The Nation Newspaper

Tag: ballot box

  • Man shot dead, while attempting to highjack ballot box

    One person was shot dead by security agents in Jos, the Plateau State capital, during the election yesterday.

    The victim, whose identity cannot be immediately ascertained, was suspected to be on a mission to disrupt voting process and snatch ballot box from a polling unit at Alikazaure, Jos North local government of Plateau.

    An eye witness who is one of the domestic observers at the polling unit said, “The guy came to the polling unit to make trouble, he was trying to create a chaotic scene while the voting was going on. I saw the security agents warn him twice not to cause any commotion, but the boy did not listen. He later turned on the police, and was shot while attempting to attack them in their vehicle.”

    His shooting did not, however, disrupt the voting, as voters on the queue continued to cast their votes after the incident.

    Aside that lone incident, the election was, however, generally peaceful in Plateau State.

    The killing was confirmed by the Special Task Force (STF) on Jos crisis.

  • Three dead as Soldiers chase ballot box snatchers

    No fewer than three persons were feared dead and scores wounded in a ghastly motor accident in Imo State Saturday as elections were going on across the state.

    The incident which happened at Okwele in Onuimo Council Area of the State, according to an eyewitness account, occurred when a take-off bus conveying hoodlums who were snatching ballot boxes in the area, somersaulted while trying to escape from Soldiers who gave them a hot chase.

    According to the source, “on sighting the Army vehicle, the hoodlums accelerated their speed, while the Army vehicle, apparently suspecting a foul play, gave them a hot chase. Suddenly we heard a loud sound and the bus somersaulted severally”.

    Meanwhile efforts to confirm the incident were not successful as the Police Public Relations Officer, (PPRO), Andrew Enwerem, could not be reached on his cell phone.

    But a reliable source in the Army, who pleaded anonymity, said the Soldiers on election duty were chasing the thugs when the accident occurred.

  • Thugs snatch ballot box at Dankwambo’s polling unit

    Thugs suspected to be working for the ruling People Democratic Party (PDP) in Gombe state Saturday snatched one of the ballot boxes at Shehu Manzo 005 polling unit in Gombe metropolis where Governor Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo’s casted his vote following apparent indication of President Jonathan’s failure at the unit.

    It was gathered that the thugs were aided by armed policemen men on patrol in the polling unit area after observing from the tune of the counting that the result may not favour PDP’s presidential candidate.

    Before then, votes for the Senate and House of representatives were already counted and the All progressive Congress (APC) candidates won both.

    Nasiru Shehu Ali Sidi Manzo, an eye witness said they noticed thugs patrolling the area and reported to policemen on patrol that thugs were disrupting the peaceful conduct of voting at the polling unit, but were ignored by the police.

    “We are aware of plans to destabilise the smooth conduct of the voting at this polling unit because APC is going to win but we ignored the rumour.

    “So, on sighting the thugs carrying all sorts of weapons, voters started running away but that did not deter us. Some people remain and chase them away.

    “After the voting when counting started and APC was leading, suddenly the policemen tear-gassed the area and forced the electoral officials into their vehicle,” said Manzo, APC’s agent at the polling unit.

    He said APC scored 303 votes, while PDP 88 and three invalid votes were recorded for the Gombe/Funakaye/Kwami constituency Federal House of Representative election.

    He said APC recorded 394 votes against PDP’s 92 with 2 invalids were recorded in the Gombe North Senatorial District election.

    He said the thugs assisted by the police came when counting of the votes for the presidential election started at the polling unit and snatched the box.

    When contacted the police spokesman DSP Fwaje Atajiri, dismissed the allegation saying that it was the work of mischief makers who only wanted to cause trouble.

    The Gombe state Resident Electoral Commissioner, Barrister Kashim Gaidam said they were investigating the case and will address the press after their investigation.

  • In March…

    • (Youth and the ballot box)

    We say because we belong to the divide that everybody calls “have-nots,” there is nothing we could do to have our say and actualise it. We do not belong to the “have-nots.” Do we?

    If we do, then let me make good to say that promising as we are touted to be, our promise has been tainted by perversion and shame. Our songs of hope are tainted by defeat and our most promising image is yet ravaged and austere.

    For we have become unfaithful to a land that gave us life and sustains it, still. The hope we know still prospers as eternal defeatism – for we remain unfaithful to a land devoid of catastrophe and hopelessness save that which we have learnt to visit upon it, from our fathers.

    Our best years hardly lie ahead. Perhaps they do. Who knows…the hopelessness we swore to diminish may finally disappear. Our best years may truly lie ahead, if we could squeeze the juice of youth to nourish atrophy.

    Today, a wonderful thing is happening to you and me. The chance we seek has landed within our reach. It had always been within reach, we have only been too cowardly to seize it.

