LG Election Rigging In AK University Campuses

On December 2, 2017, Akwa Ibom State Independent Electoral Commission (AKISIEC) announced that election held in the various polling units in Akwa Ibom State. However, a lot of citizens across the length and breadth of the State described the so-called election as a charade and nothing short of deceit because in their polling units there were no voting materials to enable people exercise their right.

Newspaper, television and radio reports indicate there was massive rigging, carting away of ballot boxes among other vices.

This kind of election is not in any way new to Akwa Ibom State.

At least in the past eighteen years, elections have left soar taste in the mouths of citizens due to violence, killing, rigging etc.

All the time, as a result of the corruption of the electoral processes, we have seen people who were not the choice of the electorate emerge as leaders.

The singular effect of this, is that these leaders without any thought of service in their brains occupy very important government positions.

They cannot churn out policies for the good of the people and the economy goes dead while the people suffer endlessly.

Again and again this has been the lot of Akwa Ibom citizens. But what is even worse is the transfer of violent election attitudes to the younger generation.

The average Akwa Ibom youth thinks election has to be violent-ballot boxes hijacked, opponents maimed or killed and results forged.

Why do they think so? In their communities they have seen that all the leaders who became anything in politics didn’t benefit from an orderly and responsible election process. They were products of hijacked ballot boxes.

Sadly, in previous elections and during the December 2 local government poll some interested parties, who own and operate private universities in Akwa Ibom State turned the university campuses into rigging centres. Meanwhile, young undergraduates were resident in the halls, they saw how thugs, armed to the teeth ran into the schools and elections were rigged.

The first concern of The Sensor Newspapers is that in the midst of such malpractice should violence erupt, then majority of the casualties will certainly be the students.

In the event that a student is killed what would the proprietors have done to our collective desire to raise the best of our brains to the utmost heights, of course this will be the height of callousness.

More so, let it be known that it is a sad day for our education and sensibilities for persons who own universities, where the best of the best minds should be trained to rather expose the youths to episodes of brigandry and thuggery.

If owners of these schools have condemned their conscience to darkness, it is most uncharitable of them to sell such evil to younger people.

Need we remind these proprietors one more time that universities are centres of not only academic learning but citadels for teaching and learning character; in fact, education is murderous if it does not offer the character that bears virtues for building up society.

We therefore call on the universities’ proprietors to have a change of mind and forth with not engage in activities that puts them in badlight and no longer examples of nation builders.

If they achieve this personal conduct, then it will be possible for our younger generation in their care not to be turned into thugs due to ill exposures to thuggery during elections. 

The Sensor Newspaper Editorial