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