It was hardly 7:30 am when I started seeing people troop in a nearby government school close to where I reside in Sabo, one of the heavily populated areas in Kaduna city. By the time I joined them a few minutes passed eight o’clock, the whole corridors of the school blocks were occupied mostly by relatively aged men and women, while the teeming youths were scattered around, waiting for INEC officials to surface. At around 12:00 pm, hunger, tiredness and the effect of the scorching sun was already telling on the faces of everyone in the polling station. Yet, everyone seems to be determined to wait till they cast their vote.
One good thing about the waiting voters was the confidence they seem to have that the current INEC/election will be different from the past ones. Majority of the people were capitalizing on Jega’s (the INEC boss) statement of “One Man, One Vote” to presume the fairness of the election. However, the expectations of the people could not be met as news latter filtered in the waiting crowd (around 1:00pm) that the election has been postponed to Monday April 4, 2011. This was followed by signs of dissatisfaction with the system as almost everybody who speaks was not happy about the situation. After Nigerians began making arrangement against Monday, another news arrived that, the Monday election has been cancel and taken to Saturday which supposed to be a date scheduled for governorship elections. The question now is that, what implication would this have on the general 2011 elections?
It is important to know that, Nigerians have shown great commitment to participate in this year’s election, but based on the past experiences, Nigerians are beginning to loss hope in the credibility of Jega’s INEC regime. While some people look at the current situation as a deliberate way to confused Nigerians and allow manipulation to set in, others expressed faith in the Jega led INEC regime. From the time being, it appears the postponement will definitely affect turn-up of voters on Monday.
Another thing is that, in Kaduna North Local Government Area, the final list that include the names of all NYSC (Corps) members as well as INEC ad-hoc staff who were to participate in the election could not be placed until around 7:30pm on Friday. In this way, it was difficult for those involved to travel to various destinations (polling units) on time as many did not even know the exact locations of the polling stations they were assigned to go to. This was also viewed as a deliberate hitch to frustrate the smoothness of the election. Where the issue gets complicated is that, despite all these elections were held in some places that voters’ materials arrived in good time. For example, voting took place in some polling stations in Kagoro in Kaura Local Government Area of Kaduna state. The question now is, would INEC allow the results of such elections to be valid or the people have to recast their vote for the second time?
In whichever way one chooses to view this issue, two things are involved. First, it appears that the billions of naira invested in INEC for the purpose of these 2011 elections is showing no significant positive result. Secondly, if Nigeria has billions of naira to invest in elections that will come and go, instead of fixing the roads to reduce accidents, then the government should be prepared to compensate citizens for the inconveniences caused by INEC in such unwholesome postponement of subsequent elections.
*** Art in Disguise ***
