Postponement Damages And Paranoia (PDP)
By UbongAbasi Ise
At the end of it all, Saturday
16th February 2019 turned out to be quite calm and peaceful. I had
met with Barr. Clifford Thomas, the Akwa Ibom State Human Rights Community
Coordinator, and we drove all afternoon, with visits here and there. From the
urbanized areas of Uyo, the capital city, to the countryside of Nsit Ibom,
Etinan and some other places, tranquility subsists beyond the warm harmattan
afternoon. It was quite uncharacteristic of any Saturday in this part of the
world: there were no wedding and burial ceremonies; markets were either shut or
half-closed; business activities in general were quite low key, no thanks to
the brusque postponement of the Presidential and National Assembly elections in
the dawn of that day by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
Barr. Clifford Thomas had expressed disappointment in INEC for putting off the elections
it had almost four years to prepare for. He berated the commission for wasting
tax payers’ money on mobilization for the polls that would never hold, and was
not happy that INEC would stop the common citizens from going about their normal
businesses that could have brought food on their table. The human rights lawyer
therefore called on the electoral body to immediately apologize to Nigerians
for its show of shame and national embarrassment. Later on, the car radio broadcasted the fiery voice
of Comrade Adams Oshiomole, the National Chairman of the All Progressives
Congress, APC, who took it all out against the INEC. While protecting the
interest of APC, Oshiomole decried the cost incurred by his party in mobilizing
party agents to the polling units and then slammed the INEC Chairman, Prof.
Yakub Mahmood, for having to wait till about 2.00am before he could announced
the postponement. The Presidency would later rap the INEC in order to show that
the commission was taking its decision independently outside the influence of
the government. Even Senator Godswill Akpabio tweeted to describe the postponement
as the impunity to democracy. On the other hand, the Peoples’ Democratic Party,
PDP, was seeing the rescheduling as a ploy by the APC government in connivance
with INEC to scuttle the electoral process. The electoral body was facing the
worst rejection and condemnation almost unprecedented in the history of the
nation.
Beyond all the condemnations trailing INEC, the
unceremonious postponement of the elections was just a raging wind that blew open
the main tail feathers of a fowl to expose its cloaca. It exposed all the stratagems
the PDP in Akwa Ibom State concealed under its sleeves to stage a huge surprise
so as to affirm the infamous cliché that Akwa Ibom is PDP and PDP is Akwa Ibom.
Had elections went on as scheduled, a lot of nauseating incidents would have
occurred to embarrass the image of our dear state courtesy of the desperation
of Governor Udom Emmanuel and his PDP co-travellers. Their paranoia over the
entire electoral processes forced them to embrace all extremes. The veneer of
peace as pretended by our state government was torn open and it was clear that
the PDP-controlled state government does not mean well for the generality of
the Akwa Ibom citizens as long as its continuation beyond May 29 is threatened.
On a day to the aborted polls, all the incongruities as blindly composed by His
Excellences and the Honourables in the PDP began to play out. How could the
government vested with the responsibility of securing and protecting lives and
properties condescended to the level of hiring over 1,000 thugs per polling
unit in the state with our taxpayers’ money with the intention to maim and murder
the citizens who might have come out to exercise their constitutional rights? How
could our resources be lavished in feeding militants in a dormitory at Winners
Chapel in Uyo and other locations under the pretext of rehabilitation only to
release them for elections? Were all of these done out of fears that the people
of Akwa Ibom have rejected the PDP? And does it mean that their election
actually worth a single drop of Akwa Ibom son or daughter? Whatever the
response might be, the postponement had averted, at least for a moment, the
mayhem that would have been visited on the innocent and unsuspecting citizens
of our dear state.
It is no
longer news that the umbrella people professing ‘Only God’ were flooding the
state with thugs recruited from within the state and the neighboring Cross
River and Rivers States, with our resources going down the drain. With the
rearrangement of the elections timetable Ghana-Must-Go bags had already missed
road. They blew away stupendous amount of cash before one vote was cast. Certainly,
INEC would never be forgiven by the pre-election big spenders for failing to
hint earlier on about the postponement, thus letting them waste the money
aimlessly with many electoral battles still lining up ahead. The postponement might
be condemnable, but extrinsically, it has served our soul.
Again, what
really exasperated the PDP most was the wasting of billions of naira on the
votes that would never come, and on the people they never loved. PVCs were
becoming ticket to free cash. The money the PDP denied the people by not executing
life-touching projects were sent back to the people in desperation to win their
sympathy and regain lost popularity. At the end, it became a big loss to these
vote-buyers and a huge gain for the vote-sellers that had no vote to sell.
To this end, Akwa
Ibom people should know that it is not time to vote for money and tribe but time
to vote for our conscience, destiny and future. Those who steered us towards
hunger, unemployment, backwardness, infrastructural decay, weak educational
system and insecurity in Ukanafun, Etim Ekpo and Ika local government areas are
at their game again. By selling our votes to them, we are destroying our voice
and mortgaging our rights, and so whatever they will be doing in government,
won’t be our business; we can’t hold them responsible because the officials had
paid us off. It is time to rise up against their chicaneries, intimidations and
tempting naira wads and establish our authority in government as a people as
required by the spirit and letters of democracy.
Yes! I am UbongAbasi Ise. For
comment, send SMS to 08189914609 | ubongabasiise@gmail.com
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