THIS is the fourth time that I have written on this same subject, civic incompetence and danger of complacency even as we lament daily about the illusion called ‘dividends of democracy.’ I have written and spoken to this same theme under different titles. One of the titles has been on the danger of ignoring PVC as a weapon of mass destruction of corrupt leadership. I have had to return to this same subject at this time because we are on the march again.
The race for 2027 has even taken the steam out of the need to protect the people who should vote in 2027. What is urgent is this: understanding the times. Yes, a time to understand that we should not bow to the shenanigans and peccadilloes of the our dealers, sorry leaders, currently distracting us from paying attention to what we need to do to take back our country through #Project 2027.
In the next ten months, we will certainly face the consequences of our electoral choices. And here exactly is the thing, unless we wake up now from our usual complacency, after the 2027 elections, we may return to reading from another book of lamentation. Yes, we have been complaining about the 16 years that the locusts ate through the PDP from 1999-2015.
We may be lamenting at the moment that the last ten years under the ruling APC have been unspeakably harrowing. We may have been wondering why democracy hasn’t delivered much good to us other than some form of freedom in the last 27 years. We can justifiably claim that democracy has become less participatory since 1999 with poor voter turnout even in off-season elections.
Fellow Nigerians, this isn’t a time for questions and lamentation. Let me restate this: lamentation isn’t a strategy for change. This time of anomie is indeed a time for actionable reflection on where the rain actually began and the rainmakers. It isn’t a time for complacency, the artful enemies of democracy want to use against our great country again. It is a time to look out for our voter cards or register for new ones. Yes, get ready to look for where we can vote again if we want democracy to work for our common good.
Lest we forget, this is not a time to ask why a section of the country isn’t lamenting over collection of PVCs while a section is agonising over difficulties in registering and collecting. We may not want to ask now why political leaders and politicians who are feeding fat from our complacency aren’t mobilising people to register to vote and keep their cards for elections.
And so before we rush to the media after the next elections to shake the tables about how INEC allegedly manipulated the elections and how some powerful forces destroyed the opposition parties to achieve that, let the people, especially the youths heed the call made by INEC the other day that they should take advantage of a new window for registration to possess voter cards.
Let’s encourage ourselves in the new call. An ancient word warns us that if we consider the weather, we will not sow. Let’s not sit down without considering the danger of assumptions that INEC Chairman has concluded the 2027 elections outcome because of his current challenge with ADC leadership tussle. Yes, Let us defeat the congenital election riggers who have brought reproach to our country through rigged leadership recruitment processes.
First, let us defeat these powerful vote buyers and sellers by conquering voter apathy, a deadly malaise power mongers would readily celebrate.
It is a time for participation. Please, don’t sell your PVC. Don’t destroy your PVC because of the present state of the nation. Some evil people who want our sufferings to continue are already buying PVCs for #Project 2027. It is evil but note the immediate consequence of your complacency: the buyers in your area know that they just want to kill support for your preferred candidates. They can’t use your PVC to vote in the real sense of it. Let’s consider the following data to galvanise ourselves to action on the power that PVCs can give or lose.
Whopping 6.7 million PVCs were not collected across 17 states and the nation’s capital as of January 4, 2023. With about five weeks before the presidential/National Assembly ballots on February 25. This is a huge figure. As of December 29, 2022, estimated 1,693,963 PVCs remained uncollected in Lagos State alone. PVC collection suffered a similar fate in other states.
It was gratifying to note then that some people in Lagos were even paying to collect their PVCs at the time, just to defeat self-disenfranchisement. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had then opened the collection windows on December 12. That exercise was rounded off on January 22. As INEC was reiterating then, any registrant without PVC would not be allowed to vote in the 2023 polls, as only the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) would be used.
Let’s refocus on our data board: For 2023, INEC’s register contained 93.4 million names, up from the 82.3 million in 2019. Many did not collect their PVCs then. The outcome was that just 28.6 million or 35 per cent voted in the 2019 presidential election. Interpretation: The percentage (35%) means that the 2019 winner of the presidential election was not truly representative of the whole voters. Researchers have established that apart from Zimbabwe’s 1996 presidential ballot that recorded a voter turnout of 32.3 per cent, Nigeria’s 2019 presidential election is the second lowest in recent elections in Africa. That trend trumped the 2020’s off-season National Assembly and Governorship elections. Among others, the Lagos East senatorial election scored a turnout of 10 per cent in 2020.
