By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
On Saturday (March 28, 2015), Nigerians will once
again troop to the polls to choose who among the several contestants vigorously
campaigning and scheming out there (mostly for self-serving reasons) would be
their president and members of the Senate and House of Representatives for the
next four years. In several other countries, including even some of our smaller
and leanly-endowed neighbours here, election periods usually provide the
populace with pleasant opportunities to savour the excitement of democracy.
People go to the polls with beaming faces exchanging pleasantries and banters while waiting to cast their votes. They are not gripped by any benumbing fear that some daredevil thugs might swoop on the voting centres to shoot into the air, snatch away ballot boxes, and, possibly, wound or even kill some people in the process. Even the contestants would just come to the voting centres with little or no security, and without any fanfare unobtrusively cast their votes like every other person. And as they return to their homes, they are not looking over their shoulders to see if some killers hired by their opponents are trailing them to eliminate them.
The voters, too, would go home and enjoy another night
of refreshing and peaceful sleep with their two eyes closed. The atmosphere is
completely devoid of fear because they are not expecting that some hooligans
would soon start disturbing the peace of the neighbourhood and looking for whom
to kill or maim once emerging results begin to show that their paymaster is
losing.
The expectation of Nigerians of decent will this time
around is that we would be able to prove with this Saturday’s elections that
our case cannot just remain egregiously different in the comity of nations,
that we would not always be counted among the world’s perennially sick babies
who are always distinguished by their inability to get even very simple things
right.
*President Jonathan during a PDP rally
When Nigeria
surprised the world with its deft handling of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), America Dallas had
mishandled with far-reaching consequences the case of Eric Duncan, a Liberian
who had returned to the United
States Nigeria Nigeria
But the question on many lips now is: as skepticisms
mount across the world about our capacity to get it right this Saturday and
wild speculations about Nigeria’s likely implosion are unduly feasted on by the
international media, can’t we dare to make the world wake up the next day to
realize that Nigeria has just snatched another success from the jaws of defeat
(to modify Chinua Achebe’s popular assertion about Nigeria snatching failure
from the jaws of success)?
Why can’t we just go out there and do what other
countries undertake with such ease and continue with our lives? Why must it
always happen that desperate and grossly irresponsible politicians would always
saturate the atmosphere with bloodcurdling threats (which experience have shown
that they do, indeed, carry out quite often with far-reaching consequences),
thereby ensuring that people always
exercise their voting rights with serious caution amidst crippling fear? Why
must elections in this country be always likened to war?
Sadly, most politicians see elections as just another
very lucrative investment from which the investor must reap handsome profits.
And so, to many of them, it is a do-or-die affair! They just cannot
just accept defeat and watch their victorious opponents descend on the public
treasury with all the fury of their raw, primitive greed and start looting and
plundering, while they are out in the cold hungry and deprived. And so they
must fight to finish.
*General Buhari and his Campaign Director,
Amaechi
But I think that Nigerians ought to have had enough of
this madness by now. How long shall we continue to allow mostly ultra-selfish
politicians merely looking for meal tickets to disturb our lives and peace?
Indeed, Nigerians would be doing themselves a lot of good if they refuse to
allow themselves to be used by the unscrupulous and irresponsible fellows that
litter the political space to unleash mayhem anywhere in the country. If every
young man would today place value on his own life and refuse to be a thug or
hired killer to the politician, a lot would have been achieved in the
determined effort to gratify the deep yearning of decent Nigerians to have the
system sanitized and purged of men and women of unwholesome preferences whose
only agenda for Nigeria is how to destabilize it once any opportunity to steal
and empty the treasury is denied them.
The star characters in Saturday’s election are, no
doubt, President Goodluck Jonathan, the presidential candidate of the ruling
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Gen Muhammadu Buhari, the flag bearer of
the All Progressive Congress (APC). One hopes that they have realized by now
that no matter their good intentions for the country that only one person can
emerge president after Saturday’s elections and that Nigerians still reserve
the right to decide who that person should be. Respecting the wishes of
Nigerians is the only way they can distinguish themselves as statesmen and
respectable patriots. This also applies to all the other contestants who should
place the survival and preservation of this country far above their personal
(and mostly selfish) cravings.
Our politicians must purge themselves of this toxic
notion that the only “free and fair” election is the one which they won. And
even when they have genuine reasons to feel that they have been shortchanged,
they should shun all forms of self-help and explore only lawful processes to
seek redress. Please, we are sick and tired of having desperadoes who are in
politics solely to loot and out-loot each other coming out to create tension
everywhere and violate our right to peaceful existence each time they are
out-smarted by their fellow plunderers.
*Prof Jega, INEC Chairman
*Prof Jega, INEC Chairman
Now, for this election to be less controversial, a lot
would depend on the umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC) which must demonstrate its competence and lack of bias beyond reasonable
doubts. We know that politicians would always wish to discredit the results of
elections which they lost, but once majority of the citizenry are able to see
that INEC had tried its best to be as neutral as possible, it would then be
easy for many to hurriedly dismiss the noise-making politicians as a bad
losers.
But in this particular election, INEC has already put
the wrong foot forward and it does not appear to be doing enough to allay
growing fears about its perceived incompetence and partiality. INEC must be
willing to admit that its stubborn determination to conduct the presidential
and National Assembly polls on February 14 even when it was too clear that it
was not ready has created huge doubts about its true intentions. It may have
been a case of abject naivety and misdirected exuberance, but that singular
step surely did a great damage to INEC’s credibility.
Also, if until very recently, the commission was still
taking delivery of and distributing Permanent Voters Cards (PVC), and yet, it
was bent on conducting an election in which about 34% of Nigerians or more
would certainly have been disenfranchised, then something is really wrong with
its sense of judgment, if not ability. Some might even think that INEC’s action
smacks of sheer irresponsibility.
INEC still has the opportunity to convincingly
reassure Nigerians about its determination to conduct free and fair elections
this Saturday. And Nigerians, especially, the young people, should not help the
politicians to destroy this country. If younger Nigerians refuse to respond to
the instigation of politicians to pour into the streets to unleash violence,
certainly neither the politicians nor members of their families would be
willing to do that. It is as simple as that. And perhaps, we will see the end
of all these threats about making Nigeria
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