A Tale of Leaking Umbrellas And Knee-Jerk PDP Hatred by BANKS on APRIL 10, 2011·  

Everybody hates PDP…well, almost everybody, it’s looking like they scored some votes in yesterday’s polls. But it sure wasn’t anything like massacre of 2007 , hardly. We even heard that one PDP aspirant, who came with his four wives in tow, collapsed at his polling unit after learning that he got only three votes! Boy, I bet he didn’t know what hit him. And to make things worse, live election reporting via twitter and ReVoDa wielding Nigerians have made good ol’ rigging an unsavory option.

Now I don’t know if the PDP saw this coming, but people (especially on twitter) were totally loving the fact that the mega party was getting killed. For the first time we might be looking at the beginnings of the transition from a civilian government to a democratic government, right? Er…well, it depends. For all we know, the other parties are just as bad as the PDP. ACN you say? Those guys are mostly riding on Fashola’s goodwill, maybe a little of Ribadu’s too, a lot of them have the same prebendal mindset that is the hallmark of Nigerian politics. CPC? The Buhari-Bakare alliance is probably the only reason why they’re even in the race. While it appears that the opposition are enjoying massive voter support, I can’t help wondering if people aren’t just voting AGAINST PDP instead of FOR ACN, CPC et al.

There’s a huge difference. In Naija, politicians change parties faster than a model can change her clothes, and the ACN candidate you’re blindly voting for now might have been with the PDP in January. So if your voting for other parties is according to @Noah69, knee-jerk PDP hate, then the effort might be wasted. Consider former PDP godson, Chris Ngige, who on the ACN platform defeated Dora Akunyili. And we’re also hearing that the controversial Chuma Nzeribe has been returned Senator in Anambra on APGA’s platform, after leaving where else? PDP no less. The January primaries saw an unprecedented level of party defection, mostly of PDP party stalwarts to the ACN and CPC, and it is my opinion that in the build up to the elections, our vaunted PDP Killers have had dealings with many devils, and with short spoons too. I might not have concrete data, but I don’t think it would be totally out of order to assume that a number of these devils have made it to the polls under the auspices of a party other than the PDP. In the end it’s not really about the party you vote for as much as it is about the person. Because the average Naija politician has no ideological scruples, and his party affiliation is for sale, he’ll go with whatever party he thinks will give him the best shot at power.
I support Fashola with all of my heart, but that’s as far as it goes, all other ACN candidates go under the microscope. I think it’s a lazy person that’ll evaluate candidates solely on whether they’re PDP or not. I also think it’s a narrow-minded person that evaluates an election’s credibility based on who won – If ACN/CPC win it’s fine…but if PDP wins, it’s rigged, let’s cry foul? That can’t be right. I think its sad that the anti-PDP bias is strong enough that some tweeps are even refusing to report PDP wins. I shake my head. Personally, I’m glad that the ‘umblerras’ are leaking, but I think we need to check that reflexive anti-PDP instinct that makes you don the political blinkers so all you can see is the party, not the personality of the candidate. We’re better than that. And the fact that the Nigerian predicament has a lot to do with the PDP is not a good enough reason to chuck objectivity, informed reasoning and good sense out the window. There are many rascals out there…and they’re not necessarily not with the PDP. Is your political stance discerning? Is it objective? Or is it just knee-jerk PDP hate?

Source:www.lordbanks.com/blog

Lovely article. Brilliant!