By Shyamantha Asokan/BuzzFeed
News Reporter
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Buhari swamped by
journalists after giving a talk at London think-tank Chatham House on Feb. 26. Photo:
Shyamantha Asokan for BuzzFeed News
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Nigeria,
Africa’s most populous country and biggest economy, faces its tightest
presidential race ever on March 28. In one corner, there’s the incumbent Goodluck Jonathan,
under fire for graft scandals and for failing to quell the Islamist insurgent
group Boko Haram.
In
the other, there’s Buhari,
an ascetic former military dictator who ruled Nigeria in 1983-5, a stint best
known for a crackdown on corruption and rule-breaking dubbed the “War Against
Indiscipline.” He has since run unsuccessfully for president three times.
Buhari’s campaign team says he has met two former British prime ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, while in town. But they won’t say what was discussed at the meetings, nor what other meetings he had during over one week in London.
Blair’s
office confirmed to BuzzFeed News he had a private meeting with Buhari in
London on Feb. 21, but declined to comment further. Brown’s office did not
respond to repeated requests for confirmation.
Buhari
has not used any foreign public relations or political consulting firms to set
up this trip, Lai Mohammed, the spokesperson for Buhari’s All Progressives
Congress (APC) party, told BuzzFeed News. The U.S. political consulting firm
founded by former Obama message guru David Axelrod has done stints working for
the APC as
recently as December.
Both
Axelrod and the firm also currently work for the
U.K.’s opposition Labour party, which Blair and Brown both belonged to when
they were prime minister.
Buhari’s campaign team has given slightly different reasons for the trip at different times. At first, they presented it as a working visit to schmooze with “global institutions.”
However,
later in the week, Buhari himself and the same campaign team official said the
trip was primarily a private holiday to get a rest from campaigning in Nigeria,
with a few official engagements thrown in.
“I
have to come away from Nigeria to get some relative peace. That is what brought
me here,” Buhari told reporters on Thursday, after giving a speech at the
London think-tank Chatham House. He pointed to the
sudden six-week delay to Nigeria’s election as giving him time to take a
break.
Jonathan and his ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) face their strongest challenge ever next month, having ruled Nigeria since the end of the last period of military rule in 1999.
The
challenge to that long rein has helped lead to the increasingly intense and
ragged mud-slinging between the two political camps. This might even account
for the furtive nature of Buhari’s trip.
“The
politics in Nigeria is getting very dirty. So many people are keeping this
[trip] close to their chest,” said Bimbo Roberts Folayan, the chairman of the
Central Association of Nigerians in the UK, who added that his association
would normally be kept in the loop if a presidential candidate was in town.
Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com
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