The Big One has come and gone as Nigerians have elected their president for the next four years. No surprises about the outcome though, even though I pretty much wanted a Buhari as president instead of Jonathan. It’s time now for everyone to rally round the new president and hope for the best for all through his tenure.
I am however, a bit taken aback at how once again, we failed to match word with action with regards to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which, before the election, many could not resist describing as the ultimate villain in the sour direction our socio-economic fortunes have taken since the return to civil rule in 1999. Note that I said “a bit taken aback.” That is because I recognize that the ballot paper by itself alone does not bring about change where there is a clear will by people or groups with the right machinery to ensure that change doesn’t happen. The other point is that even when many people kept praising the so-called revolutionary thinking and new-found political awareness of the Nigerian youth, I mostly saw many youth who just wanted to be heard to be saying something, as against youths who truly wanted to be the change agent or knew the path to walk the talk. So, no mighty surprises there.
That noted, it has still been a discomforting experience to see people, many of them young people who had been chanting mantra about change on social networking fora and other fora, develop cold feet when it was time to walk the talk. It has been irritating to see many of the people who one expected to know better, resort to primordial, almost Masonic sentiments when casting their ballot or discussing the politician and his political structure. But then, therein lies the beauty of democracy.
Nevertheless, so far, this has been a far better-conducted, less manipulated election than many of us in our lifetime can point to. It may not have panned out the way proper elections elsewhere do, but for now, we will take this one-eyed leader considering that we have only had blind ones for so long in the past. So, some kudos to Attahiru Jega and his people at INEC. Kudos also to many Nigerians, even President Goodluck Jonathan, for their personal and collective conduct so far. I hope this ‘relative sanity’ carries through to the governorship and state assembly elections next week. If it does, we would be wasting less money and other resources to conduct rerun elections or run around the corridors of court rooms unlike what has obtained since 2007.
There have been vital lessons for all to learn and my major fear is whether, come next general elections in 2015, we would have imbibed enough positive lessons from what has happened in 2011 to entrench even more laudable elections. With all the praise and knocks I can muster for the season, below are a few points I have noted, some of which are sure to stand in the way of better organized polls and more acceptable results, which ought to culminate in a better, more balanced, more elevated, more forward-thinking, a better internationally-regarded Nigeria in future.
1. The ACN is content with remaining merely a regional party.
2. The PDP will continue to rule at the centre at least, for as long as the eye can see unless some miracle happens to the ranks of the other parties.
3. In fact, all the parties self na like Coca Cola and Pepsi.
4. Now that Buhari has had his final(?) shot at the presidency, cue the mad defection from the CPC and its gradual disintegration and demise as a party.
5. The much-vaunted political sagacity *phew* and sophistication of the South West in relation to the other regions of the country seems to be pregnant with many commas and question marks. (Now, you can slaughter me for this one.)
6. The absence of any form of violence alone does not necessarily beatify elections as free or fair.
7. I don’t want to go any farther back in time, so I will score only these umpires: Abel Guobadia – 42%; Maurice Iwu – 30%; Attahiru Jega – 78%.
8. Majority of voters (educated and otherwise) still do not know what voting means or what power the ballot has side-by-side their fortunes and the future of their children and the country in general.
God bless Nigeria.
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