31st March, 2011
All is set for the National Assembly election on Saturday 2 April. Though events preceding the election are far from savoury, Nigerians appear to be enthusiastic and fully prepared for the polls whose outcome, many believe, is very critical to the nation’s peace and stability in the immediate future.
If what the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega and the Inspector-General of Police, Hafiz Ringim, have been saying is to be used as a barometer to measure the readiness of INEC and the police, then Nigerians should expect free, fair and credible polls.
However, we have heard such assurances in the past on the eve of elections and at the end of the day, the people were utterly disappointed due to the scale of malpractices and violence that marred the exercise. The elections conducted in 2007 by Prof. Maurice Iwu’s INEC is a case in point and it would go down in the nation’s history as one of the worst in terms of the scale of rigging and other malpractices that characterised it.
We expect this year’s elections to be better than the previous ones, though events preceding the polls appear to point to the contrary. Or how do we explain the despicable schemes some politicians, especially those who are so unpopular that they can’t even win in their own wards, are plotting to win the election? The desperation to win is said to have driven some politicians to buy voters’ cards for N3,000 each. A senator in the Southeast is said to be behind this illegal act through which he plans to manipulate the result of the National Assembly election in his favour.
Also, a party in the Southwest has been accused of buying up voters’ cards with a view to destroying them in order to undermine the chances of another leading party in a state that has been its traditional stronghold since 1999.
An illegal arms factory was discovered recently in Enugu by men of the State Security Service, SSS. The guns produced there could have ended up in the hands of political thugs or robbers. This week alone, 19 suspects were arrested for being in possession of election materials in Osun State, while 25,000 fake INEC forms were discovered in Aba, Abia State. There are reports that some politicians are sewing army uniforms for their thugs. This comes on the heels of reports that soldiers will be deployed for election duty.
From all indications, these lawless acts don’t appear to have diminished the desire of Nigerians to choose the right leaders that would represent them in the next four years. The awareness created about the polls on social networking sites like facebook and twitter on the internet has engendered so much interest in youths that the usual apathy towards our elections has given way. The youths are even campaigning for candidates of their choice by sending text messages to people.
This year’s elections may witness a lot of upsets as leading parties and their candidates may lose their traditional strongholds if the elections are free, fair and devoid of the usual manipulation by politicians who want to win at all costs.
We implore Nigerians to go out and take their destiny in their own hands. Their vote is their weapon. They must not toy with it. It’s time to throw out politicians that have failed to improve their lot all these years. They should vote for the right people, not leaders with tainted antecedents or those that would further impoverish them for four years.