[Opinion] 2015: History Will Be Written In The Streets Not At The Polls By Bayo Oluwasanmi

I feel helpless not to mock or inveigh the parade of buffoonery that has become daily libations in the feverish anticipation of Nigeria’s most dreaded Political Year 2015.

The political landscape is littered with dubious merchandizing efforts by terrifyingly corrupt and unrepentant politicians whose objective is to deceive the ever gullible Nigerians.

The National Assembly, the Executive, and the Judiciary have demonstrated time and time again beyond belief that the three branches of government are partners in crime of a tyrannical government.

The unjustified criminal jumbo salaries, the dirty bogus perks, the lewd life styles, the lurid spending recklessness, the amass of huge fortunes through uninterrupted flow of treasury money and multiple conduits of malfeasance that form the signature national priorities of the ruling class are mounting evidence of a political system that has metamorphosed into a reign of terror. The atmosphere in the country for the legion of poor Nigerians is like a funeral.

Disparities in wealth increased with the richer prospering and the poor starving. The long running poverty slaughtered and uprooted as it were, the present generation and generations to come. The persistence and prevalence of untamed corruption and infectious poverty are yet another reminder of the fire next time…

The cause and consequence of all these are inflamed ethnic rivalries and religious intolerance which grow daily with intensity among the poor. It has fostered distrust and festered old ethnic prejudices.

The excesses, evils, injustices, and wickedness of the ruling class have further chiseled the great divide between haves and have nots and have collapsed our civilization and culture. It has turned our society into Hobbesian horror that a normal person must escape. An extended mediation of Nigerian maladies is capable of turning one into a surviving appendage that begs for life support.

The on and off, and off and on strike of Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities (ASUU) for adequate funding of universities and better condition of service is taking toll on the students, staff, parents, and the country.

The “I don’t give a damn” attitude of Aso Rock on the demands of the striking professors and the students’ academic programs, portrays the president as anti-education, anti-intellectual, and anti-civilization. Our universities have become glorified secondary schools graduating intellectual zombies.

Nigerians must be ready to die to live. I’ll like to remind them that the only language oppressors understand is fire for fire and force with force.

Don’t you remember the lynching and butchery of the oppressed in other parts of the world in order for them to gain their freedom? Don’t you remember the raging, ripping hounds, the tear-gas and guns on people fighting their oppressors?

Don’t you remember history of oppressed people who for years fought under epic patience and death-defying grace to free themselves from wickedness in high places?

Did you forget the story of crusading students, the vigilant souls who risked their lives, the marchers who stood steadily and strong, the vocal leaders who called on God, justice, and commonsense in order to prevail over their oppressors? Do I need to remind you that it is better to be a live dog than a dead lion?

For your information, the history of oppressed people all over the world was written in the streets whereby their blood fertilized the fields of liberty and freedom before triumph glisters in the eyes of the parents and resounds in the laughter of their children.

There is nothing to be proud of in Nigeria. For 53 years it has remained a country of misery characterized by rainbow of misadventures. The citizens of a country blessed with the world’s most abundant resources live in one of the worst places on earth.

The political model of the presidential system is not working or better yet, the operators make it impossible to work. It’s a failure. It’s a tombstone. It’s a fragile foundation built on a corrupt and deceitful political model that doesn’t make sense.

There comes a time when oppressed people take to the streets when they were convinced that existing institutions and their functions only reinforced the status quo. Many rights have been won in democratic societies by means of courageous activism – the eight hour-day, votes for women, the right to sit at any lunch counter, the desegregation of schools, workers right to unionize, etc., not at the polls but in the streets.

The recent barbaric election fraud concocted, conducted, concealed, and carried out by the Kwara State Independent Electoral Commission (KWSIEC) in Offa Local Government Area of Kwara State tells me that the fire next time … history will be written in the streets not at the polls.

The PDP councilor Afolabi Jimoh confessed that the APC candidate won his ward. Jimoh who contested the Shawo Southwest Offa seat said KWSIEC was in error to have declared him the winner. He said as a Muslim and a faithful Offa indigene, he would not claim victory he did not win.

