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Until she got a text message from her
New York-based boyfriend, Shalewa Ayobami, 25, had never heard of Nuhu
Ribadu, a fiery anti-corruption fighter, and one of the most popular
Nigerians alive.

That morning, Ms Ayobami’s boyfriend,
Adesina (who prefers that only his first name is used), walked into
Western Union’s shop on Times Square and wired $100 (approximately
15,000 Nigerian naira) to his girlfriend, an agricultural economics
student in a university in South-West Nigeria.

After sending the money off, Mr Adesina
typed out a text message for Ayobami. “I have sent 100 dollars to you,”
he wrote. “The test question is ‘Who will you vote for? The answer is:
Nuhu Ribadu.’” He then pressed the send button.

The following day, Ms Ayobami, who was
receiving money from abroad for the first time, walked into one of
Western Union’s more than 1,900 agents in Nigeria, to claim the money.
When she handed over her form, the paying agent behind the counter took
a long look and then suddenly burst into laughter. Ms Ayobami was
alarmed.

“What’s the problem?” she asked, worried that the information she provided was wrong.

“You guys are beginning to play politics with Western Union,” the cashier said, smiling.

Ms Ayobami still didn’t understand. The
cashier then explained to her that Mr Ribadu, Nigeria’s former
anti-corruption chief, was a presidential hopeful and that the test
question was a “very clever” campaign strategy.

Mr Ayobami is just one of many
Nigerians who have, in the past weeks, walked into banking halls across
West Africa’s most populous nation with the “who-will-you-vote-for”
test question to claim money wired through Western Union by US-based
supporters of Ribadu.

It is not clear how many supporters of
the politician have so far sent money home that way. Western Union
declined to disclose records, saying it does not comment on specific
transactions. But Olubunmi Aborisade, coordinator of the Ribadu
Coalition for Nigeria, a group campaigning for the election of the
anti-corruption czar in the presidential election fixed for April 2011,
said most of his members across the 50 U.S. states regularly follow
that procedure in wiring dollars to their relatives and friends in
Nigeria.

Mr Ribadu, 50, was an assistant
inspector-general in the Nigerian police and former head of the
country’s anti-graft commission. In 2007, late Nigerian President, Musa
Yar’Adua, removed him from his post and dismissed him from the force
after the commission arrested ex-governor James Ibori, on corruption
charges. After unknown gunmen shot at his car, Ribadu fled to the
United Kingdom. He then moved to the United States where he was a
senior fellow at the Centre for Global Development.

After Yar’Adua died in May, the federal
government withdrew charges against Mr Ribadu and retired him him from
the force. He arrived back in Nigeria in June and joined the opposition
Action Congress of Nigeria where he is a leading presidential aspirant.

“Those of us abroad remit billions of
dollars home every year, yet we are not entitled to vote in elections
in our country,” said Mr Aborisade, shortly after a meeting of his
group one recent Wednesday night. “So, this time, we are trying to
influence our relatives at home to vote right by voting for Ribadu in
the election. We are passing our message across in various forms, the
Western Union campaign being one of them.”

Making their voices heard

The idea behind the
who-will-you-vote-for remittance question only came by chance. In early
November, Mr Ribadu visited New York and held a late-night meeting with
about 50 of his supporters based in the city. During the meeting, held
at a popular Nigerian restaurant in Brooklyn, a pro-democracy activist,
who requested that his name be withheld because he does not want to be
seen as aligning with a candidate, suddenly had a brainwave. He
whispered it to other supporters and, before long, a new and completely
novel campaign strategy had been born.

The following day,
Mr Aborisade sent emails to representatives of his organization in 30
of the 50 U.S. states, urging them to inform members in their states to
“call their families and friends in Nigeria frequently, asking them to
vote for Ribadu as the next president of Nigeria.” He also requested
them “to generate questions and answers that remind people about the
“Nuhu Ribadu for President” project in the Western Union Money Transfer.

“That is a good way
to remind their loved-ones to campaign and vote for Nuhu Ribadu in the
2011 presidential elections,” he said.

Mr Aborisade
himself has wired money home that way in the past month. In fact, while
Ayobami was claiming $100 dollars in her university town in Oyo State,
30-year-old Gbenga Akinyede, strolled into a branch of First Bank of
Nigeria in Ado-Ekiti, less than hundred kilometers away, to process a
$500 transfer sent to him by Mr Aborisade, who is also an adjunct
professor of communications at the State University of New York.

Mr Akinyede was
armed with the same test question as Ayobami. But unlike her, Akinyede,
a soft spoken, unemployed graduate of Business Administration from the
University of Ado Ekiti, was politically up-to-date. He knew Ribadu was
running for president and that the question was a campaign message. He
however did not foresee the “excitement” the question generated in the
banking hall that day. After looking at the information provided by Mr
Akinyede, the paying cashier smiled and then invited three of his
colleagues over. The four bank staff laughed.

“As we got talking, they all became interested in Nuhu Ribadu and his campaign,” Mr Akinyede said in a telephone interview.

“They wanted to
know how to get involved in the campaign. Two of them requested
souvenirs like caps and T-shirts. They were excited when I promised to
get it across to them.” Doba Afolabi, a New York-based painter who
himself has, twice in the last month, sent money home to his aged
mother using the “who-will-you-vote-for” test question, said the
campaign strategy is paying off.

“We are trying to
tap the power of our remittances,” Mr Afolabi said one recent Saturday
afternoon as he drove towards the venue of a campaign meeting. “My
nephew, through whom I sent money to my mother, did not know about
Ribadu and his campaign. But he is now one of the most vociferous
supporters of Ribadu. He’s passing the message along to his friends and
other family members, telling them about the importance of a Ribadu
presidency to our country

Dictating the tune

Nigeria is the
number one remittance receiving country in sub-Saharan Africa.
According to the World Bank’s latest Migration and Remittances Factbook
2011 released in November, the country of 150 million people received
$10 billion (about 1.5 trillion Nigerian naira) from remittances;
followed, in a distant second, by Sudan, with $3.2 billion. The bulk of
the money is believed to come from the United States, where Nigerians
are the single largest contemporary African immigrant group with a
population of over 165,000 people, according to the year 2000 census.

“There are several
thousands of us here and we send home billions of dollars,” said Bukola
Oreofe, executive director of the pro-democracy group, Nigerian Liberty
Democratic Forum. “It is high time we realized the importance of our
remittances and take advantage of it to be more economically and
politically relevant at home.” Nigerians at home generally regard their
compatriots abroad as more sophisticated, better educated and
successful and thus think highly of their opinions, said Omolade
Adunbi, an assistant professor of Afro-American and African Studies at
the University of Michigan. Mr Adunbi is intrigued by the
who-will-you-vote-for campaign.

“The fact is that
most people who send money home are breadwinners of their families and
their opinions carry a lot of weight,” he said in a telephone
interview. “If I am sending you money and I request you to campaign for
and vote for Ribadu, you most likely won’t do otherwise because you
won’t want me to stop sending money.” Ms Ayobami obviously wanted her
boyfriend to keep the dollars coming.

After she left the
bank that day after receiving the money sent to her, she rang Mr
Adesina who informed her at length about Mr Ribadu’s track record and
the edge he has over other presidential candidates.

On a visit home that weekend, the university student said she
discussed Mr Ribadu with her grandmother who happened to know more
about the anti-corruption activist. By the time she returned to school
two days later, she had become one of Ribadu’s staunchest supporters.
“Corruption is the biggest problem our country face and we need a man
like Ribadu to fight it,” she said. “If the election is free and fair,
I am sure he will win because most Nigerians want him.”