The build-up to the election was extremely tense, with the two major gladiators, President Goodluck Jonathan and former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, being very combative. They heated up the polity with their accusations and counter-accusations so much that fear gripped the people. The last few days were particularly terrifying, as expletives and verbal missiles from both camps rent the air. The campaign had the appearance of a people preparing for war rather than a preparation for deciding a party’s candidate. The situation before the primary could not have been worse than what Ivorians are currently going through.
The primary election campaign nearly divided the nation along ethnic line, especially with the issue of zoning being a major factor. Up till the time voting started, ethnic card was still being played up. The Abubakar camp went into the contest believing that head or tail, it would win because, as it claimed, an Abuja High Court had ruled that the zoning arrangement in the party must be respected. So, the victory of the president would not matter as it would be later upturned by the courts.
Not a few Nigerians are of the view that the hightened level of insecurity in the country was precipitated by the PDP presidential campaign. The new wave of security challenge started during the 50th independence cele-bration of the country at the Eagle Square, when two cars exploded in Abuja, killing about 14 people.
The Boko Haram crisis in the North has since assumed a deadlier dimension with quite a number of lives lost, just as the unrest in Plateau State has been revived. The Plateau crisis reached a crescendo on Christmas eve when bomb blasts killed several people in the state. The bombing expedition returned to Abuja on the New Year eve, when the mammy market, adjacent to Mogadishu Barracks in the city, was bombed, leaving in its trail several dead and maimed Nigerians. Militancy that had been subsided in the Niger Delta was also revived with a number of places being bombed.
Now that Jonathan has emerged as the presidential candidate, it is expected that he will be magnanimous in victory and ensure that the bickering that characterised the campaign is not allowed to continue. The president, during the campaigns, once said all the PDP contestants were from the same party and that the issues generating bad blood among them would become a thing of the past after the election. Now that he has won, he has to ensure that all the quibbles die so as to lessen the tension in the polity. It is also expected that the nation’s political climate will get better; the heat that has been generated will subside and normalcy will return to the nation because the essence of democracy is ensuring the good of the people.
Now that the primary is over, it is expected that it is not just the mudslinging that will stop, the bomb throwing will also cease. It is expected that Nigerians will now be more secure and real developmental issues that are of concern to Nigerians will be addressed.
Now that the PDP presidential primary has been decided, Nigerians expect that the campaign that will lead to the general election will not be as rancorous as the PDP presidential primary. It is expected that rather than concentrating on the factors that divide the nation, more attention will be paid to issues that unite the nation.
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