‘‘HONESTLY, genuine patriotic Nigerians must stop perpetuating the Nigerian condition by remaining docile and inactive in matters that touch on the democratic destiny of Nigeria…A historic opportunity present itself in the coming elections in Nigeria to end high level of avoidable deprivation and tortuous penury to which Nigerians have been subjected by tricksters, fraudulent and happy go-lucky politicians’’. Quoted in Nowinta’s book [2009] _WHERE WE ARE (page 145)
It is a fact that the Nigerian people are far more sacrosanct than anything else. We are supposed to be the fundamental priority of our society .But recent events starring at us in the face as the March 28th Presidential election approach seems to be trying desperately to relegate the sacredness of the people of Nigeria to the background .
This must not be allowed to happen! I am starting on this note because of the nauseating activities of groups like Oudua Peoples Congress (OPC), Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) ,Niger Delta Volunteer Force (NDVF) and other faceless militias ,and fraudulent individuals cum over night organisations scattered around the country.
Do these people actually represent the voices, wishes and aspirations of the greatest Nigerian masses? Who do Gani Adams, sari Dokunbo Government Tompolo and company represent? The enemies of the ordinary people of Nigeria have never before openly identified themselves like the way they are going about the Presidential Election.
What is wrong with Permanent Voters Card, the Card Readers and other innovations being perfected by Professor Jega and his lieutenants at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) towards the 2015 general elections? It is seething to see questionable characters who live by the guns and bullets to stage and lead protest marches calling for the sack of Professor Jega before the election. It is most annoying seeing some politicians who have eaten fat and blind from our commonwealth promising hell and fire if a particular presidential candidate fails to win the March 28th presidential election.
What type of society do we call our country, where demented individuals with little or no education are trying to force their will on all of us because they have had dubious and unholy alliance with the cabal that controls the political, social and economic heart beat of the country?
Let go down memory lane a bit. The elections that ushered in our founding fathers as representatives of the people were marred with widespread unprecedented irregularities. Then the wishes and aspirations of the ordinary people were perfectly aborted. Sir Harold Smith, a towering colonial master had revealed in a riveting memoir thus:’ These structures did not become corrupt after independence, they were rotten before the British handed over power to a small and elite group of Africans’
If the First Republic was enmeshed in gigantic fiasco and nonsense in the name of electoral malpractices a greater evil visited the people during the ill-fated 2nd Republic when election matters almost resulted into a state of civil war? Is it the Third Republic that General Ibrahim Babangida personally manipulated that witnessed no electoral sanity, except for the ‘miracle’ of June 12 1993 Presidential election?
The 1999, 2003,2007 and 2011 general elections recorded their fair share of electoral banditry. And in all of the charade that plastered the nation in every manner, the people of Nigeria did not have any say. Never before have had a people been so systematically captured.
Again lets hear Sir Harold Smith:’ We are the ones who rigged the elections. We are the ones who gave them the examples. We used every dirty trick in the book. We did it to Nigeria’
Now, sixteen years after, electoral imperfections that has enabled misfits, half baked characters and political bandits to have their ways over the affairs of the country, a selected few, greedy to their bones and extremely callous, are at it again, to prevent some measure of sanity to take place in the 2015 general elections.
Common sense dictates that we should never allow them to have their ways this time around. We should never allow these parochial, retrogressive and miserable politicians to reverse us back to 1960 and 1983.Many countries in civilised climes are already applying the digital approach to manage or conduct their elections, yet some dudes are scheming desperately so that electoral rigging can go on because of some pot of porridge.
Professor Jega must be protected by every available means. Now, Gani Adams and Tompolo of this world have already been fingered in some contract chasing within the Niger Delta recently. These people simply do not mean well; they don’t care a hoot about what happens to the rest of us, provided they are lining their pockets with blood money.
We must challenge ourselves and brace up to the present situation. Those toying persistently with the welfare and sensibility of our people must be condemned and stopped. Cash and carry political activists, pseudo democrats must be defeated to their satanic game.
There must be a paradigm shift in the way we handle our elections in Nigeria. It is nothing but the eternal enemies of the impoverished majority in Nigeria that will seek the removal of Professor Jega few days to the 28th March, 2015 Presidential election in Nigeria. It is only the enemies of democracy and electoral sanity that will stoutly oppose the reforms being implemented at INEC.
Really and truly it is those that hates the Nigerian nation; hates rapid social, political and technological development etc that will constitute themselves as road blocks to the usage of Permanent Voters Card (PVC) and Card Readers at the next general elections in Africa’s most populated nation.
Those prodding them on, paying the bills of these haters of change are themselves the greatest haters and enemies of Nigeria.
Nowinta wrote, WHERE WE ARE-A CALL FOR DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION IN NIGERIA.
Attahiru Jega, INEC Chaiman
