The just concluded Ekiti governorship election has brought to the fore the absurdities in the country’s socio-political and economic arrangement whereby many Nigerian voters will sell their conscience for a mere pot of porridge.
The fear is that if what happened in Ekiti State where majority of voters in that state sold their voting right to the highest bidder is not checked, it might snowball into the forthcoming general elections scheduled for 2015. And Nigeria will be doomed.
Nigeria is a country of extremity where less than one percent of the population who perch on top of the political and economic ladder, and who swim in the ocean of plenty and opulence, equally control the destiny of the entire country, while the remaining ninety-nine percent who amass at the base, and who scratch the surface of the earth trying to make ends meet, are manipulated at will.
In Nigeria today, it is either you belong to this extremely super rich who corner the country’s resources and who decide what happens, or you belong to the extremely poor who are the victims of the political and economic manipulations by the former. While the extremely super rich will continue to get richer, the extremely poor will continue to get poorer.
Since the easiest way to make it in Nigeria, today will be through politics, a lot of politicians have been killing themselves and doing everything possible to get to one political position or the other.
When the politicians will be campaigning for votes, they will be so humble and down to earth. They will promise the people heaven on earth. But as soon as they climb up the political ladder, they will forget those promises they had made. Worse still, they will introduce harsh economic measures that will further pauperize the people, while they themselves will be further enriched.
When the people will begin to complain about the hardships or the difficulties they face, nobody will listen to them. To console them, the politicians will tell the people that they should go to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and collect their PVCs, that is, their Permanent Voters Cards, with which they will vote out an unjust government.
The people will think that the politicians are on their side. They will readily obey the directive and begin to trace their way to the INEC office to register as voters for the election. Armed with their PVCs, they will steady themselves to cast their votes for the candidates of their choice.
Election time comes, the politicians will come with bagful of money and given to share N4,000 or N5,000 to each of the voters to l vote for them. The people will collect the money because they are hungry and begin to vote against their conscience. When you begin to look at it, it means that the voter has been reduced to N1,000 a year for each of the four years the politician will be in office.
In the past, it used to be “money for hand, back for ground“, but now it is “back for ground, money for hand“. You must openly show who you voted for, before they will give you money. That’s how bad the situation is!
Ironically, this is happening in a regime that claims to be fighting corruption, which then means that the so-called war against corruption is a farce, or at best, a media propaganda.
If the APC government is serious about fighting corruption, why is it that nobody has been arrested in Ekiti for inducing voters to vote one candidate or the other? As a matter of fact, it was the APC that was alleged to have raised the stake high, to woo voters to its side, which forced other political parties to join the bandwagon.
