Nigeria concluded its general election on the 18th of March 2022. The election has brought some things to life and has made me despise the political elites in the country. Nigerians both young and old came out in large numbers to exercise their franchise and vote for the candidate they prefer to govern them in the next four years.
The presidential election which was held on February 25 saw a lot of flaws on that day. INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) , which had four years to prepare for the election, performed the worst election in the history of the country. The concluding governorship and the house of representative were even more brutal than the presidential election and it has brought me to this conclusion:
INEC WAS COMPROMISED
The Independent National Electoral Commission failed to follow its own guidelines and allowed the ruling party to influence the election in all corners of the country. INEC released its guidelines and regulation on how it will conduct the election and one of them was that the result calculated at the polling units should be uploaded immediately on the BVAS, but that was not the case on the 25th of February.
The INEC agent sent to conduct the election refused to upload the result to the INEC serval. Some said they were given instructions not to upload the result, while some claimed there was no network or they were not given the password to login and upload the result. When the result was finally uploaded to the collection center it was totally different from what was calculated in the polling unit, the result was manipulated and even when the party agents complained to the INEC chairman in the collation center in Abuja he was unwilling to listen to the complaint and continued counting the results and declared a winner around 4 am which has never been done before by INEC.
THE POLICE ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM
The Nigerian police to me were useless in this election when thugs came to snatch the ballot box in some polling unit, the police watched and did nothing when thugs carried out their disruption in the polling unit. There were even videos of some policemen snatching the ballot with thugs, the same people whose job is to safeguard and protect the citizens were involved in such a diabolical act.
Nigerians had to defend and protect their lives and vote from these thugs. It is a shame the police have gone so low just to fill up their pockets and neglect their national duties to the people who also pay their taxes which the government uses to pay their salarieand I also applaud some of the policemen and women who attend to the response when called upon. They did well but the corrupt ones made their effort seem useless at the end.
ONE NIGERIA IS THE BIGGEST LIE IN OUR HISTORY
The amount of tribal war online and on the street was the main headline of this election especially the governorship election in Lagos state. The ruling party supporters (APC) came out early in the morning of the election day and went around to say if you are not voting for their party then dont bother to come outside and vote, and some said anyone from the Igbo tribe is not allowed to vote and should go back to their state, that they should not interfere with the owners of the land on how they want to be governed.
This was not just a mere threat, they implemented it on the polling unit, Igbo people were beaten and injured because they came out to vote and some people who were of their tribe and wanted to vote were not allowed. According to these APC supporters they looked Igbo.
Some people online justify the attack and I ask where in the Nigeria constitution the law says if an individual does not belong to a particular region he/she does not have the right to live or exercise their franchise and all I got was it is not their land they should go back to their land, and some political elites even supported those claims, calling anyone, not from the land an alien, just shows that Nigeria was never one and how backward the country has gone and INEC still announced the result with all the disenfranchised and violence that happen on that day.
CONCLUSION
The country is completely broken and divided, it needs healing and i don't know how it's going to happen because with everything that happens in this election, the term one Nigeria won't be taken seriously and this might cause more problems in the future and as it stands nobody knows where is the country is heading to until the court final decision.
This is where I say goodbye, thanks for stopping by and have a great day.
In as much as I agree with the fact that there were lots of flaws in the electioneering from the part of INEC, I think they are not truly independent. Maybe if they were, they would have done better. Also, the government (of politics) provides the necessary monetary resources for the so-called 'independent' to work. I believe more independence will occur if there is a way by which they will be less dependent on the government for things...else they may still be subjected to the dealings of unscrupulous politicians!
This election period was very disappointing across many fronts. It's sad to see that participating in election is still a risky thing to do in this country. Anyone that steps out of his/her house on election days already knows that they have a high chance of encountering unpleasant things from thugs.
The results generated from the elections created a lot of doubt in the transparency of our electoral commission. It has become fairly obvious that so many agencies are nit trustworthy in Nigeria. INEC is sadly one of those agencies.
It's sad that Nigeria can still perform an election smoothly with out violence, and rigging for the past 25 years and we call ourselves a giant of Africa.
I kind of disagree with this mentality, I feel if we continue thinking this way, it will only make matters worse for the next generation.
One Nigeria is possible, it might not look so now, but it can be so if we choose to keep on fighting relentlessly.
The United States of America wasn't always united, it was once Native America, until certain persons decided to make it great by becoming united, it never looked possible when they started, but if they can achieve it, then so can we.
Since the civil war up till date, Nigeria has never been one, the truth is out there and this election just exposed it, people sold out their neighbors to thugs when the came to find a certain tribe and watch and supported as they got beaten up by this thugs, now tell me how you a expect that individual would look at that same person that thought was the fellow country the same way again.
It's only natural for man to behave wickedly and selfishly to his own brother.
But still we are hopeful a time will come when being a Nigerian will mean something, and will be something to be proud of.