• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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BusinessDay

‘Electorate are resenting the process,  not voter apathy’

‘Electorate are resenting the process,  not voter apathy’
Contrary to what many see as voter apathy that explains the abysmally low voter turnout  in virtually every polling unit in Egbe community, Alimisho local government area of Lagos,  Abiodun Abdulateef says it is a case of the electorate resenting the electoral process. 
“It does not make sense going out there to waste your time and energy in a flawed process in which the results are predetermined”, Abdulateef told BusinessDay.
He recalled that the experience of February 23 is still too fresh in the mind for anybody to leave the comfort of his home for “an exercise that has no meaning”.
Anayo Okoli, a business man, shares this view,  adding that the threat on some people to stay away from the election “is also responsible for what you see out there”. “It is there thing; let them do it the way they want it”, he said in anger.
The governorship and state assembly elections in this area looked just  like a child’s  play.
In some of the  polling units visited, there was no single voter. INEC officials were busy ‘gusting’. The situation  was made worse by malfunctioning  card readers.
It was either the card readers were not capturing and showing voters data, or it was not working at all and INEC officials  said they were instructed  not to do mannual voting.
The implication of what happened in this part of town is that, in the next four years, they will have no government presence.
But a resident who refused to disclose his name was particularly angry,  saying,  “after voting and electing them,  they will only remember  and develop Ikoyi and Ikeja. Is this area not good for development?” he asked rhetorically.
It is a dangerous development  that, incrementally,  Nigeria is degenerating in every aspect of its development as a nation.  It appears to be in its worst in electoral process.  Every electoral cycle is worse than the one before it.
The February  23 presidential and National  Assembly elections,  as bad and bloody as they were,  are already better than March 9 governorship  and state assembly elections.
Similarly, 2015 elections were better than what we have seen in 2019, meaning that in the last four years,  the country’s democratic  journey  has been retrogressive rather than progressive.
Correspondingly, voter apathy has nosedived over the years. Available record shows that in 2007, voter turnout  was 67%; in 2011,it was 56% while in 2015, it come down forcefully  to 43%. It was estimated  that the turnout in the February  23 presidential  election was below 40 percent.
This is only a reflection  of a nation whose development is on reverse gear.
Chuka Uroko