An African proverb says, “A wrong step by a leader is a warning to the followers”
A toad does not run in the day time for nothing and it is exactly what Nigerians expected happened in the 2019 general elections.
For INEC to conduct much better elections, the president and the senates agreed and approved the tune of N234.5 billion for the 2019 elections.
Professor Mahmud Yakubu, the INEC boss had not only boast his readiness for the 2019 election but designed the dates of almost 50 years elections to come.
But, it started indicating warning alarm to Nigerians that INEC had not prepared to conduct the four years preparatory elections of February, 2019.
But, as it is nasty for a bird to messes its own nest, Prof. Yakubu unexpected changed his dance to tango and announced the postponement of the presidential election supposed to take place on the 6th February, 2019 to the next week in few hours to the election time.
Despite the complain of logistics reasons that caused the postponement of the presidential election, the conducted presidential election on the 12th February, 2019 was characterized by delay before starting the elections in almost parts of the country, and the INEC haphazard replacement of their ad-hoc staff resulted to inefficiency and irregularities in the elections.
The card readers in many states developed problems that paved ways for over voting and sabotaged the laws of election’s conducts.
As the saying goes that a boat cannot goes well when each rows hits another but the winner of the election was declared.
Though, the gods are not to blame as Chinua Achibe prescribed but a zebra cannot do away with its stripes as INEC had already starved a knife on its own chest.
As the Igbo witty adage says, “A lizard that falls from iroko tree praise himself even if no one does and I must commend INEC for one thing.
INEC has done commendable effort in the Gubernatorial and States Assembly Elections in delivering the electioneering materials in time to the respective polling units, nationwide.
But as Guinean says, around a flower there are many insects. The 9th March, 2019 elections are marred with irregularities despite the Automated Card Reader employed to sanitize Nigerian elections.
Section 153 of the Electoral Act, 2010 ( as amended) gives power to INEC to issue regulations ,
guidelines or manuals for the conduct of any elections in the country .
And, by the power of INEC, it stated that any election conducted without the Card Reader is null and void but despite the supervisors, the observers, party agents and the INEC officers all around, many elections were conducted without the available card readers.
Now all the blames are on the INEC boss as the Ugandan says, ” A weak ruler puts a load on his head” but a “clever bird builds its nest with other birds’ feathers” and Mahmud Yakubu failed with his team in his promises of conducting free and smooth elections for the people.
On the 13th November, 2018 Professor Mahmud Yakubu promised Nigerians that the “2019 election will be free, fair and better than the 2015 elections.”
As there is no wormwood that comes into flowers that does not wither and that is what happened in the past elections because the history of our past elections nightmare replicated itself.
A man can only knows his progress in life better when he never forgets his yesterday and the analysis of INEC of yesterday and of today are two feathers that flocked together and to sincerely compare the previous elections of 2015 and 2019 the analogy is clearly different, that the elections of 2015 were better than of 2019 elections.
The results collation of the 2019 election is totally slow and delay is dangerous as people always warn.
People are suspicious that the new mantra of ‘ inconclusive election’ is a technical name to favour the ruling government as suspected in the 2018 gubernatorial election of Ekiti.
INEC is an independent electoral body that has the ultimate power of the citizens of the nation and the security agents during elections to toe the line of its laws during elections but people are of the
opinions that the ruling party is still using its power to fine tune the direction of the body.
As inconclusive order halts the victory of PDP leading states of Plateau, Kano, Bauchi, Adamawa, Sokoto, Imo and Benue Nigerians are smelling rat that something fishy is about to happen.
The Kenyan people preaches that a leader that does not take advice is not a leader and a word is enough for the wise because an egg never sits on a hen.
The glorified image of Nigeria is now in the hands of INEC and any mistake to overhaul the credit of the elections before the eyes of the world will nullify the country’s struggle in its fight of corruption.
Meanwhile, With the half baked election that was served by INEC, I blame no one that refer his case to court to demand for justice.
Auwal Ahmed Ibrahim
The Secretary General, Youths Salvation, Kaduna
[email protected]