By Hope O’Rukevbe EGHAGHA
Aboki: The temperature of politicians and the tempo of politics are rising so fast! Meetings and counter-meetings are taking place all day and all night across the country. Fake news is being planted on different sites. People are jostling to be invited to meetings and parties, wedding parties, funeral parties, and remembrance parties! It is when a man suddenly remembers his father who died forty years ago and invites party loyalists to come and chop!
Rukevbe: In all of this, where are the people?
Orezi: It’s like that all over the world. Meetings to outsmart opponents. Meetings to plan rigging strategy. Meetings to fool the public. Meetings to raise funds. Funds are very crucial to electioneering. During elections, funds flow freely, even from contestants who are known to have Aradite fingers!
Aboki: Because Abubakar Atiku has been highly critical of the BAT administration, they have dug out the corruption allegations files against him.
Orezi: Yes o. They want him to be occupied with the EFCC till the elections are over. OBJ perfected that strategy! El Rufai has been silenced for now, courtesy of ICPC. Trump is trumping that card too in America. Politicians all over the world, like commercial sex workers, operate with the same code!
Isi: I don’t think politicians in Europe and America plan how to rig elections. That seems to be the forte of African politicians.
Orezi: Don’t be too sure. You should ask Donald Trump about stolen elections!
Isi: Not even of the claims by Trump has been substantiated in any court of law. It has been on allegations on social media.
Chidi: The fact that it is plausible and possible to accuse someone of a stolen mandate in America is the juice of the matter for me. Perhaps their own methods are sophisticated and only a sophisticated mind like Trump’s can fathom its nuances!
Aboki: The mere fact that allegation can come up in the US speaks volumes!
Rukevbe: In all of this, where are the people?
Orezi: Please say something else. Let us discuss our feverish elections.
Rukevbe: I ask for the umpteenth time, where are the people?
Chidi: The people are not feverish at all about the forthcoming elections. They seem to be emotionally detached from the whole thing. They are more interested in bread-and-butter issues than who to vote for. They know those whom they shouldn’t vote for. That is the only certainty. But that could change before elections when they are induced with rice and cash!
Isi: How can an unpopular party win an election? This for me, is the real issue. A party that has been associated with untold hardship in the last three odd years is campaigning seriously about staying in office. Food prices are out of reach. Cost of transportation is killing. The cost of living as they say is killing the living. Yet, the president and presidential candidate is claiming that days of prosperity are here.
Chidi: The president’s strategy is to use the state governors into whose hands and pockets he has pumped in billions of naira. The state governors are the chief agents of the APC in the states. That is the reason they want all state governors to align with the APC. As you know, you can’t rig an election if you don’t have an agent on the ground. The APC knows that the policies of the Tinubu administration are not popular with the people. Some state governors are popular or have the machine on the ground to muscle their way to victory.
Rukevbe: I ask again and again: where are the people?
Orezi: The controllers of the world economy are happy with the president of Nigeria. He disappeared for three weeks in Europe. Do you think he was simply eating French fries and chicken wings? I daresay that they would look the other way if the elections are compromised. The IMF and the World Bank have come out blazing something about not restoring petroleum subsidies.
Chidi: This is why I get angry with some of our public affairs analysts. How can you spue such nonsense from your mouth that the IMF approves of Mr. President’s policies? Who are they? How? Why? Are they at the receiving end of terrible policies? Even the military dictator with President as title Ibrahim Babangida pretended about it all by calling for a debate. He did. Tinubu has done no such thing. As far as he is concerned, he is doing well by Nigerians though they don’t appreciate it for now. Take it or leave it. I don’t really care! I know what I am doing. Miserable Nigerians do not understand. That’s the body language. I am the master. I know what they don’t know.
Rukevbe: Where are the people in all of this?
Orezi: The people? How do they count? Why should they count? They are like the plebeians in Shakespeare’s drama world. They are ‘hard hearts’, ‘cruel men of Rome’, ‘worse than senseless things and ready to flow with the last idea! Our citizens are fickle. In Julius Caesar, the ‘plebeians cheers Caesar one minute, Brutus the next, then Antony whips them into a murderous riot with one speech. In Coriolanus, the citizens are ungrateful, cowardly, and unable to govern themselves.
Rukevbe: Their votes are supposed to count!
Chidi: Do votes really count in America, the so-called bastion of democracy? Does the Electoral Collage system not annul the power of individual votes? In their very odd system, you can garner 350million popular votes and lose the election to a candidate who won 300 million votes because of the Electoral College system. Hillary Clinton got more votes than Donald Trump in 2016, but Trump was declared winner. Indeed, Clinton scored 65,853,514 votes (48.2%) while Trump recorded 62,984,828 (46.1%). It is said that it was the 5th time in American history that a candidate won the popular vote but lost the presidency.
Rukevbe: For real? Where is the place of the real people?
Chidi: Good question; good, good question! In the Bush-Al Gore election, did the system not rig out Al Gore who got the popular votes? Come on. It’s true. Bush became president because of Florida and subsequently led the country into the disaster of 9/11!
Orezi: Our state governors are emperors in their home states. They can do and undo. Has any sitting governor ever lost an election? No.
Chidi: Yes. Many times. In 2022, incumbent Gboyega Oyetola lost to Ademola Adeleke in Osun. In 2019, Mohammed Abubakar of Bauchi state lost to PDP Bala Mohammed. In what has been described as the 2003 South-west wipe out, President Obasanjo used the federal might and all five AD governors lost.
Orezi: The Economist magazine has said that ‘Nigerians dislike their president, but may re-elect him anyway. The magazine hinges its arguments on five structural reasons: a divided opposition, incumbency advantage, religion, political cynicism, and a low turnout’.
Aboki: This is the work of a spin-doctor! They are preparing our minds for a rigged outcome!
Chidi: To complicate matters the more, President Tinubu has said that though he is the presidential candidate, he is going to depend on proxies to do the leg work for him. He says he cannot physically reach the voting public as he did in the past. Let me quote him in full. While inaugurating the Campaign Council, Tinubu said: you have warned me and asked me not to allow the rigour of the campaign to distract me from governance. I hear you. I am in full agreement with your decision. I will still make out time to speak directly with Nigerians, even as you lead the campaign in the states and local government areas. So, you will excuse me from going everywhere with you! End of quote!
Rukevbe: Hmmm! For real? He is preparing us for a no-show. He is not as strong as he was in 2023. The first time I saw Awo was when he came to Sapele by helicopter to campaign. Zik came too. But with each candidate and the passing of time, the strength to do physical visits has diminished.
Aboki: Whatever the reason or excuse, I smell a rat!
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