Lack Of Creativity In The Campaign Of LASU Aspirants

By: Abina Olumide

In my over 4 years in Lagos State University (LASU), I have witnessed many campaign strategies of aspirants for political posts in LASU and it can be said that a lot of them are not strategic or intellectual in any way. They all follow same trends of:

Repetition of Name:

BUHARI FOR PRESIDENT
BUHARI FOR PRESIDENT
BUHARI FOR PRESIDENT
BUHARI FOR PRESIDENT

Lack of Information about the aspirant:

VOTE M.O.G AS COSA TREASURER

Grammatical blunders and assassination.

In some campaign broadcasts and fliers, there are some poorly constructed sentences, typographical errors and wrongly spelt words. Although this might be due to the typist, attention should be paid more to things like this nevertheless.

E.g SIJUADE FOR ‘ASSISTANCE’ GENERAL ‘SECETARY’

Vague agenda or Personality

BUHARI FOR PRESIDENT

B - Beginning of new era
U- Unity
H- Honesty
A- Accountability
R- Remedy
I- Integrity.

Lack of statement of achievements as a leader

Lack of statement of previous or current position(s) held as a leader

Use of Propaganda.

These sort of campaigns can be seen as nonchalant and a trigger of apathy.

Some of these aspirants only repeat vote for (Name) as (Office to hold) without any other information added. Some use only their initials or nickname in their campaign. While some add a write-up that gives no information about who I am to vote for, while some just put vague agendas and personality.

As an aspirant for a political position, your first objective or goal is to serve through leadership for the sake of making a change. But can a change be made when even the usual bland unintellectual strategies of campaigning have not been changed?

It would be proper for broadcast messages of an aspirant to contain the following:

1. Full name
2. Political name (if available).
3. Faculty and/or Department.
4. Brief information of the person, containing educational and academic prowess/achievements (if any) as well as position such aspirant is vying for.
5. Skills (if any).
6. Leadership Position(s) held before and detailed achievement(s).
7. Service(s) rendered to the community (if any).
8. Details of Personality. In other words, to what degree is the personality attributed to you true?

E.g AKIN FOR PRESIDENT

A- Accountability
In the year 2016, I was appointed as the Auditor-General of the Faculty of Gyming. During my 2 years of service, I ensured all officeholders submitted a detailed account of revenues and where mismanagement and embezzlement were suspected, a thorough and unbiased investigation was carried out for the sake of accountability.

8. Detailed agenda or plans, not just the Next Level agenda.
9. Short conclusion on why I as a voter should vote you in.

However, it is a bigger sadness that aspirants both at the Lagos State Universit Students' Union (LASUSU) level and Faculty level do their campaign like a routine without paying attention to how they carry out their campaigns on Banners, fliers, handbill, WhatsApp broadcasts etc.
It is like every aspirant sees an election campaign as a perfunctory thing done nonchalantly.

This is just a typical example of what the mainstream politicians do when they are campaigning for an election. We can just say our school politicians now are just the quintessential of our failing national politicians. Perhaps that is why we voted in Next Level without having details of the type of Next level we were going to be ushered into.

I believe some aspirants will argue that they talk one-on-one with the electorates and in the process of talking to them, they give details of their agenda and plans. However, shall I tell you that your one-on-one campaign method may convince 10 people but a detailed public message can convince 100 people? I think it's time aspirants graduate from a traditional campaign to a strategic campaign and stop using the one-on-one campaign method as an excuse for being intellectually indisposed in constructing a good and informative campaign broadcast.

Moving on from aspirants, the biggest pity is that the people who call themselves electorates will support and canvass a person without track records and achievements, without a clearly stated plan or agenda and a degree of intelligence.

We keep on making the mistake of voting for people with promises rather than achievements. We keep supporting people who held offices but have no evident achievements in times of service. We keep endorsing those who attribute a lot of personalities to themselves without a clear statement of why such personality befits them.

It is time we grow from a mediocre way of campaigning, supporting and canvassing. It is time we begin to pay attention to who we are voting for. It is time for aspirants to begin having an understanding of service and leadership.

I hope after reading this, aspirants will:

Stop giving us vain broadcast messages.

Stop giving vague agenda and personalities.

Stop making promises without the backup of previous achievements.

And I hope the electorates will as well:

Be inquisitive.

Stop supporting aspirants blindly

Stop supporting and canvassing based on friendship.

Stop voting in promises instead of achievements.

Stop voting in claims instead of evidence.

Stop being gullible.

Let the positive change begin with us all from the grassroots to the top offices in the nation.