This morning, my team member, Oluwatobi Soyombo and I sat in the office, and discharged our final responsibility to the Buhari Campaign Organisation – we changed the bio of the Muhammadu Buhari account across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and everywhere else to ‘President of Nigeria’.

I asked Tobi for the privilege to do this myself, with my own hands.

Then, as he looked at me, shocked, the tears began to follow.

After sending out the tweet for the new president of Nigeria (personal tweets from him are signed –MB), I took to my own private account and shared: ‘@MBuhari better not disappoint us. This is too important. This is too important’.

My team and I were offered the job to handle the communication for the Buhari campaign in November 2014. I couldn’t believe it. We had never been close to the All Progressives Congress; I had never even met Buhari. Even the ‘closer’ Tinubu, I have not met since that time in 2002 when I served him tea as a production assistant at the Nigerian Television Authority.

I had a few weeks before declined a meet to discuss youth communication for the Goodluck Jonathan campaign because I no longer had any faith in his leadership, but I was almost certain he was going to win anyway.

In May 2014, I had arrived Abuja to speak at a #BringBackOurGirls event. But I had hardly left the airport, when someone high up in the government called me: “If I see you up on that stage with Oby (Ezekwesili), you are finished in this country.”

So, I wondered, was it wise to finally set up enmity with the government for the next four years by working directly for its opposition?

All through the time my co-founder, Adebola Williams worked hard with the team of Uche Nnaji (OUCH) and Kelechi Amadi-Obi to shoot the photographs that redefined Buhari’s image, all through the period the team was assembled from Tobi to Alex Yangs to Kathleen Ndongmo, I couldn’t move. I was transfixed in fear, in hope that dared not speak. Could Nigerians actually unseat a seating President from the People’s Democratic Party?

I wondered if the rage I felt was worth the sacrifice I was about to make – putting my life, my relationships and my business on the line in a country where the biggest advise our richest man has given entepreneurs is ‘never fight with the government of the day’?

All of that is history now. What looked like a mirage then has become reality. The job became a mission. After four months of the most emotional campaign in my lifetime, sleepless nights at the StateCraft Inc headquarters, from the campaign office in Abuja, supervising the setting up of billboards, fighting TV stations that didn’t want to air our ‘Is This Transformation?’ promos, Adebola following the candidate around the country, and rewriting speeches in the dead of the night because the candidate knew exactly what he wanted to say, we are here now. Nigerians have unseated a 16-year monopoly.

So, this morning, I shared a story on my Instagram page that I haven’t spoken about in public before.

In 2013, six of us friends including Adebola Williams, ‘Yemi Adamolekun, ‘Gbenga Sesan and Kola Oyeneyin came together and decided that, beyond mobilising citizens, leading protests and using the media to drive conversation, Nigeria needed our passionate, sustained prayers. A year before, after our active involvement with #OccupyNigeria, and the events after, we were beyond disillusioned.

And so, every Saturday morning, we went from the houses and offices of one to the other and we would cry, and we would scream, and we would pray for country. Ah, we prayed. Nigeria’s future looked so bleak. It looked so dark, didn’t see any logical pathway to change. So we went to God with our hearts, we went to him with our disappointment; we went to him with our pain. We asked him, “What should we do? How should we do it?”

One day, as we prayed, in an office on the Lagos Island, I was so overwhelmed with despair I fell down on the floor and began to speak in frenzied tongues, tears streaming from my face, banging furiously on the cabinet in front me. My heart was desperate; just desperate for something to give way.

I didn’t know my friend, Kola, had the gift to interprete tongues. But then he began to interpret what I was saying. And it frightened me, because he was absolutely right. He captured the fears in my heart, and the requests I was making. He said, paraphrased, ‘God says He will change Nigeria. It looks like it won’t happen, but He will do a new thing and it will spring forth. We won’t understand how He will do it, but He will.”

Two years later, God has kept his promise.

I do not know what the future holds. I cannot even say with certainty that this new dispensation will fulfil the promises it made to us when it called us on board and to you when it asked you to vote.

But I know one thing: I spent the past four years giving the Jonathan government the benefit of the doubt, willing it to succeed. Yet each time it failed, I was on the street, passionately denouncing it. And when, finally, after the Chibok girls went missing, I lost hope in it, I put everything on the line to join Nigerians in punishing it.

Things have changed.

I have invested faith that Buhari will be different, not just because he is a new president today, but because I have been priviledged to sit in the same space with him, I have listened very carefully to his wisdom and his depth. I have counted the cost and I have overwhelmed faith that he is the leader we need.

But we, and he thankfully, know this: he cannot play with our future. He cannot play with the future of our children.

We have cried for this nation, because it has failed us too many times. We have worked our fingers to the bones, and our ‘bloods’ have boiled because we believe in its potential. Therefore, our tempers will be short, our forgiveness will be costly, our reactions to real and perceived failures will be swift.

Our hearts our broken, our spirits burdened. We desperately need the promised change, and we need it to start immediately.

Nigeria has suffered enough.

*Jideonwo is managing partner of Red Media Africa, ‘the media group to reach and inspire the largest number of African youth at any time’. One of its companies, StateCraft Inc, was official communication agency to the Buhari Presidential Campaign

http://saharareporters.com/2015/05/30/why-today-%E2%80%93-and-president-buhari-%E2%80%93-made-me-cry-chude-jideonwo

B

.

So Chude are you better off now?

idupaul:
So Chude are you better off now?

Certainly NO!

The scales are falling outta their eyes one by one...Next year another campaign would start, and this one is still looking for change. Ha!

Chude, you and millions of Nigeria were fooled into believing that a Buhari can lead Nigeria to the future..I mean how is that possible? SMH

lalasticalala, mydn44, this should be on front page.

I,personally do not think this dance is necessary except to annihilate and disrupt a peaceful people.
Democracy is rich and is rooted in foundations of the RULE OF LAW.
There is also no self-denial that certain speeches from NK had promoted this,but this was never the right approach,especially with the issues in court.
Like they will say"2 wrongs cannot make a right."

Some will say perhaps,pay them for not voting him
Some will say punish them for daring the secession issues
Most will say,payback for the Ihejirika days as COAS.
all these are conspiracy theories am forced to disbelieve.

I am happy meaningful Nigerians are coming up 2 criticise this,as needless and unwarranted provocation.
The people who should speak have spoken,
The NBA has spoken,irrespective of tribes,
The people are united that democracy must thrive,irrespective of what I have read here on NL in the past few days,how we have suddenly become hard-hearted,wicked and rejoice in violence and death,am shocked.

In the time past,growing up as a kid,we used to mock one another that when you know a true Nigerian Spirit,is in terms of football and crisis,irrespective politics,there are times we stood tall and consummated.
Is the problem PDP,Is the problem Buhari or Kanu?
Yar'Adua of Blessed Memory was Muslim and Katsina-lite and faced similar challenges.
May God grant us wisdom to do,speak and say what is expected of us at all times.
Heard so many people make so many probables,but I ask:
On what condition should the army kill,intimidate and threaten except in self-defense?

"When we blame all Muslims,all ipobians,or all members of any group because of the action of the individuals,we fall into the trap of asserting collective guilt.We empower the narrow-minded ideology that we are trying to defeat." (S.P)

My condolences to those who lost loved ones.
God Bless The S/E
God Bless Nigeria
God Bless U All.

Chude, sorry to say this, but you'll wait for long........

This govt. Has demonstrated nothing but doggedness towards failure. No opinion matters, no counsel get attention. Failure is their darling and division and propaganda is their opium.

If you cry too much, you'll just fall sick.

lalasticlala, front page please.

you guys are all joking.

Bb

Brethren,

Hearing the plans of God for the future, especially regarding a complex Union like Nigeria is often times very easy.... when you pray sincerely.

The problem is usually the lack of patience and faith to keep believing especially when it all look even more difficult and complex after such prophesies.

Truth is God works in wonderful and mysterious ways. Our ways of doing things are not His ways.

Having heard from God myself, Buhari's presidency is of God. That's a given. Now, how he will use Buhari to achieve the glorious future He promised Nigerians is what I don't know. It could be through good, it could be through bad. We all can pray and hope it's through good.

Do not stress yourself over what God told you. He's at work. For everything will be made clear at it own time. And will be to God's glory.

Hopefully (a big hopefully), individuals will be more sincere and honest before pushing (selling) candidates.

You do not throw a stone into the market place

three:


All through the time my co-founder, Adebola Williams worked hard with the team of Uche Nnaji (OUCH) and Kelechi Amadi-Obi to shoot the photographs that redefined Buhari’s image, all through the period the team was assembled from Tobi to Alex Yangs to Kathleen Ndongmo, I couldn’t move.



We have cried for this nation, because it has failed us too many times. We have worked our fingers to the bones, and our ‘bloods’ have boiled because we believe in its potential. Therefore, our tempers will be short, our forgiveness will be costly, our reactions to real and perceived failures will be swift.

Our hearts our broken, our spirits burdened. We desperately need the promised change, and we need it to start immediately.

Nigeria has suffered enough.

*Jideonwo is managing partner of Red Media Africa, ‘the media group to reach and inspire the largest number of African youth at any time’. One of its companies, StateCraft Inc, was official communication agency to the Buhari Presidential Campaign

http://saharareporters.com/2015/05/30/why-today-%E2%80%93-and-president-buhari-%E2%80%93-made-me-cry-chude-jideonwo

You people took a highly tribalistic person, wore him Ibo and Yoruba attires, took pictures of him in Ibo and Yoruba attires and sold him to Nigerians as a detribalised Nigerian saviour.

You have a long cry session ahead of you.

You started the deceit, live with the consequences

Atlanticfire:


You people took a highly tribalistic person, wore him Ibo and Yoruba attires, took pictures of him in Ibo and Yoruba attires and sold him to Nigerians as a detribalised Nigerian saviour.

You have a long cry session ahead of you.

You started the deceit, live with the consequences

Sadly, d cry na cry of relief in 2015 say Buhari don win.
Maybe him go upgrade d cry