Now that the elections are over, I think the time is now to turn our attention to the many instances that characterized the process and are deserving of nothing, if not our outmost dissatisfaction.

The civilization available to this generation ought to have provided us with an opportunity to make progress in leaps and bounds not moving at snail's pace and expect that everything falls into place with time.

One of the ridiculous provision of an election in this century is that, it's expected that one is only eligible to vote at their various Wards of registration. For real? So, for every election period, I should save up to travel all the way to wherever I had registered to be able to vote. It doesn't matter if I got transferred, or, I had to handle an emergency outside my state of residence an eve to the election, I have to stay put, else, I'm disenfranchised. It just doesn't make any bit of sense to me.

For God's sake, with just a punch or two on a keyboard, one should be able to change his polling unit to wherever he's residing rather than apply for a location change thats not likely to remain same in the next 4 years.

This isnt even me advocating for electronic voting; for, I know thats rocket science considering the present state of things in the nation.


Let's beam our lights on certain scenarios that colored the just concluded elections. Elections were postponed hours just before the polling time, and those who travelled just for the purpose of the elections appeared to have engaged on a futile expedition


Some political parties were providing buses to convey people to their respective polling units that were located far away from their present residence. This is a clear case of voter inducement. And if truth is to be told, one political party or the other must have benefited from this.

I remember watching the press conference involving the INEC chairman and his officials also present were the party chairmen of all political parties participating in the elections. A question was thrown to the INEC chairman about how much the election postponement is costing the commission and his response was: we are not complaining and that was all there is to it; end of discussion.

What this means is that, if he's not complaining, no one else has the right to, not even the taxpayers.

If I agree not to complain about the commissions financial adventures, I definitely have the right to complain about how my vote won't be counted even after expending money and resources just for the purpose of exercising my rightful franchise. My votes can still get cancelled, after all, citing violence, incomplete supply of election materials by INEC officials to the polling units or any other reasons, my vote and that of others can be counted for nothing.

Most of these things like ballot snatching have always been related to election conducts in Nigeria, and to nip this in the bud, threatening potential offenders, providing judicial punishments for the crime might not be enough as they are only but a reactive measure rather than a preventive one.

With every recurring problem is an opportunity to plan ahead of time before you're eventually encountered by it. Can't there be permanent structures put in place to ensure that the issue of ballot snatching is tackled once and for all?


Now that my votes have failed to count, you're spending extra to rerun the elections, I have to go back to work, transport myself back to vote and hope that this time, my vote is counted.

Why should election cost us this much? What is it adding to the country's GDP, should it be something we should be done with in as little time as possible? There are different issues in need of our funds than elections that's comes up once in 4 years that only promises to gulp up a significant amount of the nations resources and by the end of the day, the majority of the populace are left dissatisfied with the entire process.




Source: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2293114467415710&id=100001515370047

...too voluminous