@egbas: This is how to polish the Buhari brand

by Jude Egbas

If the supporters of General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB) are honest with themselves, they’ll admit that the former military dictator still has a mountain to climb if he intends to win the Presidential polls next February.

You see, social media matters in the political arena. Not to understand that it matters in a 21st century marketplace will be a tad unfortunate for the businessman, the artiste, the preacher and the politician.

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For while the battle has been won (annexing the Electoral College-styled primary election), there is still a war to be fought and won (the country-wide election next year).

Here are a few aspects ‘Team Buhari’ could work on in a bid to gain some cross-country appeal for ‘Candidate Buhari’. There are presented in no particular order….

1. Media Team

Buhari’s first task should be to assemble a media savvy team. His public persona and brand at this time in most parts of Nigeria are still at an all-time low. There are many persons who will still hurl stones at you in the South-South and South-East regions of Nigeria if you as much as try to convince them to vote for Buhari. For many others, the name ‘Buhari’ is synonymous with all kinds of images from Boko Haram to extremism to Islamic fundamentalism and Islamizing the entire country.

Buhari’s media team will have its work cut out upon resumption in changing and retelling the narrative concerning their candidate across the country; especially in the regions aforementioned. The media team will also have to go about changing Buhari’s quite debilitating perception in these parts with dexterity, nuance and care. The name ‘Buhari’ still inflames manic and feral passions against his person everywhere. This is a task for the most skilled of media teams out there.

2. Prep Team

Obviously, Buhari had no prep team in the moments leading to his widely publicized television appearance on Channels TV last week. If he had a prep team, they did their principal little favours before he sauntered into the studios of the Lagos based media outfit to honour a session that still resonates for its plain lack of colour. The interview was a sad outing for a candidate who will need more than the 12.2 million votes he garnered last time out to beat a President Jonathan who has the incumbency factor going for him.

We all have to agree that in the modern politicking era, sound bites, ability to communicate, charisma and eloquence still count for something on the stomp ground and during barnstorming sessions. Buhari’s Channels TV session was vapid, his sentences were bare-boned and lifeless and his gait inspired no one. I understand that he has been that way since he was born and I understand that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but c’mon, it could have been better with a little prepping here and there!

Buhari has to begin to appeal to an increasingly young voting demographic. He has to act cool (if he can afford to..yeah…yeah…I know he is 71), he has to be more expressive when speaking extemporaneously and he has to come across as Presidential. His negative reputation has been allowed to fester thus far because the man at the centre of it all will rather remain taciturn.

No more, Buhari. No more. You have to speak out and speak up whenever the need arises. Get some communication experts on board the team as soon as possible. Phew!

3. Social Media Team

I had no love for candidate Atiku Abubakar before the All Progressives Congress (APC) primary election last week, but he almost won me over with a social media presence that was as breathtaking as it was totally refreshing, especially as it came from a Nigerian politician.

You see, social media matters in the political arena. Not to understand that it matters in a 21st century marketplace will be a tad unfortunate for the businessman, the artiste, the preacher and the politician.

While I hate to admit it, I fell in love with the Atiku Abubakar on Twitter. The use of the @atiku Twitter handle to communicate and express the candidate’s views on a daily basis was totally refreshing. There was also a synergy between what ‘Team Atiku and Atiku as a candidate’ portrayed in the mainstream media and in person and what the @atiku Twitter handle dished out. Even more soothing, the @atiku Twitter persona was a charm offensive from a different era. It relayed the candidate’s views in real time. There was a discernible strategy to it all.

If Atiku was having breakfast, farting or having amala with Obasanjo, there was the Twitter handle to relay it all to his thousands of followers in real time. When candidate Atiku Abubakar knew he had lost the primary election to GMB, the entire world read his concession speech first on his Twitter page. The mainstream media was feeding off Atiku’s social media footprints. And that’s the way it works these days, not the other way around.

Smart politicians know this and have mastered the adept use of social media in driving their agenda and dictating the narrative.

On the other hand, candidate Buhari was absent on Twitter and Facebook when it mattered most. If the General has a Twitter handle, it must be cut from the same cloth as his boorish and dour personality. All that will need to change.

The rules of the game have changed since Buhari and Idiagbon whipped recalcitrant Nigerians into line or directed people where to pee or poo. The media game is first won and lost on social media most of the time. If Twitter had a say in the primary elections last week, Buhari would have lost spectacularly to Atiku.

Ahead of the general elections, the social media space will play a more prominent role than it did in 2011. Buhari MUST get in the mix.

4. Aggressive Campaigns In South-South And South-East

This writer hails from one of these geo-political zones and it is quite correct to say as it stands today, Buhari could as well kiss his electoral chances in these regions a final bye. To some of my folks, he’s ‘Boko Haram’ with a capital ‘B’ and nothing’s ever going to change that. To most of my folks, Buhari walks around with a sinister plan to Islamize Nigeria hidden under his ‘Babariga’ or ‘Agbada’. To convince them otherwise will mean to risk being stoned to death. He is still such a hard sell.

The perception of a Buhari who is a religious extremist has gone beyond the ranks of the rural folks and has taken residence among the educated and the elite across Nigeria. Maybe the Buhari story needs retelling. ‘Brand Buhari’ is a disaster in Cross River, in Rivers, in Nnewi, in Isiala-Ngwa and in Owerri as it is a disaster in some parts of Lagos, Ogun and Ondo.

He may come short in changing the narrative in the South-South and South-East geopolitical zones, but his political party and his team must try. It may look like a race against time, but it’s worth some effort because those votes matter in the final analysis.

Are there any positives out there about ‘Brand Buhari’? Now is the time to push them out using radio, newspapers and word-of-mouth; especially in those geo-political zones he’s never won in his three previous electoral attempts.

More than anything else, Buhari has to come across as a democrat. In the Channels TV interview referenced earlier, he showed no remorse about truncating a democratically elected regime in the ‘80s– one of the lowest points from that interview for me.

5. An Economic Team

I was embarrassed to read Buhari’s take on getting Nigeria out of her present economic travails in an interview he granted ThisDay Newspapers. It was the shallowest thing I have read since the turn of the year and that, from a man who will inherit an economy in dire straits if elected President next February.

In several media chats, it’s obvious that Buhari is neither policy nor economic wonk. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has alluded to that much in his latest beer parlour inspired memoir.

Buhari needs an economic team and it’s an emergency at the moment. He has to be saying the right things about the economy from this moment. He has to have the numbers at the tip of his fingers all the time, he has to be at home with number crunching, he has to love bandying stats and all the numbers about when he finds himself before the cameras or in a newsroom.

He needs to assemble a think-tank for all the sectors of the economy, but first, he needs an ‘Economic Think-Tank’. And he needs it like kilode.

 

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This article was first published on ekekeee.com

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

 

 

Comments (2)

  1. You were so right. Brand Buhari came out strong after this article and the rest is history…

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