From the way things are going Obong Nsima Ekere maybe arrested at the Tribunal. I will come back to explain.
Nsima knows in his heart that you don’t go against an incumbent with virtually nothing to offer as alternative to the policy thrust of the incumbent.
Gen Buhari came against GEJ with a message of change. His entire manifesto was wrapped up in that message. As incumbent he wrapped his manifesto on another short message “Next Level”. Atiku on his part came against Buhari with the message “Making Nigeria Work Again”. Accordingly this drove his manifesto.
Udom as incumbent too wrapped his manifesto on his achievements of “Peace and Prosperity”.
This is indicative of people who have visions and what they want to go and do in that office if given the chance. Through visionary creativity they could compressed their visions into short messages that resonate with the voting population. Up to the day of election Nsima had none.
The first thing that surprised me about Nsima was his decision to leave NDDC with 9 states and allocation not less than 700b to 800b annually with all the leeway to spend to come and chase governorship purportedly for 4 years. It shouldn’t make sense to anyone except his governorship obsessive minds. The next was when he copied and tried to rephrase the campaign mantra of his opponent. Udom chose “ONLY GOD” as his mantra. Nsima copied and rephrased it to ONLY ONE GOD. He then put it on the same voting shelf without thinking the population already know who coined this phrase and will definitely know this is a copy from his opponent. If it was in an enlightened environment, Nsima would have ended his campaign that day. This was the most untactical and unnecessary political blunder from a challenger. It just opened the window to show that Nsima was incapable of originality and creativity and therefore has no compunction to copy.
I first asked of Nsima’s message in early 2018. His media handlers said I should wait for his manifesto. When the manifesto was made public, my first thought was if it was authored by Davido the renown singer. I remember one of his songs where he mentioned “30b for the account”. Referring to a non existent account. I read 30b there, 20b there all hanging on nothing. Where will the money come from, this same dwindling allocations? You hear thinking like 20b funds to create a new generation
of entrepreneurs. Isn’t this strange. These set of people already abound in the state. All they need is capacity building, skill improvement and capital. All a government need is to create a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) which Udom already done (AKMEDA) with relevant professionals to reach out to these people and provide specialized training including partnering with relevant financial institutions like BOI, Development Bank, ADB and development partners all over the world to help them secure capitals with the state government standing in through offer of collateral through CG, ISPO or other security instruments.
Nsima was coming against an incumbent whose policy thrust of industrialization is at the top end policies of any Third World economy to shift from dependency on a mono federal allocations to manufacturing and self sustainability. So I expected him to come up with better ways, better and perhaps more digital approach to industrialization. Rather Nsima came up with something inferior.
His campaigns on the other hand was weak in penetration with equivocal targeting strategy. Nsima deployed orators to TV notably channels TV, AIT almost on weekly basis to talk to Nigerians, meanwhile 80% of possible voters have no access to these media. Similar mistake was made on daily basis on all the radio stations within AKS where he kept speaking to a handful of elitist voters. He also took control of the internet although 3 of his top internet rats namely Ata Ikiddeh, Clement Ikpatt and Da Zion ended up playing the role of Patience Jonathan who innocently put her husband in a disturbing public perceptions in her attempt to campaign for him. The fact remains that the voters are at the units – some of which are very remote. The only method suitable for them was personal selling, an area Nsima campaign was weak. Udom on the other hand made great use of this window. At the end Udom beat Nsima with a better grounds game. This was one of the most transparent election in this state. So when Nsima claimed he won in 26 LGA and is putting together some fake INEC documents, I fear for him because he might just be arrested at the Tribunal.
