Though the bandit who takes people hostage for ransom and plies that trade with gun remains condemned, he is a lesser evil, when weighed on the same scale of values, than the politician in Nigeria who, from experiential evidence, has proved to be the real kidnapper in the country.
The politician does not use gun and so he does not kill; he does not demand for ransom as the bandit does. But the politician kills destinies; he ambushes the future especially of the young people. He dashes hope and, in a brazen manner, truncates processes and upturns rules and order to his advantage.
For four whole years, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was busy, or so it seemed, preparing for a general election to elect a new president, new governors and new national and states assembly members.
INEC assured Nigerians it had done excellent work, infusing modern technology that would make the electoral process not only seamless, but also incorruptible by which it meant the politician would be kept at bay while the process took its course leading to a free, fair and credible election never seen in the history of Nigeria’s democratic journey and electoral processes.
But the Nigerian politician was also at work, evidently, working harder and seeing farther than both the electors and the electoral umpire. He was relentless and brutal in his planning. He knew the result even before the election was conducted and, by his nature, he knew the risks and how to derisk the risks.
That explains how, the INEC technology on which assurance was given less than 24 hours to the elections proper by Mamoud Yakubu, the INEC chairman, collapsed almost irredeemably just a few hours into the Presidential and National Assembly elections on February 25.
Pronto, the politician went to work and so, between the polling units and the collation centres, he was able to ambush the hope of many Nigerians who saw in the ballot paper which they dropped into the ballot box not as a piece of perishable paper but as hope, their future and that of their children.
Many of them, especially young Nigerians, who are lamenting today are doing so because their votes, representing their future, are not part of the result they have heard today. Theirs were the votes that were ambushed by the politician who manipulated, falsified or completely destroyed them.
Many Nigerians have reacted to this rape on democracy that gave the politician undue advantage over the rest of them estimated at 200 million. Some have paid the supreme sacrifice like the 19-year old boy in Plateau State who decided “to end it now rather than live in a hell called Nigeria” because his candidate, Peter Obi of Labour Party, did not win. He took his own life!
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An unconfirmed report has it that before the frustrated young man died, he left a note saying, “no hope for Nigeria for the next 20 years after Obi lost the election; I rather end it here than live in a hell called Nigeria.” So far, this is the major victim of the unwholesome activities of the Nigerian politician.
Another young Nigerian felt so frustrated that he decided to curse the Nigerian politician who he described, in between sobs, as “enemy of democracy in this country.” To demonstrate his inner pain and hopelessness he sees ahead, the young man took out his permanent voter’s card (PVC) and cut it into shreds with a pair of scissors. According to him, INEC who he sees as an accomplice in dashing his hope and killing his future should go ahead and appoint the state governors from the list already submitted to him by the politician.
“They murdered sleep; they killed democracy in this country; it will never be well with all those who participated in this evil; that’s your voter’s card; I don’t need it again,” he said as he threw away the shreds of his PVC
A middle-age man was also full of lamentation as he painted the hideous and invidious picture and activities of the Nigerian politician who, according to him, has reset destinies, dashed his hope and ambushed his future and those of other young Nigerians between his polling unit and the collation centre.
According to the young man who simply introduced himself as ‘an Obidient’ meaning that he supports the candidacy of Peter Obi and was a member of the Obidient Movement, he had a lot of meaning and hope attached to the piece of paper he dropped inside the ballot box on February 25 which was why he endured hunger, thirst, rain, sunshine and log hours of waiting to see that his vote counted.
“I voted for Peter Obi,” he said, adding, “but I did not join that queue for Peter Obi; I did not smuggle anybody into the polling booth for Peter Obi; I did not brandish a knife or threaten anybody for Peter Obi; I did not snatch, stuff or break a ballot box for Peter Obi; I did not bribe anybody; I did not steal or kill anybody for Obi.
“What I did for my candidate was to stand in line from 8 o’clock in the morning on Saturday till 8am on Sunday. When the sun got too hot and I thought of going back home, I remembered the gunshot on the train going from Abuja to Kaduna.
“When the heaven opened and poured out rains and I thought of taking shelter, I remembered the students who were stuck at home for eight months because of ASUU strike and I stood, enduring the hunger and my worry about the children I left at home,” he said.
Continuing, he said, ”I stood there because what I wanted to give my candidate; what I ended up putting in that box was not an ordinary piece of paper but my hope, my country where children would not be so disillusioned by the actions of their own parents or their own leaders that they will be willing to cross the Sahara Desert, taking all the risk, just to escape. That hope was what I put in the ballot box and that was what my presiding officer refused to upload.”
He recalled standing on the queue with a young boy, a first time voter, who stood with them all through the night counting those votes. The boy, he said, saw his future in the votes and was pregnant with hope.
“But somewhere, between our polling unit and the collation centre, that boy’s future was ambushed by the politician who used biro to cross out that boy’s destiny and has written a new word—hopeless.
It is a terrible thing when a Nigerian is kidnapped on his way to Zamfara or Makurdi or Enugu. But it is infinitely worse when Nigeria itself is kidnapped on its way to the collation centre,” he lamented.
For this young Nigerian, it is not Nigeria as a country that has its foot on citizens’ neck; it is not the Fulani or Igbo; the Christian or Muslim that have wrapped their fingers around their neck and squeezing life out of them. He added that it is not Yoruba people that don’t give a damn whether citizens have houses to live in or jobs to do; it is not the north or south that has failed to fix their roads or provide other basic things of life for them.
“It is that politician who is willing to steal to stay in office that is the enemy. Just like the serially abused, many of you have fallen in love with your kidnapper; you admire the swagger of those who steal destiny; you admire the confidence of those who use your future to fuel their cars,” he fumed.
The Nigerian politician has done the unimaginable in uncountable numbers and to think of the impunity and arrogance that follow deadens our collective psyche as a people. After inflicting pain on the rest of Nigerians, the politician goes about gloating with ‘victory’ song.
That is why it is only in Nigeria that somebody thinks that “for democracy to flourish, only those who can endure the pain of rigging, sorry defeat, should participate in an election.”
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