Where Are We Heading To In Nigerian Politics?

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I still don’t understand in this day and age why we cannot have all our elections on the same day and get it over with and done. No, we choose to have the presidential election and the federal house one day and two weeks after we have the governorship and state houses of assembly.

The problems that arise are too numerous, first the waste of money, so much money that could have been spent on health care and housing went into organizing elections. Time that would have been used to develop the country is used to organize elections and in some states they declared public holidays on working days which meant the government itself and other companies were losing money for staying at home. In many parts of the country, elections were monetized, the highest bidders won.

The courts are now having a filled day because many disenfranchised politicians are going to court because they lost, while some are sore losers other are genuinely going after their mandate in a peaceful and legal manner. And that is very important, peaceful and legal manner, a lot of violence and assassinations occurred during the elections, each party pointing accusing fingers at the other party. There are two major political parties slugging it out and each is not letting any chances go by. We all saw what happened and are surprised parties have the face to come out and accuse each other of rigging. My understanding of what is playing out is if I rigged in a particular area and won the elections at that area it is ok, but if my opponent rigged in another area and won me then the election is rigged. Lol.

The elections was free and fair in many places, but in some other areas the politicians did all they could to truncate the elections by paying thugs to snatch ballot boxes in areas where they saw they were losing and in some areas they went as far as kidnapping the electoral officers or ven killing them.

We still have a long way to go, we have more than 70 political parties but only a handful feature candidates for the election, we hear they only registered so they could collect settlement and step aside for another party. That is also a problem for the electoral body, imagine, how you create space for more than 70 political parties and during collation every political party has to be counted.

The best solution would have been to actually digitalize the election, not the way it is now with card riders which most times don’t work. But rather in a manner that once a vote is casted it goes directly to the main collation house at the center. This will surely eliminate the issue of ballot snatching, kidnaping of electoral officers and other abnormalities could be avoided. Is this possible? Yes it is, we see that our University entrance exams has been digitalized but many politicians know that is this is done, they will lose at the elections so they do everything they can to make it unworkable.

A lot of lives were lost in the last elections and if care is not taken more lives may still be lost during the re-run elections. But all this can be avoided if we take the right decisions. Elections are not a do or die affair, if you say you want to serve then you must be a humble person and accept when people don’t want you, respect their wish, if you hang around for a sometime they might give you a chance.

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