Ruto, Nigeria and false equivalence

By Emmanuel Ogbeche

A well-informed public opinion is essential to the growth of political and social awareness. Only one who is informed can comment intelligently on his nation’s development and only by such comments can errors be corrected and progress stimulated.” Emperor Haile Selassie.

Last night, I was up and a few people who are close to me wondered why I was still awake knowing that sleeping early is a golden rule to me. Well, in an age of “Go and Verify,” I was verifying the person of the newly elected president of Kenya, William Arap Ruto.

In an age where with the click of a button one can easily factcheck what is posted online, there is a telling indulgence to buy hook, line and sinker what suits one’s proclivities especially political inanities.

Owing to the intemperate political ecosystem in Nigeria at the present, people buy into falsehood brewed by their kind. They wallow in half-truths hewed from the tree of obscurantism in other to give advantage to their candidate.

Any attempt to unravel the false equivalence is greeted with their new found “wotowoto” and “vawulence.” In all of these, they seem oblivious of the dire consequences of Cancel Culture and the dangers of their unidirectional philosophy that sniggers at plurality of opinion and choice in a supposed democracy.

For people that say they desperately desire change, their modus is no different from those who told us, “Anybody but Jonathan.”

Today, we are all in a puddle when people are given to have their way by all means necessary. If we are all agreed that the 2023 election is a “live or die” affair, however, I do not subscribe to this thinking, then those given to “wotowoto” and “vawulence” should help us to cut ties with the execrable politics of 2015.

To the Ruto matter, my friend Jimmy Abia, a lawyer, and few others have posted misleading threads about the new Kenyan president.

But I will stay on Mr. Abia. One, he said, “Ruto led the engagements on twitter and other social media and in most of the polls before the election.”

Available data from various sources show that it is untrue that the eventual winner of the Kenya election led the engagements on Twitter. It is possible for Ruto to have led if you follow a thread of his loyalists like we saw in the engagement of one of his supporters that had a response of 50, 000.

But credible and recognised pollsters like ipsos.com and an aggregation of polls by the Voice of America, VOA, (see link) https://www.voanews.com/a/polls-show-former-pm-leading-kenyan-presidentialrace/and German group,
https://www.kas.de/de/laenderberichte/detail/-/content/kenia-eine-woche-vor-den-wahlen-2022?fbclid=IwAR1iL0Wbd7ISOJHbYbXxV4NCdInx5ch_zl7NutE5130uMMuG4FHaH9jdc1M
indicate otherwise.

Mr. Abia goes on to tell a barefaced lie that “Ruto, unlike Odinga who had contested several times, was contesting for the very first time for the office of the President.”

It is important to stress that Mr. Ruto has been part and parcel of the Kenyan political establishment since 1992 when he worked for the late Daniel Arap Moi. His major break came in 1997 when he won a parliamentary seat in that year’s general election, beating an incumbent.

He will go on to become Director of Elections of the ruling Kenya Africa National Union, assistant minister in the Home Affairs (Interior) ministry docket. And later a full cabinet minister in the same ministry.

When the ruling party lost election in 2005, Ruto was elected KANU Secretary General in that year with Uhuru Kenyatta elected as Chairman. Besides being Minister of Interior, he was Minister of Agriculture, and Minister of Higher Education. You already know he was Deputy President from 2013 to 2022.

To the kernel of Abia’s post, in January 2006, Ruto declared for the presidency in the next 2007 Kenyan general election. His statement was condemned by some of his KANU colleagues, including former president Moi. He left the ruling party and he and others formed a new political party, Orange Democratic Movement, ODM, where he sought the nomination of the party as its presidential candidate, but on 1st September 2007, he placed third with 368 votes.

So, to say that Ruto was running for the presidency for the first time is MISLEADING again.

Again, the lie subsists that Ruto was the youngest in the pack of four candidates. He was and is not. David Mwaure Waihiga, a lawyer and ordained church minister, who founded the Agano Party in 2006 and marked his first run for Kenya’s presidency is 55 years old, same as Ruto.

Another lie is that Ruto ran on a new party and not the old parties. Ruto is known to have party hopped since 2005, jumping from one party to the other. Having fallen off with Kenyatta before this election, Ruto entered into an alliance that includes his United Democratic Alliance (UDA), Amani National Congress (ANC) and the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy-Kenya (FORD-Kenya) to contest the 2022 election.

In your effort to ginger your base, propaganda and false equivalence will be unearthed.

We will build a New Nigeria on the basis of truth, equity and justice, anything other than these is wash, like we say in local lingo.