The Ekiti Re- Run - We Need Electoral Reform Now
I am still disgusted when people isolate our electoral problem at Ekiti to ONLY Ido-Osi out of cheer ignorance of what electoral process is all about. We need to start saying the truth and living it without this AC or PDP connotation, else we sure have many surprises ahead. How can anyone justify any single genuine vote coming out of the present day Nigeria electoral system? How can AC or PDP justify the votes from Isan or Ifaki respectively? How many eligible voters reside at Isan, even Ado-Ekiti.
Praising the referee when your foul was not detected, but castigating same referee when he ruled that you are not a winner in this game is not only wicked but fraudulent. Anyone with knowledge of Nigeria voting history should know that electoral fraud in Nigeria starts during voter’s registration, when all kinds of information are feed into INEC information sheet without any genuine identification of the registrant or to be voters. Politicians and community leaders take advantage of this faulty process to perpetrate electoral fraud way in advance before Election Day. This is one big step we are missing as a nation.
If I am selected as part of the jury (I don’t know if we have such a system in Nigeria) on the election rerun tribunal, I will not only dissect the voter’s cards, but the people that actually did vote must be located with valid address. And my scope will creep across all the LGA and not just IDO-OSI dated back to 2007 election and that is HOW best to clean the system.
Let start by verifying the actual voters, location and address dated back to 2007 election. May be with that we can get somewhere. All this noise about someone stole a mandate, no longer fly with people can think straight. Election rigging dated back to the day we started voting in Nigeria and it won’t end until have a better process and system in place. We can no just be crying after every election when we all know well in advance that, we don’t have the structure in place.
If anyone have the plan of going into politics in future, you better start asking for the reform of the electoral system NOW, before the mandate become “stolen”. To me unless there is something someone is not telling us, what we have witnessed so far in Ekiti is all about two individuals that want to become the governor by all means possible regardless. And this outright deception and hoodwinks must stop.
IF you must fight, fight for all humanity and not just yourself. That is the kind of fight Martin Luther fought. Martin Luther struggle was not about individual, but the system. Fight against the electoral system that produced 100% for AC in Lagos during the last LGA without any vote for other parties considering the cosmopolitan demography of Lagos state. Fight against the system that said only anointed/selected /handpicked candidate can win primary election. Fight against system that made PDP the only dominating party in Nigeria.
If Martin Luther was about himself, he would have failed like others before him. And he said “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity” Martin Luther King Jr. This is kind of struggle we should be all be ready to start.
Anthony Ayodele lives in Denver, Colorado, USA. An executive member, Ekiti in Diaspora for Economic and Social Development (EDESC) www.edesc.org
|
# 
Your Comments
Please make The Square an enjoyable experience for everyone by refraining from gratuitous ad-hominem contributions, defamatory comments and off-topic posting. Such posts will be removed.