INEC Polling Centre in Nigeria
From field reports all over Nigeria, the National Assembly Elections of last Saturday April 9, 2011, have not been really free and fair.
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Professor Attahiru Jega has shown that he has been overwhelmed by the herculean task of conducting free and fair elections in a nation that is ruled by corruption at all levels of public administration and the unscrupulous citizens prefer ignominious ways of life to honourable and noble values and virtues of a civilized society and they would rather practice kleptocracy instead of democracy.
One of the shocking cases of corruption is the current political drama in Anambra State over the polls in the Anambra Central Senatorial District where Mr. Alex Anene, the returning officer/collation officer of INEC alleged that his life has been threatened by the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the state government, because he refused the offer of N10million, a duplex and a car to falsify the result in favour of APGA's candidate Prof. Dora Akunyili and deny the actual winner Dr. Chris Ngige of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).
These are the agonies and ironies of President Goodluck Jonathan's Nigeria as vividly captured in Jekwu Ozoemene's The Anger of Unfulfillment: Three Plays Out of Nigeria as he aptly addressed the dreams and nightmares of Nigerians confronting the contemporary challenges of life in the most populous country in Africa. A nation so well endowed with great human and mineral resources, but abused and misused by corrupt rulers.
In civilized nations, the omissions of the names or logos of any duly registered political party on the ballot are enough to cancel the entire election. Therefore, let us stop all these mischievous gerrymandering of electoral fraud and do the right thing or annul the whole April elections until further notice.
I will not join in the bandwagon of political sycophants and opportunists to flatter the so called winners or pat Professor Attahiru Jega on the back until I see political equity and electoral justice in every state in Nigeria.
Whatever is worth doing at all, should be done well.
These uncivilized Nigerians are not ready to practice democracy.
This is my final verdict on the NASS polls.
~ Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima
