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The All Progressives Congress (APC) is a political party that has over the years since its formation in February 2013 ahead of the 2015 election shown, and proven that she wanted power at all costs. The party which came into existence as result of the merger of Nigeria’s three largest opposition political parties namely, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), and kicked out the incumbent Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from Nigeria’s national leadership. The presidential candidate of APC, Muhammadu Buhari unseating the PDP’s Dr Goodluck Jonathan was in deed an interesting event considering that it was the first time in the history of Nigeria’s politics that an opposition party unseated an incumbent, and power transferred peacefully.
With the victory of APC at the presidential elections in 2015, there was really excitement among the masses in the country, they felt relieved that the sixteen years of uninterrupted mafia politics of PDP in the country had eventually ended. The joy, the masses had was quite enormous while PDP growled in pains how APC rigged the elections. Their pains and disappointment were further worsen when their candidate, the then President Goodluck Jonathan made it clear that he was not going to challenge the results of the election in court even when there were clear indications that the election was marred by some irregularities like underage voting in the Northern part of the country, which boasts of more geopolitical zones than others.
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The masses didn’t really care if truly the election was rigged or not, they were sure they voted massively for APC to oust PDP’s 16 years of misrule that met the pump price of petrol at 20 naira per litre in 1999 when they took over, and increased it to 87 naira which angered the citizenry. Also, other things, that contributed to the masses anger were epileptic power supply, and how corruption was thriving especially in Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. Though the economic conditions of Nigerians were not really as bad as it is now but many Nigerians felt that the country could do better since she was already beginning to consolidate on the gains of democracy and steady revenue from the sale of crude oil. Hopes were very high, but unfortunately, the results were not commiserate to the expectation.
Then APC fully well ‘packaged’, came in with their campaign. The party hired David Axelrod’s firm, the Chicago-based AKPD, a political and media consulting firm that was responsible for providing strategic campaign support to the former President Barrack Obama, for three weeks to create their campaign strategy. The ‘Change’ mantra was cleverly rolled out, it identified succinctly, all the weaknesses of Jonathan’s administration particularly the 276 Chibok school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram on the night of 14–15 April 2014, from the Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok in Borno State. APC proved with that, that Jonathan’s administration failed woefully. And promised Nigerians Paradise on Earth.