    Juvenile as we are, in character and mind; we get to enjoy such wonderful chances to play adult, again. How responsible shall we be, as adults? Such rare opportunity which we get to rekindle starlight in our darksome skies hardly presents itself in several nations of the freeborn.

    This March, shall we dispense our mandate as the freeborn who do not know how to be free? Shall we resort to genocide and war as our neighbours for whom the bullet resounds more than a thousand votes? Shall we turn our neighbourhoods and public parks to theatres of devastation and the grotesque?

    Or shall we dispense our affairs as ones who have learnt, finally, the wisdom in diligence and unselfishness? Shall this be the moment we get to put a lie to every manner of delinquency and hideousness that have been ascribed to us? Is this the epoch of the Nigerian youth?

    It is. This is the moment in which we scorn the platitudes and benevolence of insufferable godfathers. This is the moment in which we court the bounteousness of hope astride the prick of faith. This is the moment in which we get to lead by our votes.

    By our votes, we could get to choose the leader with a will to truly serve. By our votes, we could begin to unlearn every perfidy that we have learnt…we could unschool our hearts of the hypocrisy that drives us to beatify shams and delusions as the soundest of truths while we canonise reality as the genesis of farce.

    By our votes, we could end our sojourn on the roads where our heartfelt hopes lay famished. It’s time we acknowledged that we had never known better. It’s time we cast our votes like ones who truly know better.

    By our votes, we could choose our preferred candidate in the light of our most pressing goals, the possibilities of projecting them in time and achieving them via conscious and concerted efforts. One man to a vote, we could subject every platitude and cheap-talk to the scrutiny of exhaustive retrospection and candour.

    We could show predators we ennobled with power that we shan’t be taken by their promises of free meals, free amenities and infrastructure anymore. We could help them to understand that we understand that in the normal conditions of existence, there is hardly any free meal.

    We could tell them that it is the duty of every elected representative to provide among other things; good roads and electricity, security and a stable economy; for we do pay for them – quite painfully too. That is why they deplete our income by tax.

    By our votes, we could substantiate the arguments we espouse. We could breathe life into the most brilliant chapters of Karl Marx and like the late philosopher and economist, illumine the agonies of the working class.

    Every man to his vote, we could command the workings of politics and materialism beyond feckless excitation and sham-talk. By our votes, we could propound that timeless political philosophy we never had.

    This is the moment in which we actualise the success of a mass revolution, the triumph of the bread lines and the re-emerging middle class. This is the moment in which we put lie to the claim that the bread lines are incapable of determining society by themselves.

    This is the moment in which we defy the enticement of deep-pockets and their bromated loaves, cudgels, clubs and hard currencies.

    It would simply not do to explode in rant and idle cynicism anymore. It would no longer do to detonate in gripe and over-celebrated soapboxes. We owe it to ourselves to survive self-destruct by ideals much better than those our modern statesmen extract from impotent arsenals of misinterpreted politics and dogma.

    This is the time to cast our votes in revolution predicated on the satisfaction of basic necessities: bread for the hungry, land for the peasants and peace to end the barbarism of the privileged few breaking our virgin foals roughshod.

    Revolutions are born because spirited patriots decide to react. Then it spreads like wildfire in harmattan to incite the guts of latent spirits. This time around, let it excite the conscience of even the most treacherous citizen.

    Today, our talk is of Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari. There is nothing to be said, at this point in time. The hour of decision has stolen on us. Let us now elect the one whose appreciation of our relative realities in the light of that which seems unknowable and irresolvable seems incontestable.

    Let us now give our mandate to the candidate whose philosophy of governance repudiates and sufficiently resolves the predicament of those whose plight the State is incapable of improving – beyond time-worn rhetoric that it is socio-politically incorrect for such unquenchable terror to exist.

    Shall we now appoint the one whose evaluation and projection of our given concretes unlike the other contestants’ exacts the most probable if not practicable outcomes in the throes of ruthlessly objective and rational processes of thought and actions.

    Let us now elect the one capable of standing unbending before the interminable storm of our brutishness and impatience even while we pick him apart. Let us elect the one capable of repair in wisdom and action even as he braves the savagery of impatient citizenry and self-styled activists.

    Let him be the one whose blueprint for the provision and sustenance of good roads, electricity, standard health care and security, stable economy and quality education among others revalidates our hope in the supremacy of democratic ethos we are yet to enshrine.

    This is the moment in which we cast our votes with faith…faith in the ballot process, democracy and State. Let him be the one whose soul we have endeavoured to explore that we may be capable of trust.

    Bet you will claim you have found the candidate of such principle, depth and character. Who? We shall get the type of government that we deserve.