How “lazy, uneducated youths” influenced Buhari’s emergence as President
President Buhari’s statement that a lot of Nigerian youths are not willing to work has been widely condemned as reckless by many citizens.
Since the statement, many Nigerian youths who were angered by the president’s proclamation have been expressing and displaying their industrious attributes.
Retrospectively, Buhari’s emergence as a democratically-elected president after several failed attempts was largely given a boost by young, bright minds in the country.
There was, indeed, a paradigm shift in the political space of Nigeria in 2015.
The youths’ engagements on social media in the build up to the 2015 general elections was, without doubt, a game changer in the outcome of the historical elections.
This, the president acknowledged in his speech after he was elected.
“I thank those who tirelessly carried the campaign on the social media,” he had in his inaugural speech three years ago.
The change mantra instituted by the then-opposition party was to portray Buhari, who had been known as a strict military ruler, in the best character. He also had to contend with the impression that he was a stern man who would only represent his core constituency of northern Muslims.
But certain Nigerian youths who understood the present-day modality sprung into action and spearheaded a genuine national campaign structure for Buhari and his party.
Adebola Williams, co-founder of StateCraft, a political communications company that worked on the Buhari campaign, revealed that if the APC campaign slogan was to be “change”, “then he [Buhari] had to make the first move. He had to change.”
Williams understood that he had to “demystify” Buhari to voters, who “didn’t think he was a human being that they could touch, who could smile, who could cry, who could laugh.”
In compliment to Williams and his team’s campaign plan, Kelechi Amadi-Obi, a renowned young Nigerian photographer took Buhari’s pictures, with Uche Nnaji duly in charge of the styling.
Each of Buhari’s image taken by Amadi-Obi, according to Williams, was meant to illustrate a different facet of Buhari. He was photographed in a suit to look “presidential”, in black tie to look “aristocratic”, in South-South and Igbo traditional dress to make him look comfortable across the nation, and with a young girl to represent his ability to connect across the generations.
These images helped “people see him in a different light” and transformed perceptions of him from “a sectional leader, to a national icon,” according to Williams.
Thereafter, Buhari was brought to an “elite type” Lagos youth gathering. While there, journalist and social commentator, Tolu Ogunlesi interviewed the former military ruler. Afterwards, they took a selfie and tweeted it. According to Williams, it got 2 million retweets.
While it is arguable that elections are not won on social platforms, it is without doubt that they mold opinions and checkmate irregularities.
“Where we have an edge is that we’re young people, and we’ve worked with young people for 12 years,” Williams told CNN at the time. “We understand how young people in Africa think, we understand the key issues.”
And like Williams, Ogunlesi, and Amadi-Obi, many Nigerian youths worked assiduously to ensure Buhari and his party’s mandate was delivered.
