In 2015 I’ll vote like a Scientist

I am a scientist. The kind that is yet to invent anything but nonetheless, I was trained as one and therefore think like one. If you ask me, I think everybody should think like a scientist regardless of whether they are scientists or not because science is the only field that relentlessly marches forward and never turns back. Every generation gets born into a world that is more scientifically advanced than the one their parents were born into. Not so for other fields; religion for example is designed not to change. It can accommodate changes no doubt, but its essence and core values are meant to be static. Art is another example. It goes forwardand backwards. And for the past few centuries it has been going mostly backwards. We have moved from Leonardo and his angelic depiction of the Last Supper, to Picasso and his gibberish paintings that nobody really understands although many like to flatter themselves by pretending they do. What I am trying to say in essence is that if we want to kick-start this country on a relentless forward march to progress, then we have to start thinking, acting, and voting like scientists.
What has science got to do with voting you may ask, well…this is precisely the purpose of this post. To show you how to vote like a scientist and in the process show you how science could help you make better choices. I’ll do that by telling you what I (a scientist determined to vote like one) will be considering on Election Day in 2015.
* * *
The day will be hot and sunny like other election days before it. I’d wake up very early convinced that after that day, Nigeria will not be the same again. I’ll have a light breakfast and then go to do a preliminary check on my polling station to see if the INEC people have arrived (that would be around 9:30 AM). I’ll return home shortly after to bathe and do other stuff until about 11:30 AM when I’ll leave home again, this time to cast my vote. But before then, knowing the way my mind works, a thousand thoughts would’ve flippedpast. What follows are some of those thoughts that would occupy my mind…

Newton’s Law:This is one of the first things they teach in Physics and it’ll be one of the first things I will be considering on Election Day. The law states that a moving body continues in a state of motion until it is compelled by an external force. In other words, if a ball is rolled across a floor, it will continue to roll in the same direction until a force aside from the one driving it, acts on it (like a wall, or the wind, or the friction between the ball and the floor).
Take Nigeria to be that ball and the PDP the force currently driving it. It is no news that things have progressively worsened in the last 14 years that the PDP has been running this country. We are literally on the brink of self-destruction. We are staring Somalia squarely in the face. So according to Newton’s Law, the only thing that can stop our steady march to perdition is when a force different from the one currently driving this country acts. This I think, answers those who think salvation can still be gotten through the PDP by simply replacing Goodluckwith Lamido, or Tambuwal, or whoever. The change, like the force that stops a rolling ball, must come from outside of the PDP. The PDP simply has too many vested interests that are too deeply entrenched in its soul to render any leader (no matter how good his intentions) ineffective.
The Uncertainty Principle:This is from the realm of particle physics (quantum theory). Without going into any complicated details, the principle simply talks about how when you know one property of a sub-atomic particle, its other properties become uncertain. If you know its mass then its velocity is uncertain; if you know its velocity, its mass is uncertain. I will be applying this principle thoroughly on election day and I likeit a lot because it deals a knockout punch to those annoying and patronizing politicians who cannot put up a simple poster or billboard without adding Muhammadu Buhari’s face.
According to the Uncertainty Principle, if we know one, then the other is automatically uncertain (questionable). Since we know Buhari to be a man of integrity (why else is his image used so indiscriminately), it automatically means the other face on the poster is of questionable integrity. Since we know Buhari to be upright, then the uprightness of the other fellow must be uncertain. The fact that the guy needs to hide behind someone else’s integrity, is proof that he lacks integrity of his own. For that alone I will not vote for such politicians...

Now apply this to PDP vs the Opposition: by voting the PDP we get more of what we have been getting since 1999 (corruption, insecurity, fuel price hike, collapsing infrastructure, etc.) i.e. you don’t stand to gain anything. Voting the opposition on the other hand will mean either they turn out to be like the PDP in which case we lose nothing or they will be different in which case we gain something. It is that possibility, that teeny tiny little chance that they would turn out to be different that makes voting them a more sensible option than voting back the PDP.
* * *
So on Election Day in 2015, after collecting my ballot papers from the INEC guys, I’ll make my way to the polling booth and as I stand in front of the ballot box, I’ll think deeply about every single vote – if it doesn’t make scientific sense, then it’s not worth casting.

On that day, I will vote like a GENETCIST.

The child of a rogue can never be different from the father, as characters are inherited from parents. I will never vote for any child of a political rogue.