Kene Obiezu
Nigeria`s ruling party the All Progressives Congress (APC) recently reasserted its superiority in Ekiti State by snatching the gold medal in the just concluded Governorship elections in Ekiti State, handing some timely defeats in the process to the People Democratic Party (PDP) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). But as usual, the ubiquity of the ballot box in the state nicely dovetailed with the ubiquity of those who buy and sell votes.
Called to be independent but created to be dependent, at the behest of a manipulative presidency, the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC soon became an accomplice in some of the worst electoral heists ever known in the country. It took series of judicial interventions for some of the treachery midwifed by the Commission to be reversed. The passage of years has not entirely brought with it a smooth sailing. But at least, those days when bullets flew freely as ballot boxes were snatched have largely been consigned to a tasteless past.
On November 6, 2021, electoral battle lines were drawn in Anambra, and as usual, the merchants of electoral death, those who buy and sell votes, were drawn to the state like vultures to the dead.
Business was obviously going nicely until difficult customers showed up in the form of some angry women voters.
A video quickly went viral of how the women turned down the sum of five thousand naira offered for their votes. Muted celebrations erupted across the country. If the vote merchants were shamed in Anambra, they obviously went away vowing to improve their trade. And improve they did.
In the elections in Ekiti State which were keenly contested by the APC, the SDP and the PDP, vote buying was said to be rife as the contest came down to a deathly struggle between the present and the future, between private pockets and the ballot box.
Ahead of the 2023 general elections, Nigerians must look closely at themselves in the mirror of the country`s democratic processes. Specifically, Nigerians must ask themselves what they want out of the box of chocolates that the ballot box offers.
That Nigeria`s corridors of power are today crawling with thieves and truants largely has something to do with the fact that those who should have kept vigil at the gates were lulled to sleep by the lure of filthy lucre. In a country where people daily sip the dregs of despair, depression and desperation largely because a lot of things are not working the way they should due to bad leadership, it only makes eminent sense that the bleeding is stanched from the source.
Until this is done, those who wail will continue to be ignored by the wolves who commandeer the public weal.
Obiezu wrote via keneobiezu@gmail.com
