Ifeanyi Ubah as catalyst to Jonathan’s soaring popularity

Nations are built on the platform of mobilization of the
majority of the people towards a common goal of
development. No meaningful development is achievable in a
divisive atmosphere. Nigeria of our dream needs people like
Dr. Ifeanyi Ubah, the convener and major financier of the
Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria, TAN. Close to one
year prior to the ongoing campaigns for elective posts in
Nigeria, Ubah and some like minds rose to the challenge of
people-mobilization towards the reelection of incumbent Presi­
dent Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
The Transformation Agenda of Mr President, where the
administration has transformed most of the critical sectors of
the Nigerian economy became the focal point. TAN is today a
toast of even critics having achieved so much in support of
Mr. President in mobilization of majority of Nigerians, young
and old, from diverse geo-political enclaves, culminating into
getting a whopping 18 million voter-signatures for his
reelection.
Experts have said that political mobilization is the activity of
rousing masses of people both to express themselves politi­
cally and also to undertake political action. Mobilization takes
place when political elites (such as politicians, party workers,
or social movement leaders like Ubah) reach out to members
of various groups in an attempt to get group members to
undertake a particular political action (such as voting in the
case of a politician).
In fact, Karl Deutsch has defined social mobilization as a
process in which “old social, economic, and psychological com­
mitments are eroded or broken and people become available
for new patterns of socialization and behavior”. TAN aimed to
achieve this and has indeed succeeded as a catalyst for
popular movement in support of Mr. President.
Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, the principal Chinese Marxist
theorist, soldier and statesman who led his nation’s Cultural
Revolution, taught us that people, not weapons, are the
decisive factor in revolutionary warfare. He stated that, “the
outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two
new types of weapons.”
With the high yielding example of Mao’s China, it’s been
proven beyond doubts that political mobilization, the type
being championed through TAN, is the only single factor
capable to turn the people into partner-in-progress in modern
nation building.
Carl Philipp Gottfried (or Gottlieb) von Clausewitz, was a
Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the
political and military energy produced by political mobilization
of the masses when he described Prussia’s rise against
Napoleon. Clausewitz noted that Prussia, “made the war a
concern of the people, and with half her former population,
without money or credit, she mobilized a force twice as large
she had in 1806.”
Political mobilization channels the energy of the masses into
the revolution. It raises the political consciousness of the
people and makes them realize they are the weapon of
revolution.
The people will remain inert without political mobilization, the
type being championed by TAN. In an analogy explaining this
problem Chairman Mao stated, “Bells don’t ring till you strike
them. Tables don’t move till you shift them.” The revolution
we seek in Nigeria, is to deviate from the worn out path of
opposing our leaders for no tangible reasons, to actually
supporting them to achieve greatness for our nation, Nigeria.
TAN has set the ball rolling for everybody.
Lenin commented on the creative energies of the masses
unlocked by the French Revolution. He stated that France
showed its “revolutionary creativeness when it remodeled its
whole system of strategy, broke with all the old rules and tradi­
tions by effectively mobilizing its people towards great goals”
It was only through constant and patient political mobilization
that China changed from a society that discouraged men from
becoming soldiers to a society that championed the cause of
revolutionary warfare.
It was through political mobilization that the peasant farmer
learned to destroy his oppressors. Why can’t we as Nigerians
mobilize under one umbrella to defeat our common enemy—
the old orders which are chaining us from reaching our
collective and personal destinies, under Goodluck Jonathan?
China brought forth her greatest army from a weakened state
through political mobilization. Political mobilization is a long
and arduous process. The people will not automatically
gravitate to the political goal. They have to be slowly and
patiently educated in the political goal before they will join the
revolution.
The Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria, TAN, has started
something which will definitely outlive its founders. It is,
indeed, a revolution of a sort. Nigeria has evolved from a
history of trials and tribulations, into modern nation-state
under the leadership of Jonathan.
In all previous governments, no serious or concrete effort was
made to truly mobilize Nigerians as TAN is doing today.
MAMSER and the like of it were curdled inside bureaucratic
cloak, making it difficult to function as true mobilizer of
people. One unique thing that stands President Jonathan
apart is his quiet revolution of transformation of all critical
sectors of the economy. An academic, he led a very quiet
revolution which remained under reported. This is strange,
especially in our own clime where leaders spend more on
publicity much more than the project being publicized.
The opposition then chose to feast on this seeming deficiency
by churning out falsehood on the person of the President as
well as on his laudable programmes. Many could not see the
underbelly and the foundation to a prosperous nation which
Mr. President is putting up. They seem to be too narrow in
thinking in this regard. Dr. Ifeanyi Ubah is an outstanding busi­
nessman in Nigeria, having positively played a pivotal role in
the downstream sector of the petroleum industry. He is an
industry numero uno and a young, brilliant and dynamic man
who has invested so much in Nigeria, providing employment
to hundreds of thousands of young people from all over the
country.
Probably as a result of the patriotic zeal in him, he saw the
need to help in propagating the good dividends of democracy
of the government of President Goodluck Jonathan through
the now popular Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria,
TAN. Within a short period of formation, TAN has became a for­
midable Movement very hard to ignore.
And like Chairman Mao, Carl Philipp Gottfried and Lenin,
Ifeanyi Ubah is a catalyst for the mobilization of the people
towards a better Nigerian society under our present leader,
Goodluck Jonathan.
.Mohammed writes from Lagos.