This dismal trend was also at play in the governorship ballot in Edo State in 2020, which recorded a turnout of 24.22 per cent; the Ondo governorship polls (2020) had 31.6 per cent voter turnout; Anambra in November 2021 recorded 10.38 per cent; Ekiti State in June 2022 had 36.5 per cent; and Osun State in July 2022 recorded 42.16 per cent. The recent Area Council election in Abuja reportedly recorded 7.5% voter turnout. This is tainting our democracy.
Would you remember the outcome of the 2023 presidential election in this same Lagos where some unknown registrants were paying to collect their PVCs? It was official: the current President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the man called Mr. Lagos didn’t win presidential election (in Lagos) where Labour Party defeated him. He also didn’t win in the nation’s capital, Abuja. This same INEC conducted the elections in Lagos and Abuja in 2023. Before I hear your scream that Citizen Amupitan has already written the 2027 elections result and kept them in Black Scorpion Nyesom’s armoured safe in London, let’s defeat voter apathy first.
As I have done several times here, I would like to join concerned citizens in encouraging the young ones, who are angry with the present ruling class and the power elite in the country to organise instead of agonising. I have been reading some views of some young Nigerians who daily haul insults at some elders who dare to accuse them of lack of organisational ability in their quest for change. I would like to appeal to the angry elders too on the need to spare the rods against the youth at this time for some specific reasons. One, I believe that some of our youths too have been remarkably inspired by so many unethical behaviours they have found in us, (their elders).
Therefore, instead of castigating our young ones as worthless, we should advise them to come out of the social media cocoon, and fight to register and collect their voter cards. We need to tell them about the power they have to change their present condition through their PVCs. The young unemployed graduates need to know that poor and clueless political leadership that enhances poverty in the land begins with election processes. And the only specific exercise that can change that is participation (in the processes). They also need to know that the powers that have held Nigeria down, stunted our growth would not want to encourage them to vote. They know how they have been winning elections without votes.
That is why they don’t want electronic voting, real time transmission of results and their concomitant gains.
This is a time to mobilise all the good people of Nigeria who have not been spoilt by the sustainable prejudices – to adopt many young Nigerians into collecting vital data about this country that needs urgent redemption. This is a time to know that social media noises don’t deliver victory to preferred candidates. That is again why the youth should come out of their shell, collect their ‘weapons of mass destruction’ called PVCs to vote out all these workers of iniquity including most of the audacious scoundrels in the nation’s parliament.
Our younger ones need to understand that it isn’t only the presidential and governorship elections that matter. The most important institution in any democracy is the parliament. That is where the power to check executive rascality and excesses resides. That is also where the treasury can be safeguarded for the common good.
We shouldn’t have a mindset that it won’t be easy to displace a ruthless political class in a country whose oil(y) corporation has produced so many wealthy men without work. We should believe that it is possible to overthrow them through a free and fair election we should fight for. The clarion call is: don’t be afraid of their ‘war chest’ (their big election budget). Your PVCs, which are more powerful, shall make a way for us. We need to heed the warning of U.S former President Barack Obama that, “elections have consequences”.
But the young and good but complacent people should note that this is not a time to denounce the country and its electoral processes that have discouraged millions of voters. This is why the locusts always returned to eat our future.
Therefore, here is the real thing: those who have not obtained their permanent voter cards after registering should stop complaining: They should obtain their PVCs today as the bombs we need early next year to blast our heartless rulers out of power. But what we should wear as a badge of honour now is the nugget below, which trended across platforms in June 2022. God bless the author I don’t know.
“Your PVC is not just a means of identity to open new bank account. It is actually a priceless weapon that you must use to fight for your life. Therefore, create time to visit the INEC office in your location, register and collect your card. Hurry now, obtain your PVC today and begin to see it as a powerful tool that must be used. If you are too busy to register or too big to vote, just remember that you are not too big to be ruled by thugs…”
This is what we should cast on a marble at home from today. Let’s stop lamenting and note that there are no polling stations on Twitter, Facebook, Tik-Tok, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc, lest we will regret our complacency the day after May 29, 2027.
- Oloja is former editor of The Guardian newspaper and his column, Inside Stuff, runs on the back page of the newspaper on Sunday. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Monday.