The former Head of the State General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) is one of five persons aspiring for the Presidential ticket at the 3rd National Convention of All Progressives Congress (APC). In his speech at the APC’s presidential primary Buhari said that what Nigeria needs is change. Read what else he promised Nigerians:
“My Dear Delegates,
As you gather for our convention, please remember that history, change and the hopes of Nigeria are there with you. They are there to ask you to perform according to your best judgment and patriotic conscience. I also ask you to do the same.
We seek a new Nigeria. It starts with us. It starts today. I have placed myself before you seeking your help to nominate me as your standard bearer for our progressive party, APC.
Personal ambition does not drive me in this regard. I seek to be the next president of our beloved nation because I believe I have something to offer Nigeria at this time of multiple crises. Insecurity, corruption, and economic collapse have brought the nation low. Time is past due that we work together to lift Nigeria up. I am ready to lead Nigeria to its rightful future.
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I have always served Nigeria to the best of my ability. I have always tried to give more to the nation than it has given me. This is the principle of service that has guided my public life. Thus, I am not a rich person. I can’t give you a fistful of dollars or naira to purchase your support. Even if I could, I would not do so. The fate of this nation is not up for sale.
What I will give you, and this nation is all of my strength, commitment, sweat and toil in the service of the people. What I can give you is my all.
The PDP has been in power much too long for the little good it has done. For the past six years, Nigeria has walked backwards carrying the weight of PDP’s incompetence on its shoulders.
Due to its broken leadership, Nigeria has been afflicted by a strange illness. We are a great nation riddled by endless crises. Instead of resolving problems, this government multiplies and manufactures them.
PDP cannot stand before us and say things have gotten better under its direction. It has only gotten worse and it’s now time for change.
PDP’s government may say that it needs more time – that what we need now is continuity – but we do not.
What we need now is change!
I know what it takes to achieve real change – I have led our nation before – in times almost as unhappy as these.
I know that to solve our problems we need real leadership, not warm words and empty promises. A leader needs integrity and strength – and an unbending commitment to do what is right.
I know that leaders must not just mouth words about change – they must embody it in their lives and their values.
My love for Nigeria is writ large across my heart and I have spent a lifetime in the service of its people.
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Through a long career trying to build a better country for my fellow Nigerians in offices both high and low I have always tried to place my country before myself.
While some who have occupied those same positions have grown mysteriously rich, I still live on my army pension. I own no foreign bank accounts, I own no companies profiting from government contracts.
Why then do I seek office, if not for myself? While others might prefer to stay at home watching their grandchildren grow and live the battle to others I still see injustices that need to be righted and I still dream of a New Nigeria.
I am what you see before you – a simple man who believes in serving both God and his country. A man who is impatient for change, who loves Nigeria and seeks to serve it once again.
When I last led this nation I launched a War against Indiscipline – today, I pledge a Battle for Hope.
A battle against the dark forces of corruption and despair that have held our nation hostage to their greed for too long.
We simply cannot afford four more years of PDP’s corruption and the corrosive cynicism that it has bred.
The time for hope, the time for belief, is now.
You cannot trust the corrupt to end corruption.
You cannot trust the selfish and self interested to rule in the best interests of the people.
You cannot trust those who believe hope is a tool of government rather than a human right to plant the seed of belief.
Let’s be clear. This is not a time for continuity. Failure does not deserve continuity. Incompetence does not deserve continuity.
It deserves change; that is what the nation deserves and that is what we will bring.
Make no mistake – as is always the case for those who seek to bring change, it will not come easy.
And today I ask for your votes and support as I make these five pledges to the nation:
I will honestly govern Nigeria in accord with the constitution and rule of law.
I will bring all resources necessary to end poverty through ending corruption, promoting broadly-shared economic growth, investing in our country and creating jobs.
I will tolerate no religious, regional, ethnic or gender bias.
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I will return Nigeria to a position of international respect through active and wise foreign policy.
I will select the best Nigerians for posts in my government.
I do not intend to rule Nigeria. I want to democratically govern it with your help. I seek a Nigeria where Christians and Muslims may practice their faiths in peace and security; a Nigeria that is just and where corruption no longer trespasses into our institutions and national behavior and a Nigeria where our diversity could be used for our national prosperity.
Nigeria is our home. Let us now turn it into the great nation we know it can and should be.
I thank you all
General Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR”
Twitter is already a battleground in the 2016 election. The microblogging service lets public figures bypass the news-media circus and deliver messages straight to the public. It's the perfect hub for elaborate Photoshop digs and gems of sinister trolling. But the flip side of that coin is the irresponsible rhetoric, strange gibberish, misfires and gaffes politicians tweet by mistake — a truly unfiltered feed, all on display so the American people know what they're dealing with in a potential leader. Unless Twitter has anything to say about it.
Over the weekend, Twitter furthered its effort to protect politicians from transparency by cutting off Politwoops and Diplotwoops, two services run by the Open State Foundation that catalogued and exposed the deleted tweets of politicians and diplomats worldwide.
The service had already been shut down in the United States back in May, but this new decision extends the ban to 30 more countries where the service was operating, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, Turkey and South Korea.
