The Buhari Campaign Organisation hereby declares its commitment to the highest standards of decency and probity as we formally open our media and communication office to provide honest, credible and responsible information to the general public through the platforms provided by the country’s vibrant media organisations.
While we congratulate the old media for the maturity and capacity displayed in integrating new media and technologies into their operations, experience has shown that the traditional skill of gate keeping crucial to the production of credible and accurate information has become a major challenge in the news dissemination process.
This is why we endorse Nigerian Media Code of Election Coverage and pledge to co-operate with all media stakeholders to ensure that the objectives of the coverage, including the need to educate the people on the electoral process, provide informed choices, treat journalists with respect and understanding, are attained. Since we cannot blame the messenger for the message, the situation calls for the exercise of strong restraint in the issuance of messages by all interested parties. We challenge our competitors and their sympathizers to produce and propagate only the messages that will enlighten and ennoble the process of choosing the president of the world’s most populous black nation.
We, at the Buhari Campaign Organisation, hereby pledge to conduct a campaign focused on the issues which will qualitatively uplift the average Nigerian from poverty to prosperity and bring hope to a populace seeking refuge from uncertainty. The issues of electricity generation and distribution, poverty elimination, eradication of corruption, mass employment and security of lives and property are going to form the focal points of our campaign.
These issues have no ethnic colour. Poverty afflicts the old and the young. Unemployment has no political affiliation. Insecurity damages the economy precariously. Insecurity may be more prominent in the North East in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency but the reality is that Nigerians generally have never been as endangered as they now are.
Our responsibility to the Nigerian people in this campaign is to articulate how to rescue Nigerians from the present danger based on the manifesto of the All Progressives Party. Our responsibility is to demonstrate that General Muhammadu Buhari has the personal virtues of discipline, honesty and transparency to inspire the change that is imminent. Our responsibility is to communicate how the military skills acquired by Muhammadu Buhari, the generals’ general in a publicly acknowledged distinguished career has made him the most appropriate contestant in the 2015 election with the technical and technocratic skills to crush the rampaging insurgency and bring peace to a nation losing a protracted guerrilla war. Our responsibility is to make the voters aware that it is indeed historically divine that socio-political forces that were at loggerheads before have now resolved their differences because of the love of Nigeria and have put forward a man of impeccable credential and unparalleled commitment to the national cause for election.
The Buhari-Osinbajo ticket, brings together two institutions which defend the national patrimony and maintain internal harmony. While the military defends the state from aggression, the judicial system defends the law which establishes and maintains the State. Indeed the intellectual, political and spiritual antecedents of Professor Yemi Osinbajo provides the complimentary combination and collaboration that the next Nigerian administration needs- a government that respects the rights of its citizens and enforces their duty to the State.
No nation facing such gargantuan problems of poverty, lack of power, unemployment, corruption and insecurity offered the chance of a rescue by history throws away such a rare chance. It is our conviction that Nigerians, in their hearts, have chosen the way forward by supporting change. Wherever we go, whoever we turn to, we are embraced by millions of our fellow countrymen who see the hope that we represent. They are visibly and naturally excited by the prospect that at last comes a man who shall take their country back from the precipice.
And so shall it be as they celebrate their love for their country on the unique Valentine’s Day- February 14, 2015.
signed
DELE ALAKE
Director, Media and Communications
