Serious Matter : Buhari sets up University research team on how to defeat Jonathan in 2015

If you think the opposition is joking about 2015 elections, think again.Premium times is reporting that Mr. Buhari and his associates reportedly asked Femi Olufunmilade, head of department of international relations and strategic studies and sub-dean of the School of Post Graduate Studies and Research of the University, Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State, to prepare a paper which would be presented at the event holding in Abuja.

The paper, identified factors which former opposition leaders in eight African countries used in defeating the incumbents in the last two decades and which, if adapted by Mr. Buhari and other opposition leaders could send Mr. Jonathan packing next year.


The president is yet to announce his plan to contest though he has been adopted by the PDP as its sole candidate.

The eight opposition leaders the paper focused on are Frederick Chiluba (Zambia, 1991); John Kufour (Ghana 2000); Abdoulaye Wade (Senegal, 2000); Mwai Kibaki (Kenya, 2002); Yayi Boni (Benin Republic, 2006); Ernest Bai Koroma (Sierra Leone, 2007); Alhassan Quattara (Cote d’Ivoire, 2010); and Peter Mutharika (Malawi, 2014).

According to the study, titled “Opposition Victories in Africa: How it can Happen in Nigeria (A Working Paper for the APC), which would be presented at Mr. Buhari’s formal declaration, for four decades post-independence, regime change through democratic means was unheard of in Africa.

It said in some countries, regime change was even impossible constitutionally because one-party rule was legitimized by constitutional instrument while countries whose constitutions had provisions for a multi-party political system were only nominally multi-party in practice, as the incumbent presidents or prime-ministers as the case may be, sat tight, often changing the provisions of the constitution regarding tenure to perpetuate their rule.

It also said elections became a mere ritual aimed at creating a façade of a democratic order when in fact there was no substance to it. The person in power, it further noted, was always the winner in such elections and the results invariably indicated his victory was landslide.

It stressed that this scenario made military coup d’état and warfare the only means of effecting a change in government.

“However, beginning from the 1990s, there have been pockets of democratic regime changes in Africa,” it said.

“By this we do not mean an intra-party transfer of the baton of power such as happened in Nigeria in 2007 when President Olusegun Obasanjo handed power over to his party member, late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

“Rather, we refer to an inter-party change whereby, upon the defeat of a ruling party’s candidate, power is ceded to an opposition candidate, as was the case in Zambia (1991), Ghana (2000), Senegal (2000), Kenya (2002), Benin Republic (2006), Sierra Leone (2007), Ivory Coast (2010), and Malawi (2014).”

Noting that since 1999 the PDP had been in power, not necessarily because it was popular, the study alleged that it was because the ruling party “has perfected the art of rigging on one hand, and on the other, because a weak opposition.”

“All the presidential elections that have legitimized PDP’s hold on power have been seriously flawed. A combination of outright cooking-up of fake results and bribing of voters has been part of the PDP’s staying power as is the case in African countries generally,” it alleged.

To enhance the preparation of the Nigerian opposition for the 2015 presidential election in a manner that can lead to victory, this paper, which is divided into three sections – “Demystification of Power of Incumbency,” “An Appraisal of the All Progressives Congress” and “Conclusion” identified coalition strategy, complementary candidatures, mass discontentment with the PDP and promoting international pressure as means of defeating the ruling party, come 2015.

It said some of the eight leaders, who had contested elections several times like Mr. Buhari, and generally the opposition in those countries, had employed the four methods in defeating the ruling parties and incumbents.

“The objective, in this connection, is to draw vital lessons from the experience of th