THERE is absolutely nothing to expect from the All Progressives Congress’s (APC) crazy and woeful administration. In 2015, it sold a dummy of “Change” to citizens; re-inforced similar tragic slogan of a hollow “Next Level” in 2019 and now, the forceful muffling of the people’s voices and the theft of citizens’ mandate is the current albatross of a nation virtually gasping for breath.
As a result of ominous atmosphere of bleak and total darkness; the APC, President Muhammadu Buhari, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC); the enforcer of the stolen mandate, can’t celebrate the peril and blighted victory from the fractured institution, because of citizens’ broken spirits in a badly fragmented and disjointed country bleeding in all fronts.
It’s even more disturbing and murkier now that the few who helped in aiding the appropriation of the people’s sovereign will, subverted democratic ethos, compromised electoral institution, who rigged the elections are still battling with credibility deficit.
In a flash, Nigerians have witnessed the savage destruction of democracy, have their trust evaporated in INEC, that is back in the news for the wrong reasons, owing to a grisly tragedy of an election the commission blamed on technical glitches – which according to them – prevented real time uploading of results from the polling units on February 25th, 2023 into the BVAS for onward transactions into INEC website.
If human error is to blame for the criminal abortion of the people’s will on February 25th, the responsibility ultimately lies with those who devised, defended, and promoted the heist underpinning the outright collapse of INEC’s portal, since that’s their argument. What we know and have been told is that APC cyber urchins, including former Lagos State Governor and Minister of Works, were given the links and the code to manipulate INEC website after total purchase of the Commission – wholesale by Bola Ahmed Tinubu – while the populace were groping in the dark without access to the same website.
Now, the conundrums: if the poorly programmed elections were not rigged according to INEC, why are they talking about reconfiguring the BVAS, computer devices with the intention to wipe out the pre-installed Presidential and National Assembly elections results data in the system? Why is it taking INEC almost forever to obey court order to allow the Labour Party legal team to have access to both the electronic and manual results in their custody?
Nigerians are not unmindful of the aggressive rape of their mandate, the barefaced suppression of the Labour Party and ObI-dients votes across the country, particularly in Lagos, where ethnic militia, driven by established dynasty of thugs rule the roost. As the nation is in dire straits of political logjam and the economy on a tailspin with stagflation and de-industrialization driving the pauperization of the people to a point of cynical projection, Nigerian is not far from the road to Kigali.
From all available evidence, INEC’s deliberately truncated citizens aspiration so that the political vampires who have held down the nation over several decades can continue the pillaging, destruction and termination of the people’s will. The misguided and misdirected fiasco of elections, which can only pass for horror in some movies have been rejected by lovers of democracy and the international community, like the United States of America: the custodian of universal democracy.
No nation of substance has applauded the charade which the badly compromised INEC throws up at the wary citizens that desperately need believable change. Shockingly, political elites of substance are burying their heads in the sand like the proverbial orstrich, offering no word on the brazen rape of the people’s legitimate contributions to the governance of their country.
In the midst of this bizarre tomfoolery, many vocal activists have shot their eyes to the earth-shattering manipulation of people’s mandate. The scenarios playing out across Nigeria has opened the political space to the rule of the mob that can possibly enthrone anarchy.
While the citizens patiently await the reversal and return of their stolen mandate by a pathetic political party called the APC that has virtually sunk the nation in the last 8-year of the locust; the judiciary must vigorously step up to the plague, re-enforce the trust in itself by ensuring that the stolen mandate is given back to the winner of the 2023 presidential election: Peter Obi and the Nigerian masses.
