By Andrew A. Erakhrumen*
Nigeria! Oh! Nigeria! Oh! Nigeria! What is happening to this geographical entity whose potential was (and still is) a source of envy to many other climes? The country that produced abundant renewable/non-renewable resources for world’s consumption, what is happening to you? A country where some of the Greats in many human endeavours emanated from, what is happening to you? A country that was/is widely referred to as “Giant of Africa”, now weakly lying supine seemingly unable to rise, what is happening to you? A country now being presented to us to be very poor and incapably incapable but whose problem in the recent past was how to spend its ‘too much money’ – according to the then visionless usurpers of political power (the progenitors of the current self-centred characters who call themselves ‘leaders’) – what is happening to this country?
Is this the (same) Nigeria that volunteered to pay salaries of civil servants in some less-endowed countries some years ago now paying its workers slave wages lower than a legislator’s daily allowance for newspaper? What is happening to Nigeria (the 2021 Nigeria) where a university professor’s monthly take-home pay is below 400,000 Naira? A country whose political landscape had politicians with blueprints but now dominated by political charlatans, swindlers, and intellectual Lilliputians – what is Nigeria’s problem? This was Nigeria that gladly assisted its neighbours, and others, far away, to solve their security challenges but now finds it extremely difficult to defend its territorial integrity! What is really wrong with Nigeria?
This country is currently deeply enmeshed in a serious mess but our own ‘breed of politicians’, especially those in government, carry on as if there is no problem! These are the people ‘leading’ us, today! They are, at present, more interested in 2023 – that fatidic year for the next general elections – than today’s safety of the generality, from whom they intend to seek votes! They are already positioning and repositioning themselves for offices, come 2023 and beyond, when they are not sure if ‘tomorrow’ will come, and if it does, if they will see it! As always, they are calculating and recalculating everything in order to get into, or retain their stay in, public offices.
They are strategising and restrategising, seriously, on how they will achieve their aim – their only aim – to get into, and stay in, public offices for personal aggrandisement and not necessarily for service! They are always, unbelievably, desperate for public offices that they can do anything to achieve this aim! To buttress this fact, these same people have connived to smuggle clauses, insolently but surreptitiously, into the draft amendment bill for the review of the Electoral Amendment Act 2010 (as amended), at this 9th National Assembly. For example, a clause was included that will allow Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to enable electronic voting without electronic transmission of its results. What then is really the essence of electronic voting without transmitting its results electronically?
The question above is imperative considering that transmitting results electronically has been well argued to possess good capability of eliminating electoral fraud that occurs, on paper results, between polling stations and collation/consolidation centres. There are tenable examples, locally, supporting the plausibility of electronic means of transmitting electoral results. For instance, INEC successfully used electronic means to publish results (real-time) on their website, for the recently held gubernatorial elections in Edo and Ondo States, in September and October, 2020 respectively. This effort actually discouraged and reduced attempts at tampering with election results (on paper), declared at polling stations, while on their way to collation centres.
This real-time election results’ publication on INEC website drastically reduced tension caused by disputation of election results since all the interested parties were able to monitor the online results vis-à-vis what they obtained from the polling stations (on paper). Undoubtedly, publishing election results, real-time, only on INEC’s website is not the final ‘bus-stop’ for well meaning Nigerians agitating for electronic transmission of election results. Nevertheless, this latest INEC’s effort has shown that transmitting election results electronically is a veritable means of ensuring transparency in elections and integrity of their results. Certainly, like many other things, technologies do have their challenges that are continuously being surmounted with the passage of time.
Consequently, why the efforts at trying to exclude the use of electronic means of transmitting results in the oncoming (2023) elections? Why are some Senators and House of Representative Members (that are interested parties in elections) ganging up to ensure that they (and agent(s) of the executive arm of Federal Government of Nigeria) control how election results will be transmitted and eventually declared? Why are they further rendering the word ‘Independent’ in the acronym INEC, worthless and meaningless by trying to take us back to the dreaded ‘stone age’? Do they have things to hide concerning how they were ‘elected’? Are they scared of the possibility of being unpopular in their constituencies?
Have they perfected strategies that the adoption of electronic transmission of election results will truncate (in 2023)? Where are we heading to with this kind of ‘legislators’ who voted for the return of Nigerians to the ‘stone age’? Resisting electronic transmission of election results is absurd because some countries adopted it even before electronic voting! Is this a familiar case of Nigeria’s ‘one step forward’ and ‘two step backward’? As far as we know, it is in Nigeria that computerisation (of publicly-owned offices) makes work more clumsy and difficult! When you propose good paperless strategies for efficient management of resources, in those places, you can be rest assured that this is when more paper will be spewed from their printers! Nigerians are really a unique people!
