Who wants to scuttle our St. Valentine’s Day Elections?

Historians trace the origin of Valentine’s Day to ancient Roman Empire, and in truth the genesis of the event has its many myths. The most popular of the myths involved the intervention of Emperor Claudius II, under whose reign Rome was involved in several bloody and unpopular campaigns. Claudius found it tough to get soldiers […]

Historians trace the origin of Valentine’s Day to ancient Roman Empire, and in truth the genesis of the event has its many myths. The most popular of the myths involved the intervention of Emperor Claudius II, under whose reign Rome was involved in several bloody and unpopular campaigns.
Claudius found it tough to get soldiers and felt the reason was men did not join army because they did not wish to leave their wives, families and other loved ones behind. To escape his predicament, Claudius cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome. What he did not reckon with however, was the principled stand of one of the Christian priests called Valentine. Valentine led the subtle rebellion against what they failed was the Emperor’s unjustified order and secretly married couples. But his treachery was soon discovered and Valentine was brutally beaten and put to death on February 14, about 270 AD. After his death Valentine was named a Saint.
Another version holds that Valentine was killed because he attempted to help Christians escape from the Roman prison as they were being tortured and beaten there. Yet another popular version of the legend states that while in prison Valentine or Valentinus fell in love with jailer’s daughter who visited him during confinement. Before his death Valentine wrote a farewell letter to his sweetheart from the jail and signed ‘From your Valentine’. Whatever may be its genesis, however, St. Valentine’s Day, has, over time, come to signify the day normally reserved in western folklore for the celebration of love.
Unfortunately, however, we also know that St. Valentine’s Day could also be a day for the celebration of anything but the celebration of love. It was the same day on in 1929 that Al Capone’s hoods lined up the rival five members of the rival Moran gang – including collaborators Reinhardt H. Schwimmer and John May – against the rear inside wall of the garage at 2122 North Clark Street, in the Lincoln Park neighbourhood of Chicago’s North Side, and machine-gunned to death.
The Moran gang had made the fatal error of attempting to muscle in on Capone-run dog track in the Chicago suburbs, the  takeover of several Capone-owned saloons that he insisted were in his territory, and the general rivalry between both for complete control of the lucrative Chicago bootlegging business.
Now, it is on that same famous or infamous day, so rich in both love and tragic symbolism, which Nigeria’s Presidential and National Assembly elections will hold. It is already a tragedy of monumental proportions that the important issue of whether the same elections will hold at all is fast becoming a matter of conjecture.
With rampant insurgency and insecurity bedevilling the North-Eastern parts of the country the old conspiracy theories that it could be used as an excuse by the ruling PDP to postpone the elections indefinitely have refused to go away.  But even if the elections do get to hold there are already sufficient grounds to believe that large swaths of eligible voters from the region are likely to be disenfranchised.
Already, the INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, has already gone on record to affirm that there are indeed provisions in the Electoral Act that precludes the holding of elections in areas with debilitating security challenges. We cannot blame him because that is exactly what our laws prescribe. But apart from the issue of insecurity and Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), there are also other germane reasons to doubt if the elections will hold and they are man-made.
You know the nation is courting trouble when Femi Fani-Kayode – the foulmouthed and ridiculously inconsistent Director of publicity for the Jonathan Campaign Organization, starts requesting that General Muhammadu Buhari, of the opposition APC, should be disqualified on flimsy and laughable excuses of eligibility.
While on face value the allegation hints at desperation on the part of a massively unpopular party, it also proves the limit to which they are prepared to descend if things don’t eventually go their way.
Even more discomforting has been the issue of intolerance to dissenting views in the lead up to February 14th. No one expected the explosive intervention from Father Mbaka a few weeks back when he went public with his views on why he considers the incumbent president unelectable, it is rather the direct and indirect reactions to his comments that have gotten me so worried that the next elections may still be a mirage.
For daring to say his mind, the respect clergyman has apparently been hounded into hiding. In his place we now have only those who are prepared to peddle the same sorry narrative that has brought our dear nation to its present sorry pass.
You know the nation is in trouble when the Prelate of the Methodist Church of Nigeria, Archbishop Samuel Uche, could stand before an exclusively Christian congregation that included the President, Senate President and all the service and paramilitary chiefs of the same faith, to allege that it was the Fulani and Kanuri, desperate to regain power, who were behind the Boko Haram insurgency in the North East like he did last Sunday during the Armed Forces Remembrance Day Interdenominational Service held at the National Christian Centre, Abuja.
The primate went further to add that some soldiers at the warfront – whom he did not name- had disclosed to him and other bishops that apart from some collaborators from Chad, Libya and Somalia, 95 percent of those waging war against Nigeria were Fulani and Kanuri. He concluded by saying that but for the involvement of many disgruntled elements – WHICH HE AGAIN FAILED TO NAME- (emphasis mine), it would have been possible to contain the Boko Haram insurgency.
On a different date and time, such irresponsible comments would easily have been nipped in the bud by the assuring comments of a credible leader whether Muslim or Christian. But President Goodluck Jonathan removed whatever doubts remained that Nigeria remains a land desperately short of responsible leaders with his own comments at the occasion. He merely repeated the vague allegations that tended to concur with the highly dangerous so-called investigative report carried by the Thisday newspaper a couple of weeks ago that there are, indeed, ‘black legs’ (saboteurs)  in the military.   The big question is: why hasn’t he as the Commander – in- Chief named or prosecuted them?   
The bigger danger of course is that beyond dividing Nigerians which he is actively aiming at, we now also risk a military being polarized possibly beyond redemption due to the desperate and irresponsible comments of politicians and their foot soldiers in the media and the clergy.
When that mixes with the sudden onset of pre-election violence we experienced in Plateau, Gombe and Rivers states in the past week, then Nigerians should pray to avert a definite rendezvous with tragedy that may as well overwhelm love on the next St. Valentine’s Day, if the trend is not immediately reversed.