Opinion

Ordinarily, the postponement by a week of Nigeria’s 2019 general election should not have generated as much outrage as it has done, but the protest that the postponement has attracted is positive proof of the fact that the Nigerian electorate do not trust the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The postponement of the 2019 general election by one week — even if by one day — is yet another spectacular testament to the pathological incompetence ruining our country. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) told us a million times that it was ready for the elections.

On Saturday, February 16, 2019, you will, once again, be called upon to choose the leaders who will pilot the affairs of our great nation for the next four years. This is a constitutional right which should be freely exercised by all eligible voters.

One foreign newspaper said Nigerians have to choose between a former dictator and an alleged kleptocrat. Another one, The Guardian of London, was not so diplomatic. It said Nigerians have to decide between “a stingy rightwing dictator and an established thief.”

I’d never had the head for figures. In fact, the enmity between me and mathematics was so bad that if you gave me a bottle, and you asked me to use the bottom to write the letter ‘o,’ it may likely come out as ‘p’ or ‘q,’ or even something more catastrophic.

On February 16th, Nigeria will hold a general election. Four years ago, the country experienced its first democratic transfer of power to the opposition since 1999. The vote in a few days will be no less significant.

The above quote is probably synonymous with the popular definition of insanity as “the continuous repetition of the same process with the same wrong results, and still expect a positive difference at each turn.”

A few weeks to the general election, Ezekwesili woke up marketing the illusion that she was “Esther”; the destined liberator of Nigerians. She claimed she was running for president under the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN).

At this rate, President Muhammadu Buhari may beat former military President General Ibrahim Babangida to the record of collecting the most abusive letters from a former president.

How could anyone, regardless of their political leaning, justify the slip up of presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party and former Vice President, Abubakar Atiku, on Saturday?

One of the most worrying developments in Nigeria today is the ugly phenomenon of cash-for-votes by political parties and candidates. Desperate politicians are not leaving any stone unturned in order to ensure their victory at the coming 2019 general elections.

“Buhari is sick in the spirit, body and soul. Let’s beg him to go and rest…Let’s give chance to another person” – Olusegun Obasanjo, January 21, 2019.

Democracy becomes a sham if elections are carried out by people who should be impartial and neutral umpires, but who show no integrity, acting with blatant partiality, duplicity and imbecility. For all democrats and those carrying out the process of elections, there must be the redline that must not be crossed in tactics and practices of democracy.

If you are a lover of competitive democracy, you must have been worried by the pronouncements and demeanour of Alhaji Lai Mohammed, minister of information, on Friday. Lai, speaking in a very bitter tone, told State House correspondents that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), could spend as much time as he wanted in the US but he would be quizzed on his return over his role in the collapse of Bank PHB

I am sure you have noticed that “money is not flowing” this season as it did in 2015 when there was a blizzard of dollars.

I once had a taste of political violence during the 2015 Presidential campaigns. In Bauchi, our convoy was stoned. In Katsina, restless youths wielding stones and long sticks threatened to attack us. It didn’t matter that it was a Presidential convoy. But nothing in those two places is comparable to what I experienced in Sagamu, Ogun State on Sunday, January 13.

Get this straight: Atiku Abubakar will lose the presidential election on February 16. I’m not Rev. Father Ejike Mbaka or one of the tongue-in-cheek seers whose predictions you’ll be struggling to figure out after dropping your offering in the bag at midnight of December 31.

“Bandits” have emerged as the new bogeyman for insecurity in Nigeria, joining a long (and still growing list) that includes Boko Haram, cultists, herdsmen, kidnappers and militants.