Jega, never again the fraud of 2011

But I urge Professor Jega to take heed, so that this year will be truly happy for all of us. Indeed the year has a great potential to be happy for us; if well-managed. And if only we are a truthful people. But as it happens, the truth and Nigerians have never been friends. Even […]

But I urge Professor Jega to take heed, so that this year will be truly happy for all of us. Indeed the year has a great potential to be happy for us; if well-managed. And if only we are a truthful people. But as it happens, the truth and Nigerians have never been friends. Even Lugard said so.
I just want to alert and warn Jega, that the kind of criminal heist they did in the 2011 elections will not be acceptable this year.  I don’t know who did it, but the heist was done, under his watch. He finally approved it. And announced it. The international observers, knowing full well that they will never allow such stupidity happen in their country, looked left and right, and decided that such banality was befitting us as an inferior people.  So they too signed off.
A reconsideration of the breakdown of that last election shows that the results were handwritten in the way that suited those who eventually declared themselves winners.
Imagine a 65% and 67% turnout in the South East and South-South respectively, with that zone voting an average of 95% for the incumbent president? Meanwhile, in the North, Jega’s INEC managed to convince us that the voters were nowhere to be found, and that the many poor peoples of the North decided to sit at home and watch DSTV on voting day?  Suddenly, the usually enthusiastic peoples of the North decided that only half of them will go out and vote? Please see the attached INEC result.
The biggest heist happened in the South West. Imagine that in Ondo State where I’m from, it is alleged only 28% of voters turned out on that day? And in the entire South-West, only 32% of registered voters voted?  How can a state like Lagos, with over 6million registered voters, end up having almost the same number of actually voters as Anambra, Rivers or Imo. Look, Oga Jega, never again! This type of result will not be acceptable. Hopefully too, with the current quarrels this government is having with the so-called international community who were quick to ‘endorse’ it, they would not quickly come and endorse another monkey election for us as ‘the freest and fairest’.   
I also blame the Yoruba people, for allowing chicanery and treachery to always overcome good sense. In 2011, they were all telling us how Jonathan is a good Christian and he had gone to kneel down in front of Baba Adeboye. Many swore they will not allow a ‘Gambari’ rule over them again! Whatever that means. Four years on today, they get their just desserts, in owed salaries, owed contractors, banal corruption and a society almost falling down on itself. Perhaps we are wiser now.
It is also very telling, that in a couple of instances in the South East, notably Imo and Anambra State, shortly after this election where over 1.8million people turned out each, they had their own governorship elections, and all the gubernatorial candidates in those two states, as much as they were on ground, monitored and supervised all proceedings and could not cheat each other much, they could only manage 400,000 votes between all of them! I mean between Ohakim, Rochas, Agbaso and the rest, they couldn’t find 450,000 votes. Ditto between Obiano, Nwoye, Ifeanyi Ubah and the rest. Those ones couldn’t find 500,000 votes. How those states managed 1.5 – 1.8million votes in 2011 is simply miraculous. That those votes were cast and counted too within that short period, beats the imagination. We will not accept this thievery again! Neither the South-South nor South-East should rob the rest of us simply because they believe their ‘brother’ is the one there and needs to continue there for that reason alone. I also know that it is not everyone from those regions that believe in that lame rhetoric.
In sociology, you cannot have that much variance in human behavior, such that within a country, a region will register 87% turnout and another 28% (talking about Imo and Ogun State respectively). Some people have tried to rationalize this daylight robbery by saying south easterners and south-southerners believed they had something at stake while south westerners did not. I think that is just fraudulent in every sense of the word.  We urge, in the interest of peace that this not be allowed to repeat itself. In human relations at this level, there should not be more than a 10% point variance in response from one community to another. That is a fact. Human beings are not machines. You can hardly have a sea change from one to another.
Meanwhile, and perhaps more importantly, I have not found my Permanent Voters’ Card. Not because I didn’t try. I have gone to the Karu INEC Office where they are all dumped, twice, no luck.  In the first place, on a working day, going in and out of Karu could take anything like 5 hours of your time. I had to park somewhere and take Okada to the office. The staff there are too few and overstretched. There is obviously no attempt at getting organized, as bags full of PVCs are strewn all over the floor in different rooms in that bungalow!  There is even inadequate security to prevent hoodlums from storming the place to hijack all the PVCs. From what I saw, less than 10% of PVCs meant for Abuja has been collected! Is Jega setting himself up for failure and the rest of us, for a calamity? This is unacceptable, barely 6 weeks to these all important elections!
People are angry and need a change. So they said. If the current government is not ready to test their resolve at the polls, let it abdicate and leave. No harm in that. People are going through stress daily trying to get these cards. Some I met there gave me a message to tell Jega that there has to be quick provision for those who have just turned 18 (could be more than 500,000 across the country), those who relocated from where they voted to another, and those who were living elsewhere and just relocated to Nigeria. How can INEC hope to disenfranchise millions, despite all these huge allocations we read about in the newspapers.
I say, never again! We will not accept another robbery of 4 years of our lifetime. Jega had better made up his mind.