Six days from today, Nigerians will go out in their numbers from where ever they reside to vote for who they want to be their president for the next four years.
They have been doing so since the return of democratic rule in 1999. But that of this year has raised the stakes and generated much interest and concern in and outside the country.
Whoever emerges as the president will steer the ship of state till 2019 when another election will hold.
On April 11, governorship and state House of Assembly polls will also hold. Regardless, all over the world, a presidential election attracts much attention because of the international image the winner radiates.
Since about four months ago when the Independent National electoral Commission (INEC) blew the whistle for campaigns open, political parties and their candidates have been traversing the nooks and crannies of the country soliciting support.
The parties have done relatively well in selling their candidates and their manifestoes. However, beyond the sloganeering lies the most fundamental issue of the future of Nigeria after the polls. That is where the electorate and their interest come in.
It is important Nigerians show more than a passing interest in this election by going out to cast their ballot if the future of the country and its teaming population already on a cascading lane must be secured.
What confounds about Nigerians is that though they claim to love, and crave for good governance anchored on democracy, they are yet to imbibe the global philosophy of democracy being about the people, for the people and by the people.
Over the years, they have assumed that democracy and good governance are what politicians give or are prepared to hand over to them. They stay with anything given to them by government officials at the federal, state and local government levels.
We bother little about holding those in government accountable not withstanding that our collective patrimony is with them, and by being nonchalant, we get tokenistic treatment; crumbs, as if they are doing us a favour. That is what we must change going forward.
The change the All Progressives congress (APC) is preaching does not excite me per se because the credentials of some of its leaders are not good enough to guarantee the type of change the country desires.
What fascinates me, however, is that this year’s election and the interest it has generated has the potential of making the people the king they ought to be in a democracy if they play their cards well.
We should use this election to cause real change in different areas of our life and that of our dear country.
Given the level of mass unemployment, impunity elevated to a religion everywhere by those in authority, greed of monumental proportions, corruption in high and low places, decayed infrastructure, religious intolerance, ethnic jingoism and parochialism, insecurity and a lot more, the electorate cannot run away from using this opportunity to help themselves.
We have had rulers and not leaders in this country. Isn’t it time we voted for leaders who are real leaders? In the Bible, we see how God raised leaders for the Israelites, and since God is still raising real leaders, nothing suggests He cannot raise the kind of leaders we desire using the electorate as instruments.
This is one country where in many states, governors lack the initiatives to better the lot of the people. They run to Abuja every month to collect allocation and whatever they are unable to do with it remains undone. Elected lawmakers know little about lawmaking? All are simply masters in political wheeling and dealing for selfish interest.
We should vote to change a system where ministers see themselves as above the law simply because they have stolen so much from the public till.
If the basic things of life like affordable hospitals, goad roads, schools, electricity, housing, drinking water, which are taken for granted in other parts of the world, including in countries that are less endowed than Nigeria, are regarded as luxury here, the electorate must vote to change the tide.
It is time to vote out lawlessness, impunity, brigandage, crime, highhandedness, laziness and other negative tendencies. We can change all that with our Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).
The INEC Chairman, Attahiru Jega, has pledged the readiness for the exercise this Saturday. “I have not seen any indication from anywhere that there is a desire for another postponement of this election. So we are all focused on March 29 and April 11,” he said.
“If people snatch card readers, it is sufficient grounds to cancel elections in those places …. Anyone who has registered and has a PVC will be allowed to vote …. We do have confidence that the card reader would be very good in curtailing electoral fraud. We are confidence in the card reader machines.”
There will be temptation to be used or induced by politicians and their parties to do the unimaginable on the day of election. Things like double voting, ballot snatching, thuggery.
Any act geared towards denying us the right to elect the leaders of our choice must be stoutly resisted. We must learn to ask them to get their children to lead in any act considered anti-thetical to good electoral conduct.
For our sanity, the sanity of Nigeria and its image, and the credibility of the poll, we must resist every temptation for violence, no matter who is stoking it.
Those being deceived by politicians angling for further postponement of the polls can rest be assured that the exercise will take place as planned with complete security in place as well, as Jega said.
The international community has invested resources for a successful and credible election, and it is keeping keen eye on all the participants, but more importantly, on the Nigerian electorate who will be largely blamed for the success or failure of the polls.
That much has been demonstrated by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, who said through his Under Secretary Political Department, Jeffrey Feltman: “I have had a series of meetings with political leaders, government leaders, civil society leaders and security officials.
“I have been reassured with what I have heard about the commitment of Nigerians to transparent, free, fair, credible democratic elections commitment to the March 28 elections. I have the commitment of Nigerian political leaders in the January Arusha Peace Accord.”
The time, therefore, has come for the electorate to play our own part as the kings of democracy.
