A lot has happened in our dear country these past few days. They have all added to the cliche—the Nigerian thing! Who says it is rational that 15 contestants went into the just-concluded Edo off-cycle election just to be called “former governorship candidate?” They ended up adding to the huge cost of the electoral process. Celebration is comely, but it must be done with humility. It is doubtful if the winners of the Edo election are being magnanimous in victory. What do we say of the ‘jangolova’ between the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and former Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello? Hmm!
“These are politicians who from the outset knew they would not even vote for themselves, let alone being voted for. Yet they enlist as candidates.”
The ‘Waka pass’ contestants in Edo
In Nigeria’s Nollywood, there are prominent actors and actresses whose names ring a bell. Whenever they feature in any play, they play prominent roles and they appear throughout the play. Such characters give the play both meaning and direction.
There are other emergency and budding actors and actresses who have no defined roles. They are just fielded to show their faces for their nuisance value, which lies in the comic relief they provide for the audience. Their faces may just appear once in the entire play. For instance, when you see a drunk suddenly appearing in the course of the play, uttering inanities and shaking as if he had drunk a whole brewery, and, after that display of drunkenness, he fades away completely. Such appearances in home videos are called “Waka pass” in local parlance.
Sadly, the Nigerian electoral process is being muddied by too many “Waka pass” characters. These are politicians who from the outset knew they would not even vote for themselves, let alone being voted for. Yet they enlist as candidates.
In the off-cycle gubernatorial election held in Edo State last Saturday, 18 candidates that represented their political parties contested. Long before the election day, it was obvious that it was going to be a three-horse race. The baffling thing was that some of these “Waka pass” characters were still busy claiming that they were the contestants to beat, even when the voters did not know them. They neither campaigned online nor offline. They only succeeded in raising the cost of the conduct of the election. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would have spent far less in printing the ballot papers and on logistics if it had concentrated on the three prominent parties that got nearly the entire votes that were cast.
Out of the nearly 600,000 votes that were cast in the election, the All Progressives Congress (APC) got 291,667; the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) polled 247,274; and the Labour Party (LP) garnered 22,763, totalling 561,704. The other 15 parties and their candidates managed to get just 8,000!
These parties could be said to be part of the distractions that the INEC suffered, particularly in the area of result collation that has become a subject of controversy on the basis of which observer groups are pummeling the umpire.
Read also: APC’s Monday Okpebholo wins Edo guber election
Apart from these “Waka pass” candidates, the voting masses in Edo allowed fear of the unknown to scare them away from the polling booths. The INEC records show that over two million people registered as voters; about 1.5 million got their permanent voters cards (PVCs), yet only a paltry number, less than 30 percent, went out to put their PVCs into use on the election day.
Some said they were afraid that violence would break out and that they stayed away because of the militarisation of the entire space, but would it have been possible for the Army and the police to be shooting people at the polling units just because they came out to vote?
It was disheartening that, of the few that went out to vote, some of them were said to have turned the exercise into an opportunity to make money at the detriment of their own future.
Reports had it that some voters were given N5,000, N10,000, or N15,000 depending on the location.
The point is, politicians will always be politicians. They will always be driven by desperation to do everything possible to win an election. But it is the duty of the people to take their destiny into their own hands.
The National Assembly managed to amend certain aspects of the Electoral Act 2022, on which Nigerians had hoped for a fair, free, and credible general election in 2023. The Supreme Court’s ruling that the INEC was not under any obligation to abide by the dictates of the Electoral Act may have “Buccaneered” the people’s expectation for credible elections in Nigeria.
Despite the profuse promise by the INEC that technology would be heavily deployed in the 2023 election, it did not happen. The inability of the electoral umpire to honour its own words may have dampened the enthusiasm of many Nigerians from further participating in the voting process.
From what played out in Edo last weekend, it was obvious that voter apathy is deepening as a result of a trust deficit in the system.
Observers have come to the conclusion that Nigeria may have sunken deeper into hopelessness in relation to credible elections. Very unfortunate!
Celebrating with ‘vauntness’
Smarting from the APC victory in the last Saturday’s election, Abdullahi Ganduje, national chairman of the party, said the broom association would use its template in the Edo State governorship election to win the November 16 election in Ondo State.
He also spoke about the party’s plan to capture the remaining Southeast states.
“We have started working to develop strategies to win these states. Next year, Anambra State will follow. Let me remind you that we have a project that we named political de-marginalisation of the Southeast geopolitical zone.
“That project is also a task that must be done. We will face the Southeast Zone with 5 states. We already have 2, but 2 is too small for a big party like ours. We will face that state and see how we can recover many states in our favour,” Ganduje said.
In Rivers, the party’s leader, Tony Okocha, boasted that the APC would repeat the Edo feat in Rivers and Delta in 2027.
“We are sure and certain that we are going to replicate what happened in Edo State at Delta and Rivers State come 2027,” he said.
Observers have recalled the similar boasts by the late Vincent Ogbulafor, when he said with air of pomposity that the umbrella association was going to occupy the nation’s power stool for 60 straight years. In the current circumstance, observers said that the tough utterances may have given the party away as deploying certain other subterranean means to clinch victories. Many Nigerians who have followed recent elections in the country believe that the elections fell far below the integrity test and that it does not show any lesson has been learnt.
While the winners have their right to clink glasses and toast to their victory, they must be magnanimous in victory without creating any impression that could suggest being “audacious in rigging,” which the opposition members are crooning at the moment.
Read also: EFCC slams fresh 16-count charges against Yahaya Bello, ex-Kogi Gov
EFCC’s “Jangolova” with Bello
Since April 8, 2024, when the EFCC declared it wanted the former governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, it had carried itself as an agency that was desperate to have the man prosecuted. But the EFCC body language in Bello’s matter seems not to synchronise with its public posturing.
Many Nigerians have begun to suspect that there must be something fishy in the Bello issue. They wonder why the EFCC could not smoke Bello wherever he may be hiding and prosecute him.
The public was told that the former governor stole or laundered N80,246,470,089.88. This is a country where many citizens have died in prison for stealing a fowl, goat, cassava, or a few tubers of yam belonging to other people. It is the same country where one Shadrach Hanson, 28, spent over one year in prison for stealing his mother’s pot.
But the EFCC is playing “Jangolova” with Bello in a matter that involves over N80 billion, an amount of money that can change the face of many Nigerian communities if judiciously deployed.
Since that April, when Bello was declared wanted, the EFCC has behaved as if the man was invincible. A few days ago, the most wanted man “voluntarily” walked into the head office of the Commission in Abuja in a swagger. But instead of arresting and taking him to court for prosecution, he was allowed to walk away. Nigerians froze.
In a face-saving gambit, the EFCC deployed its officers to bombard Bello’s residence, disturbing the peace of the neighbourhood with their braggadocio.
The reasons for allowing Bello to walk away freely were both infantile and castrated. The Commission said that the Chairman rejected the method of Bello’s reporting to the office and that because Bello visited the office with the serving state governor of Kogi and other dignitaries, it was difficult to arrest him.
These explanations did not add up. The popular opinion out there is that even if he had visited the office with all the Kogi indigenes, the EFCC should not have shied away from doing its job.
The explanation and intentions of the EFCC may be right, but they do not appear reasonable in the estimation of many right-thinking members of society.
This seeming abracadabra may have further dampened the hope of many Nigerians for a brighter future.
It is little wonder why Nigerians are all over the place seeking visas to even countries they ordinarily would not have dreamt of going to.
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