If you are talking about results from a population of 2.3 million, with over 1.6 million eligible voters and 700,000 plus registered voters from which meagre figures totalling just about half of registered voters voted, as victories and loses, then you can have a field day celebrating or crying. But if you are really recognising the depressing reality and hopelessness of Nigeria under its current democracy, if we can use that term, then the results of the Ekiti election are a cause of consolidated grief and reason to ask – when will the people stand up?
I can amass 200,000 people in Ekiti tomorrow, not just to vote for me, but even for a simple jamboree. In this light, both Kayode Fayemi and Ayodele Fayose lost woefully. Our Ekiti election results are a disgrace and sham of democracy. But frankly, people like us never expect much better from European political democracy as adopted by Africans. It hardly ever fails to produce such meaningless results. Two hundred thousand votes to represent a “choice” of the people? The mere thought is criminal. A democratic institution that attempts to present people’s leaders based on such five per cent fraction of the population having participated in choosing should have its offices sealed off permanently with workers inside.
The results from Ekiti did prove however that the people rejected Governor Fayemi, but also rejected ex-governor and now Governor-elect Fayose. They did not bother to leave their houses for neither. Sadly, the highly intelligent people of Ekiti did not see anyone worthy in the list; had next to no fate in the democratic process – not wishing to go cast votes that will be discarded without being counted or to be intimidated by the security agencies, double the number deployed to terrorised Borno State, and would simply not be bothered for any reason to participate. They stayed home and watched the World Cup… or rather, not having “light,” they stayed home and sat outside in the shade, trying to cool off and wondering when Nigeria would wake up; when true revolutionaries will come and take advantage of any system to transform Nigeria. They sat and thought about how two groups of not too smart people were mostly voting, not for, but voting against the other person. Really and truly, many who voted for Fayose were voting not for Fayose, but against Fayemi for their grievances with him and his party; and likewise, many who voted for Fayemi were doing the same against Fayose. The rest were exercising their rights to scoops of rice.
Until and unless the All Progressives Congress gets off its high horse and invites revolutionaries and new generation youths into and to control its party, its victory at all levels other than the Presidency – where humiliating victory has long been predicted– will not be guaranteed and the Peoples Democratic Party will simply purchase its way to victory at all levels, facilitated by military intimidation, state to state, local government to local government.
Nigerians will never step out of their houses to vote until and unless they see something worth voting for. This is the true lesson of the Ekiti election. Meanwhile, we the people are still preparing for our second independence this October 1, 2014 – via The Nigerian Masses Revolution – when we would have successfully expelled the cabal from every nook and cranny where they hide their dirty, insatiable, thieving selves in positions of authority, holding our nation to ransom, keeping us murdered, abducted, displaced and raped every day and leaving our great nation as a global sleaze pit and laughing stock.
By Dr. Peregrino Brimah
National Coordinator, Every Nigerian Do Something
This article was first published in The Punch on June 25, 2014.
Last modified: June 25, 2014
