By Innocent Okon
As one born when the military custodied access to the corridor, living room and bedroom of civil governance, I have never questioned my passion for democracy.
I was born to hear and see the portrait of General Yakubu Gowon as the Head of State of Nigeria and literally wept in 1976 when he was toppled by his fellow adventurers at arms!
My young and fragile mind was calibrated to see the military rule as messianic when told that it was Gowon who fought ‘rebellious’ Odumegwu Ojukwu to keep my beloved Nigeria ‘one and indivisible ‘.
When agitation for democratic governance came in 1977 under General Olusegun Obasanjo after the assassination of Muritala Mohammed, many young minds like me neither understood nor appreciated the need for something that we never experienced.
The constitutional conference came and the elections followed in 1979. As a youngster in Secondary School, I neither voted, nor understood the ‘novel’ system of governance that was in the works!
It was only four years after test-running democratic governance that I came to see the alluring beauty of participatory civil governance and fell in love with it.
I cast my first ballot in 1983 for Chief Obafemi Awolowo of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) for President and Retired Brigadier Udoakaha Jacob Esuene for Governorship of then Cross River state.They both failed the elections for reasons elections are called selection in Nigeria!
The elections were massively rigged with impunity by the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN), and Chief Awo lamented that he might not live to see credible elections in his lifetime.
The military struck in the dying hours of December 31, 1983 and uniformed adventurers from the barracks held sway till May 29, 1999.
By more of luck than efficiency, civil rule has survived infant mortality in Nigeria to last this long since 1999.
Come next Saturday, February 25, and on March 11, two rounds of of elections are due to b held according to the schedule by the Independent Nationl Electoral Commissiion (INEC), Nigeria’s elections umpire.
The first round is for the election of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The choices are already known to all eligible voters with their permanent voter’s cards (PVCs).
In other climes, by now credible pollsters would have disclosed the leading candidate and the margin of victory!
But here we do more of permutations than verifiable scientific survey. That’s why am incurably unpersuaded by whatever social media polls are throwing at us.
My experiences have serially confirmed that most elections in Nigeria are always won and lost by religious affiliations, ethnic affinity, exclusive control of coercive state agencies, money and fear of political marginalisation.
Political manifestos are mere perfunctory fulfillment in our democratic leadership recruitment process!
The ides of February and March are here. Nigerians have been tied to a stake that they can no more fly! But like Caesar in Shakespeare’s JULIUS CAESAR , they must fight the cause!
No Nigerian adult of voting age needs to be told what insecurity means. Nobody needs to be told how hunger feels, nor the rapacious official corruption in high and low public offices .
Few days to the polls, Nigeria is having parallel legal tenders as medium of exchange for goods and services! Exiting Governors at the state level have perfected their pension benefits to include mansions in any location of their choice within Nigeria among other parting perquisites!
Same Governors that ignored and refused to pay gratuities and pensions to retired civil servants that had served for 35 years.
As you go to the polls on February 25 and March 11, I plead with you to make out time and digest the lyrics of Bob Marley’s song, EXODUS. Th excerpt of the song reads: OPEN YOUR EYES
AND LOOK WITHIN
ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH THE LIFE YOU’RE LIVING?
I dare add: If what you are seeing is giving you nightmares, use the power in your hnds through your PVCs to demand change.
Okon, a journalist and lawyer, lives in Uyo
