Waiting for Godot? Nay Jega

But for the market cacophony of complaints, explanations television analysis and pure mischief, you could have heard a pin drop anywhere from Otuoke to Daura. Until the first postponement, Jega had assured us he was ready to do a 10-mile dash in the speed of a 100-meter race. He registered voters, gave them temporary cards, […]

But for the market cacophony of complaints, explanations television analysis and pure mischief, you could have heard a pin drop anywhere from Otuoke to Daura. Until the first postponement, Jega had assured us he was ready to do a 10-mile dash in the speed of a 100-meter race. He registered voters, gave them temporary cards, delineated constituencies and later distributed permanent cards aka PVC or power to vote change. He had trained ad-hoc staffs to use the electronic card readers without knowing that the military would put their boots in the national soup pot. They did and forced a postponement of the symbolic Valentine’s Day love gift for the ruining party.
President Jones had nothing to do with it. He was minding his own business in Bayelsa, the state that returns 100% at polls when the news hit him. He welcomed his luck, but the people’s General almost lost his cool – suitors don’t like to postpone wedding dates so you could predict the exasperation. After three failed attempts, this was closest to a home run except that it is running on a bank loan with simple and compound interests.
Every minute of postponement compounds compound interest if you don’t have the keys to the vaults of the Central Bank of Africa’s largest economy. Besides, delay is glucose to a desperate ruining party and an eager opposition giving it a run for its records.
But wasn’t waiting a game we all love to play? Who didn’t wait for the day their lover would pop the question? In a society where marriage is open license to procreation who didn’t wait to hear that their partner had taken in? And then waited with bated breaths for those nights and days leading to the mystery turning into a bouncing baby? Come on, peeps, we all love to wait. We waited for JAMB results, waited for the result of final exams, waited for NYSC call-up letters, waited to get that dream job, to rent the first lodging and to make money or hammer. Succinctly, aren’t we all-waiting to die!
But none of this compared with the tension that enveloped the country for over 72 hours beginning Sunday March 29. We understood what our elders meant when they say that the chicken is a worthless domestic pet but of value in the bush, so it is with Jega whose importance is usually only felt once in four years. He had assured us that he would announce a winner within 48 hours. What we did not ask was what timepiece would be used to measure the time. Professors know a thing or two about getting full instructions. Now we know that the clock starts ticking when the umpire says so. Patience is a great lesson that desperate politicians need to learn.
By every calculation of Chike Obi, Naija ought to have slept in peace or in pieces by Sunday night, but it kept abuzz with conflicting reports, confusing analysis and intense speculation. Friends used every app available to gaze at the horizon for any news or analysis that could defuse national tension.
Even writers, that breed of tension-busters whose craft unceasingly titillate were on and off duty not wanting to be sucked into making predictions that could trigger an explosion and send them to be Gbagbo-ed by Fatou Bensouda. Yet, no reader pays for a newspaper with nothing new.
In this confusion, we did not know what to make of the role of social media. It aggravated our tension but allowed us to share our fears, frustrations and expectations. We did not know what to make of foreign election observers. Their messages conflicted with their body language. How could they see a free and fair election amidst the intimidation, the deliberate shooting to death of innocent bystanders or protesters and the house arrest of prominent opposition figures? Something didn’t add up. Did they not ask why the contractor who supplied the card reader had to be kept in detention? Does that happen in Europe, America or even in Ghana?
Legitimate questions were left unanswered because nothing was more important than what Attahiru Jega had to say on Tuesday. National cohesion depended on it hence the new expression – waiting for Jega. Next time your date shows up 72 hours late, remind yourself you were – waiting for Jega.