Nigeria: Obamania - History in the Making

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http://allafrica.com/stories/200806080012.html

Nigeria: Obamania - History in the Making

8 June 2008
Posted to the web 8 June 2008

Kunle Somorin

Good luck, well-thought-out campaign strategy, team work and mass appeal have coalesced to draw Senator Barack Hussein Obama nearer to the American electorate and to the White House.

In the Democrats' camp he lives in their hearts. In the last five months of fiercely contested primaries, he has loomed larger than life, upturned modern-day Nostradamuses and made pundits ordinary. Understandably, he has also learnt that the road to power, especially that to the White House, is strewn with thorns, at times enmeshed with mud and in extreme cases watered by blood.

The Presidential Declaration

As if he had a premonition, his choice of declaration venue was historic. Obama chose Illinois to begin his campaign for the exalted office. That city had played host, in 1860, to supporters of Abraham Lincoln, the man who once declared democracy as the government of the people by the people for the people.

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Campaign Funds

Through the ordinary man to street urchins and the rich, Obama's campaign secretariat has also raised eye-popping amounts of cash for campaigning, better even than Democratic rival Hillary Clinton who has invested over $12m of her personal fortunes in the campaign and is saddled with another $10m debt overhang from sundry sources.

That in itself is an impressive performance in his party's primary elections and has put him in line for the big challenge for the White House against McCain, the Republican candidate, who could not muster enough funds as Mrs. Clinton did in the primaries. But McCain's backers may be compelled to bare their fangs now and launch their hands into their tills and reserves to be able to prosecute the Herculean campaign to stop the storming petrel of American politics, Obama.