In this process of re-amending the Electoral Amendment Act 2010 (as amended), reports have it that campaign spending limits are proposed to be increased from: N1 billion to N15 billion (for Presidential), N200 million to N5 billion (for Gubernatorial), N40 million to N1.5 billion (for Senatorial), N20 million to N500 million (for House of Representatives) and N10 million to N50 million (for State House of Assembly) elections. Interestingly interesting! Nigeria’s ‘democracy’, which is already operationally a plutocracy, is being officially established as a plutocracy before our eyes! Nigerians, behold your (our) ‘democracy’!
Yes, it is in the public domain that Nigerian politicians do not comply with the currently stipulated campaign spending limits since no effective institution exists to ensure compliance! However, why insult our collective intelligence with this kind of amendment to the subsisting electoral laws? Of course, it takes two to tango as many of the governed (followers) are complicit in the rot we find ourselves today. Many of them toe the line of these politicians, without good plan for the country, by also unduly engaging in primordial issues rather than merit-based ones, in the political arena. To them, too, politics is all about what can be illicitly extracted from the evidently but painfully collapsing system! Are we to continue with this ineffectualness?
Something must be wrong with a people who adopt the same method(s) in doing things, over and over, and expect different results! The current ‘Nigerian breed’ of politicians, from all indications, have developed thick skin to all positive, objective and constructive widespread criticism from well meaning Nigerians (and non-Nigerians) aimed at building a better system in a country as against the warped one we are currently maintaining. The way this breed of politicians treat Nigerians (perhaps because of the long anomalous military governments in Nigeria’s past) have encouraged us to start searching for, and researching into, description(s) for our type of ‘democracy’!
It is clear that this civil rule is unique in this epoch and so it must be properly characterised for necessary improvement. We know that those benefiting from the lopsidedness of the current system will not give up easily for necessary improvement. Politicians, particularly those in government, are expecting social critics, with positive, objective and constructive opinions, to get weary with time! Unfortunately, the bad news for those who do not want Nigeria to move forward, is that some people will keep on asking salient questions until things begin to change for the better. That is how the places and people, our ‘leaders’ run to, for treatment of headache, were developed!
Development, everywhere, is human-propelled. It does not just happen out of the blue! It has to be desired, and worked tirelessly for, by the people desiring it – themselves. Nobody will come from the outer space (are there humans there?) to develop you and all yours – for you and all yours – for free! It has not worked, and still does not work, that way, anywhere, except we want to continue yielding, collectively, to those local and international deceptive conceptions woven round most of the non-existent and fictitious entities known as ‘development partnerships’! There are, without doubt, some mutually-beneficial partnerships but those identified spurious ‘development partnerships’ are the main reason why some of us do not wholeheartedly believe in ‘technology transfer’.
Most times, what is referred to as cooperation towards ‘technology transfer’ turned out as merely a means by which manufactured products are made available only for sale in less-developed climes! Nothing more except that these manufacturers and their location(s), through ingenious default design, make themselves dependent upon, by these less-developed climes, almost in perpetuity. No product developer will give its trade secret away on a silver platter; therefore it is necessary that in-depth local thinking, geared towards home-grown ingenuity, be encouraged. The earlier we incorporate this awareness into, and accommodate it securely within, our thinking, the better for us all!
It is doubtless that Nigeria needs a critical mass that will assist in catalysing it towards positive directions others are taking in this century. Fortunately, the country is endowed – within and out of it – with highly cerebral people of unimpeachable integrity and character. The problem we, as a people, need to surmount (and this is surmountable) is how they can successfully get in the saddle, in this kind of unfavourable caustic local political terrain. Solutions must be found! People must be continuously mobilised and enlightened to know that many of their current ‘leaders’ across almost all the political parties are ‘dealers’ with mercantile mindset!
The people must be informed that they are these dealers’ stock-in-trade! It is necessary for us all to free our minds from mental enslavement by these dealers. One of their mental enslavement tools is the effective use of primordial sentiments. It must be told that the current Nigerian politicians are the same in the different political parties! This is the reason why any of them can take breakfast, lunch and dinner, without a glitch, in different political parties! As far as we know they all have the same political philosophy in any political party they belong to! As we always say, those with good plans for Nigeria should not adopt the laid-back disposition while the ‘vampires’ continue to torment us all.
*Andrew A. Erakhrumen currently teaches at the Department of Forest Resources and Wildlife Management, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria.
