The much feared presidential election has come and gone, and so have most of our trepidations. I tell you, so grave were the fears that I heard that many people abandoned their jobs and took to their heels in the direction of their villages. Naaah, many did not go ‘home to vote because that is where they registered’ as they wanted us to believe. They went ‘homewards’ because they did not want to be surprised by any breakout! I tell you, the fear of election violence is the beginning of….
Anyway, I did not go ‘homewards’. I stayed bravely under the blankets. That’s the kind of courage that cowardice gives you. I thought, if anything would happen, at least, it should meet me in great comfort.
However, I had a change of heart midmorning. So, I donned my canvas shoes (for a swift get away), light handbag (for phone, keys and lunch) and my thumb and pointing finger (for voting, of course!). THAT DAY, I FINALLY UNDERSTOOD WHY MY FOURTH FINGER IS ALSO CALLED THE WARNING FINGER. I USED IT TO WARN THE FELLOW I VOTED FOR.
By the time I got to my polling unit, I found that I was among the last to arrive. Actually, I was the last to arrive. The scene I beheld was chaotic. There were people seated. There were people standing. There were those seated and shouting or standing and shouting. And then, there were those who were quiet. I joined the standing and shouting ones. Those ones were safer. After a while, I was given a number on the queue that was closer to #1,000 than #1. What is this?, I thought. It looked bad for me. Every candidate had a higher probability of being voted than I had of voting.
I looked around me at the shouting faces, sitting faces, grumbling faces and debated with myself just what I should do. Hope and pray that someone along the line would lose their ability to count and jump from calling #10 to #500 suddenly? It could happen, but not in Nigeria, I decided. Nigerians are very sharp on the matter of their rights though rather dull on their obligations. Someone read my thoughts and came over to me with a proposition. He had finished using his number and had voted. Would I care to use it again?
O TEMPTATION! O MORES! MORE DEBATES WITH MYSELF. I DECLINED THE OFFER AND GENTLY TOLD HIM I WAS BORN TO SUFFER ON NIGERIAN QUEUES. Besides, how did he come to have voted so soon, I asked him? He came early, he said. Besides, the queues were moving fast. Wonderful. This was clearly a departure from the 2015 election experience. Reader, if you remember I told you that my voting experience in 2015 was a mini-practice of how many of us would shove and push to enter hell. I was shoved and pushed around like hell then. This time, there was only queueing. How INEC has grown, I mused aloud.
‘What growth are you talking about?’, hissed one woman behind me on the queue. ‘Is this how to conduct an election, putting people under the sun for a whole day in these days of technological advancement? In many countries now,’ she paused for breath, ‘people sit in the comfort of their homes and receive the voting papers by email. They fill out the forms and send them back by email. God forbid that we should make progress in Nigeria,’ she finished. ‘Ah, I think they’re afraid of this problem of hacking’, put in someone else, a man. He had a knowledgeable face. ‘Don’t even think about surface mail, with our post office the way it is… But these desperate people… Imagine, because of voting, we now have a public holiday.’
‘Desperate or not, holiday or not, now they are making people suffer for no reason,’ returned the aggrieved lady. ‘If they used electronics, would they now be carrying ballot boxes up and down? Would anyone even be snatching ballot boxes, not to talk of losing their lives? I beg, let me hear talk,’ she finished, like a conqueror who had finished and decapitated her foes and had them all lying at her feet, lifeless. After her barrage, we did feel lifeless for a while before we continued enjoying the hot sun under whose hospitality we were forced to take cover. No shoving, no pushing, not in my polling unit at least.
Nevertheless, I was still flummoxed by a few things when it came to my turn. First, I was attended to by some young people whose sense of the awesomeness of the positions they were in quite overwhelmed them. To start with, here they were, just fresh out of school and parental dependency, not more than a few months into adulthood, now being asked to exercise power over the very people who ordered them around just ‘yesterday’. Naturally, it went into a few of those tiny heads and made some of them to deign to shout at us. We laughed, and endured.
When it came to my turn, surprise, my name was on the register. That’s one hurdle gone then, I thought. The card reader however took one look at my PVC and crossed its arms and refused to work forthwith, even though it had been working before. I tried to introduce myself to it but it pretended deafness and refused to read my card.
In exasperation, the lady at the desk said they would have to accredit me manually. Was I ready? I showed her my thumb! She brought out her books, found my name and asked me to thumb print across it. After I had done that, she noted how finely I had done the thumb printing. I told her it had taken years of practice: when you read all kinds of handwritings from your students, you learn to use your thumb to straighten out words!
Anyway, the entire exercise in my unit cost me no more than three hours, some hot sun, some walking up and down, some queueing and a little bit of annoyance – no one served any drinks. It was later I learnt that in some polling unit somewhere in Lagos, some citizens had thoughtfully turned the exercise into a picnic and had brought coolers of drinks, snacks and picnic tables to the event. Oh yes, they made an event of the matter all right. I had only one thought for them: why on earth was my name not transferred to that polling unit?
Seriously, everyone around me just wanted to vote and go home. All the novelty that made us stand on the line from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. in 2015 had worn off. In its place in 2019 was tiredness and a certain ennui born of the realization that the people we were queueing for had been given preferential treatment in their own polling units and were resting in their own houses.
No one thought of snatching any ballot box, what with an armed policeman prowling all around us anyway. I imagined that the policeman could very well have been the one who said the words in a text someone sent to me: ‘I don’t have the power of forgiveness. Only God can forgive a ballot box snatcher. My only duty is to arrange their meeting.’
Anyway, I left the unit when I finished voting. Some people stayed back. I was told those were the ones who wanted to make sure their votes counted by counting their votes. Me, I took my thumb home for some needed rest. After all, 2023 is just around the corner.