"Twitter considers it a violation of their terms of agreement, but that was known for five years. Politwoops has worked for five years and has extensively been used and cited by journalists in various countries," Open State director Arjan El Fassed told Mic. "The question is, why did Twitter suddenly ... close down API access after five years [of it] being condoned?"
But there's one group Twitter's really catering to, and it's not you and me. Twitter proudly announced two weeks ago that it was expanding their services for brands to help them plug into, search and exploit the massive database of 200 billion yearly tweets.
That announcement begins by praising the user information available to corporations:
"Unfortunately, Twitter's decision to pull the plug on Politwoops is a reminder of how the Internet isn't truly a public square," Sunlight Foundation president Christopher Gates wrote in June.
There are no similar, hard rules that say that politicians, in the use of their personal Twitter accounts, are public servants. But Silicon Valley corporations are working to tip the scale in favor of the powerful.
Why? That's easy. Business isn't good, and Twitter needs to find a way to make money. Aside from running advertisements and promoted tweets, which aren't working very well, selling their entire firehose of data so that marketers can use Twitter to surveil customers is one of Twitter's only useful business propositions.
There's one way to fend for ourselves: Delete all of your tweets in protest. Ever since Twitter built out its brand tools, deleting every tweet you've ever made has become a trend. Some influential Twitter users in technology and media have purged their feeds. As the Awl's John Herrman wrote, it doesn't matter how edgy or how tame your feed is — tweets devoid of context feel like "a stupid way to represent yourself to the world."
"What elected politicians publicly say is a matter of public record," El Fassed said yesterday on the Open State Foundation website. "Even when tweets are deleted, it's part of parliamentary history. These tweets were once posted and later deleted. What politicians say in public should be available to anyone."
Over the weekend, Twitter furthered its effort to protect politicians from transparency by cutting off Politwoops and Diplotwoops, two services run by the Open State Foundation that catalogued and exposed the deleted tweets of politicians and diplomats worldwide.
The service had already been shut down in the United States back in May, but this new decision extends the ban to 30 more countries where the service was operating, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, Turkey and South Korea.
"Twitter considers it a violation of their terms of agreement, but that was known for five years. Politwoops has worked for five years and has extensively been used and cited by journalists in various countries," Open State director Arjan El Fassed told Mic. "The question is, why did Twitter suddenly ... close down API access after five years [of it] being condoned?"
All users of the Internet are made alike, Twitter says. Not so, says democracy.Twitter's explanation appeals to every user's worst fear: "Imagine how nerve-racking — terrifying, even — tweeting would be if it was immutable and irrevocable?" Twitter wrote to the Open State Foundation when it said it would be cutting off access. "No one user is more deserving of that ability than another."
But there's one group Twitter's really catering to, and it's not you and me. Twitter proudly announced two weeks ago that it was expanding their services for brands to help them plug into, search and exploit the massive database of 200 billion yearly tweets.
That announcement begins by praising the user information available to corporations:
Dr. Carl Sagan once famously said, "You have to know the past to understand the present." For brands to most effectively analyze Twitter data in the present, they also need to know what's happened in the past.All users of the Internet are made alike, Twitter says. But democracy says that isn't so. When politicians communicate as part of their job, the people of an open democracy get to hold on to those records. It's why, when reporters discovered Hillary Clinton had maintained a private email server, it set off a political scandal we're still talking about today.
"Unfortunately, Twitter's decision to pull the plug on Politwoops is a reminder of how the Internet isn't truly a public square," Sunlight Foundation president Christopher Gates wrote in June.
There are no similar, hard rules that say that politicians, in the use of their personal Twitter accounts, are public servants. But Silicon Valley corporations are working to tip the scale in favor of the powerful.
Why? That's easy. Business isn't good, and Twitter needs to find a way to make money. Aside from running advertisements and promoted tweets, which aren't working very well, selling their entire firehose of data so that marketers can use Twitter to surveil customers is one of Twitter's only useful business propositions.
"What politicians say in public should be available to anyone."By using Twitter, we're all collaboratively building a database of information. This move demonstrates Twitter's ranking of who should have access to it. At the top are corporations, and at the bottom are regular users like you.
There's one way to fend for ourselves: Delete all of your tweets in protest. Ever since Twitter built out its brand tools, deleting every tweet you've ever made has become a trend. Some influential Twitter users in technology and media have purged their feeds. As the Awl's John Herrman wrote, it doesn't matter how edgy or how tame your feed is — tweets devoid of context feel like "a stupid way to represent yourself to the world."
That you might be able to explain [your tweets] if asked, or reconstruct the context, is irrelevant, because that's not how they'll be experienced: they'll show up in a search, where their decontextualized strangeness, failing to rise to the level of actual inquiry, will nonetheless leave some kind of impression.After all, people should have control over their autonomy and public identities. But politicians are not like the rest of us.
"What elected politicians publicly say is a matter of public record," El Fassed said yesterday on the Open State Foundation website. "Even when tweets are deleted, it's part of parliamentary history. These tweets were once posted and later deleted. What politicians say in public should be available to anyone."