highlighting these issues, the group said the problems of “electricity generation and distribution, poverty elimination, eradication of corruption, mass employment and security of lives and property” will form the “focal points of our campaign.”
“These issues have no ethnic colour. Poverty afflicts the old and the young. Unemployment has no political affiliation.
“Insecurity damages the economy precariously. Insecurity may be more prominent in the North East in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency but the reality is that Nigerians generally have never been as endangered as they now are.
“Our responsibility to the Nigerian people in this campaign is to articulate how to rescue Nigerians from the present danger based on the manifesto of the All Progressives Party. Our responsibility is to demonstrate that General Muhammadu Buhari has the personal virtues of discipline, honesty and transparency to inspire the change that is imminent,” the statement noted.
“Our responsibility is to make the voters aware that it is indeed historically divine that socio-political forces that were at loggerheads before have now resolved their differences because of the love of Nigeria and have put forward a man of impeccable credential and unparalleled commitment to the national cause for election,” it added.
“The Buhari-Osinbajo ticket brings together two institutions which defend the national patrimony and maintain internal harmony. While the military defends the state from aggression, the judicial system defends the law which establishes and maintains the State. Indeed the intellectual, political and spiritual antecedents of Professor Yemi Osinbajo provide the complimentary combination and collaboration that the next Nigerian administration needs; a government that respects the rights of its citizens and enforces their duty to the State.
“No nation facing such gargantuan problems of poverty, lack of power, unemployment, corruption and insecurity offered the chance of a rescue by history throws away such a rare chance. It is our conviction that Nigerians, in their hearts, have chosen the way forward by supporting change. Wherever we go, whoever we turn to, we are embraced by millions of our fellow countrymen who see the hope that we represent. They are visibly and naturally excited by the prospect that at last comes a man who shall take their country back from the precipice.
And so shall it be as they celebrate their love for their country on the unique Valentine’s Day- February 14, 2015,” the statement said.
