It may sound like a joke, but remember that jokes by the Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear, turned out to be truths that were mistakenly ignored by King Lear, but not without some devastating consequences.
In the July 23 edition of the Nation, Mohammed Haruna wrote in his column (back page) what some people may want to dismiss as a joke. But it is a joke serious enough to warrant our unalloyed attention. Please hear this about the just concluded Ekiti governorship election. “200,000 ballot papers thumb printed in Abj, CBN Abj conveyed to CBN Ado-Ekiti, CBN Ado-Ekiti to some selected commercial banks, some selected commercial banks to some party leaders in Ekiti land, party leaders to some ward leaders, ward leaders to 10 women per polling unit…… Each woman with 10 already in her body, they pick one each and drop 11 in the ballot box where they are bought agents”. This may look like a fantastic joke, but it is a joke worth courting. It needs a thorough investigation from its very root (considering the fact that another election will take place in Osun State on August 9, 2014). For those who may want to dismiss this as a joke, hear what Mohammed Haruna said about what Major-General IBM Haruna once said: “anytime anyone tells you something is impossible in Nigeria, consider it done”.
The second issue that might have played out very well in Ekiti election of “stomach infrastructure” is scientific rigging. Rumours had it that ballot papers were cloned or designed in such a way that once you thumb print on the ballot papers for APC and fold it, the thumb print on the APC ballot paper transfers automatically to PDP thumb print and pronto the thumb print on APC in the ballot paper disappears only to reappear on the ballot paper of the PDP. Now, for the layman, this is impossible, and even unimaginable, forgetting that science is a product of man’s imagination that is behind scientific intelligence which gave birth to science and technology. For those who may not want to believe this, we refer them again to IBM Haruna’s statement above. It may be you are not aware of technological wonders. You may be dressed originally in an agbada outfit but technology can, without your knowing, robe you in an academic gown, or make you look like half human and half animal, leaving your head and face as you are, but decking the remaining part of your body in the like of a horse with its prominent tail. The lesson here is that voters should not fold their ballot papers when casting their votes this time around.
Let us wager then, that the alleged second rigging device (and even the first) may be true for, in believing in and acting on it, we have everything to gain, as we would have prevented possible rigging by not folding our ballot papers before we drop them in the ballot boxes. On the other hand, and just in case the allegation is untrue, we still have nothing to lose by doing the same thing. Therefore, we should wager that the allegation is possibly true for, by not believing in it, we have everything to lose. The exercise is our maximization of expected utility of the outcome of our decision to fold or not the ballot papers. What is important is that we should not take things for granted in this country.
The question now is: can we say that these diabolical two rigging devices had been tested with great successes in Ekiti state, only waiting to be repeated in Osun and later at the 2015 general elections? If this is the case, then we may say a permanent goodbye to free and fair elections and, consequently, democracy in Nigeria. After the Ekiti election where Fayose was made to beat the incumbent governor in all the 16 local governments – an incredible feat, perhaps out of the ordinary – subsequent elections might be similarly programmed to such an incredible extent that PDP would be made to win all the 36 states of the federation, including the FCT, and people like Gen. Buhari programmed to lose in his own backyard, his vote having been replaced with an already thumb printed one, or scientifically transferred to that of the PDP. All this may sound like conjectures or scientific fiction, but philosophers and scientists know very well that all scientific knowledge is conjectural knowledge, and scientific fiction translatable into reality. I must say that from these two rigging devices may be deduced an infinite number of other rigging devices that offer attractive possibilities to the master riggers, like orchestrated disenfranchisement of voters by means of late arrival and inadequate voting materials in areas where APC is strong, like it happened in Anambra State, and also the case of military and fierce security operatives to facilitate and provide a cove-up for perpetrating, with impunity, the two alleged rigging devices as mentioned above. So, Nigerians and, especially the APC, should wake up from their dogmatic slumber and begin to shine their eyes very well, first at the forthcoming governorship election in Osun State, and second at the subsequent general elections in February 2015.
Last Lines
E e mo wo’lu (Evil spirits have entered the town). These were the words of an elderly man in Osogbo when a convoy of about 50 vehicles of Military and Security Operatives, with some of the men masked, stormed Osogbo on Wednesday, 30 July, 2014, sporadically shooting into the innocent air in a show of federal might, trying to intimidate and frighten Osun people as if to force them to surrender, like in a war situation. It was like a military siege and very much like the Boko Haram insurgents’ seige of Nigeria under the watchful eyes of the Federal Government which should have deployed the military and security operatives to Sambisa forest rather than to Osun State where they are neither needed nor invited. Yet, Nigeria has a democratic constitution with a National Assembly and Judiciary as the other organs of government which look on while the Executive over-runs a nation state with reckless impunity. If the federal government hoped that the deployment of intimidating soldiers was a rehearsal of what to expect on August 9, they were disappointed, for the exercise backfired, as it exposed the desperation of the PDP to win elections at all cost, and as a do-or-die affair. Against the presence of the intimidating number of the military which was well reinforced by some other Contingents of Military and Security Operatives from the Department of State Security Service (DSS) in Osogbo, people just laughed and watched, unimpressed and unperturbed. Rather than being frightened, the people demonstrated their annoyance by raining curses and abuses on “the perpetrators of this evil”. Remarkably interesting was the drama that unfolded when people responded to the sporadic shootings into the air with intermittent shouts of “APC! APC!! APC!!!”. They did this by also raising up their hands to make the Awo victory sign “V” with two fingers. Surely, the Security Operatives did not expect or like what they saw, and must have come to terms with the reality – the fact that Osun is not Ekiti State. in the final analysis, this ugly and primitive scenario might have done a great damage to the PDP’s image, as the annoyed people swore to PROTEST the ugly show of federal might or power (which they saw as powerless power) through their votes, come August 9 and even thereafter.