“I remain the authentic candidate of the PDP for Shawo Southwest Ward,” Jimoh tells stunned Nigerians. “I make bold to say that in all the eight polling units in my ward, the PDP lost that day.”

“As a son of this great town, I believe that in all that we do, we should know that we are going to account for them,” sounding more like a preacher than a politician, Jimoh scolds the election riggers. “I’m this wise. I’m not going to be a part to getting what is not mine from anybody,” Jimoh assures Nigerians.

Jimoh sheds more light on the day-light electoral fraud: “In all the eight polling units in my ward (Shawo Southwest) the PDP lost, while the APC won convincingly in all the polling unit in the rerun on August 31, 2013,” Jimoh explains. “I know well that the town stands for equity, and justice. “I know that we shall give account of all our action on this earth one day,” Jimoh reminds the shameless KWSIEC officials.

As if under grand jury investigation, Jimoh continues with his confession and full scale indictment of his party, PDP. Listen to him: “The people of Offa have said that they don’t want the PDP. It is clear that Offa people want the APC… It was a test for the PDP people to correct the wrongs they have been doing, which made the people to hate them.”

Election rigging and manipulation have become a permanent feature of our electoral process with little no consequences. Up till now, no one that I know of the KWSIEC officials has been sanctioned in any legal way. It’s business as usual.

The INEC chair, Attahiru Jega the Kano Professor is void of ideas and creativity of protection against such electoral frauds like the Offa brutal highjack of election results. The subversion of the electoral law in Offa is a very rich microcosm representative of 2015.

The Offa incident proved that the GEJ administration is working full throttle effort by arming and enabling the INEC with all the state apparatus needed to defraud and deny Nigerians of their votes come 2015.

Nigeria is a country of no laws, no courts, no policing, no leadership, where names of candidates who won elections are replaced with losers, where votes cast are more than registered voters, where election petitions and disputes are resolved long after the administration of the candidate who won by default is long ended.

How can we entrust our political destiny in the hands of INEC and other deluded twisted fantasy dreamers of “erotic triumphs”? Well then, the street is the last resort to settle the matter.

Part of the benefits of deliberative democracy is the impact demonstration has on direct action. Deliberative democracy such as street matches, boycotts, strikes, protests, picketing, etc., are activities that confront rather than engage in discussion with the government. It is not unusual therefore to see dialogue between critics and defenders rapidly deteriorated as each side becomes increasingly polemical.

Public protest and even violence in the politics of a nation do indicate that all is not well with the system. And Nigeria provides a textbook example of a country being governed by deaf, dumb, blind, and insensitive ruling class.

The elected representatives are the real enemies of our people. Of what use are the representatives who were elected to take care of the people but turned blind eyes to the suffering of the people?

Who are these people anyway? Who do they represent? Which civilization do they belong? The foundation and enduring mission of their representation is to devour the very sheep they are charged to protect. These representatives have no such guts and bravery to fight on behalf of the people.

Nigerians have lost confidence in the electoral process. Elections have no meaning in Nigeria. The people are regarded as dummies, treated like dummies, and the people behaved like dummies – 160 million of them.

It is petulant and pointless to hold 2015 elections because INEC is a puppet whose strings are being pulled by the PDP. The fire next time … not at the polls but in the streets!

I invite you to take an abbreviated tour of the poverty landscape in the country with me. Nigerian unskilled poor have exchanged rural poverty for even deeper miseries of the shanty-towns. They form the local core of local desperadoes with disaffection-filling movements.

The swelling urban mobs, abductors, rapists, kidnappers, and hired assassins in the ghastly alleys of Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Kano, Balyesa, etc., are unchecked, disregarded, left to grow and fester. There is enough explosive material to produce the fire next time …

Sectional rivalries, pluralistic and ethnic sentiments/prejudices are the root cause of humanitarian, political and economic motives that would make irrepressible conflict possible between oppression and freedom and a struggle for economic equity.

It is never the disasters you see coming that finally come to pass – it is the ones you don’t expect at all. That’s the fire next time … not at the polls but in the streets!

 

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