Says Osoba
It started getting bad in 2003 when the election was badly manipulated, mutilated, badly rigged and people emerged not on merit. And when a student gets graduated by cheating, when a student who didn’t study at all suddenly gets graduated, then you must have taught him to use the idea of cutting corners. Most of those who emerged in 2003 got there by rigging. The garrison politics introduced into the 2003 election was the beginning of our problems. From then, charlatans emerged as people’s representatives through rigging. They used the word capture; garrison commands and do-or die politics.
What then is the way out?
The fact is 2019 is going to be a defining year. My strong advice is that all the elite should re-enact the June 12 1993 scenario. There is a golden opportunity for that to happen because the amendment to the Electoral Act that is now in contention is the strongest weapon ever that is going to make for a clean, clear respected election. Nigerians are focusing on only one aspect of the amendment, which is the sequence of the elections. There are many fundamental aspects of the amendment to the Electoral Act, which would crate another June 12 that would make the outcome of the election indisputable. For instance, the use of Electronic Voting System (EVS) in the election process has now been put into the Electoral Act. Card Reader is now recognised and they even went beyond that by saying any modern technology should be used in conducting election in the country. The National Assembly went further to say that there must be accreditation before voting, which must be transmitted immediately to the headquarters of the electoral commission. The most interesting part of it is that failure by any electoral officer to do that would be five years jail. Another fundamental provision is that the election result must be transmitted immediately to the headquarters of the commission from each pooling booth and failure to do that is five-year jail term. In addition to that there are provisions that failure by any electoral officer to deny any agents access to any information about all electoral process carries jail term.
The possibility of a Macron, an independent candidate in the last French election who won, is not far-fetched in the coming 2019 election. Emmanuel Macron in France didn’t have a political party. He just had a movement, which he used to defeat established political parties. If the provision of the amended Electoral Act is effected, we will produce an Obama. The immediate past President of U.S. Barack Obama did not win just on Democratic Party’s platform but he won on appeal to the younger generations and he depended on the modern electronic system to run his campaign. The future is in our hands; let everybody takes advantage of that Electoral Act when it is eventually put in place and we should all go out to exercise our fundamental right to chose the best person that will run the country.