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.
