Mr President, the unpleasant optics of horror from the
Kogi and Bayelsa elections, is a bright Code Red, an emergency - the
nature of a fire alarm in a hospital except that this is about the
fundamental idea of democracy in our country. I am particularly
concerned, and I think you should also be for I cannot imagine what this
portends for our country Nigeria especially as we begin to march
towards future elections.
In
future, should all parties in a democracy go and procure arms and
soldiers in a bid to match the members of your party, the APC, and
security agencies under your watch? Mr President, how do you explain
that this is happening under your watch? I have reflected soberly as to
what could be your reading of things. I am sure you have access to
security reports indicating that all hell was let loose on the citizens
you swore to protect while your police and other military agencies
looked on, or in some cases, perhaps participated in this show of
shame.
I need to remind
you that between 1999 till 2015, the election process has continually
improved with less human interference and violence. I need not
overemphasize this to your good self for I have often imagined how you
must have felt given that you participated in a few elections which
could not have been perfect but to see that by 2015, the process had
improved enough to allow an election that produced you and your
government.
How do you
feel watching the gains and improvements in elections and attitude to
the process go literally to the dogs? The way things look now, it is as
though we are now back to one of the backwater fascist inhuman
dictatorships - the likes of which no longer exists in the world. One
will have to look for the eras of Mussolini, and his irk to find
anything remotely resembling what Nigeria has been reduced to under your
watch.
What is to be
gained in all this is what I am yet to fantom. We might as well save
ourself the huge embarrassment within the comity of nations and spear
the mothers of our children who we waste needlessly to the election
process.
How do we reinforce failure and misery in such a brazen manner?
There
is no gainsaying that all of this in a country with a high level of
youth unemployment can only spell doom. When you also know that poverty
is at an all-time high, then the matter gets elevated to a catastrophe.
What we must do is to clean up the entire process. There is a need for
us to ask the question, how do we have an election process that can be
credible, easy to understand, transparent and fit for purpose. The
Independent Electoral Commission needs to be completely reformed. What
we are doing right now cannot define us going forward, we must ask the
tough question. First, what are we doing with so many parties that makes
the whole election process cumbersome from a logistics and costing
point of view?
Everyone
can accept the result of an election if it is credible but to expect a
political party and its followers to look helplessly while they get
killed and cheated cannot be allowed to continue. What about the
needless anxiety we subject our citizens to just because they wish to
exercise their franchise to choose leaders in a democracy?
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