Gov. Wike’s policy leads to the new rigging strategy of the 2023 election

According to reports from some Nigerian newspapers, Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike’s employment policy has been currently turned to another dangerous devised method of influencing voters - that is well coded away from the eyes of vote rigging suspects - by politicians. The tactic is very attractive and irresistible to politicians that many of them especially the governors have already swiftly switched and adopted the strategy for the 2023 election.

Since the old system of vote buying seems very difficult for the 2023 general election because of the redesigning policy of naira and its scarcity, some Nigerian governors have deployed massive employment of citizens as another weapon for vote buying, reports Vanguard.

It was reported that many state governors have employed thousands and millions of Nigerians with PVCs as aides with the interior motive of using the employment as a trap to cage them and win elections by making them cast their votes for them or to their anointed ones. In the report of Vanguard headlined, “Vote-Buying: Politicians plot new strategies to bypass cash crunch”, it was alleged that Gov. Wike “recently, appointed over 200,000 special political appointees and placed them on a monthly allowance of N30,000 to N50,000.” What does Gov. Wike need over 200,000 political appointments for when he is about to leave office?

This deceptive employment method in the myopic views of these political desperados will still give them the same desired results they would have gotten if they had shared money, rice, tomatoes, onions and sachets of garri etc. to voters for their votes. Sadly, the report also has it that some of these people employed were getting meager N10,000 naira monthly, and that there were plans already to disengage some of them after the 2023 election.

This is not smartness but cruelty – a very dangerous and devilish game. Because of the high level of poverty in Nigeria and the gullibility of many Nigerians, this gimmick is capable of keeping us for a very long time again under the grip and the control of these same bunches of heartless and desperate politicians as their hewers of wood and drawers of water, if we do not resist it now.

“Wike appointed 200,000 aides. We are doing a similar thing on a larger scale. We mobilised over one million people for the voter registration and ensured they got their PVCs. The 2023 elections will be different from past elections because of the BVAS and redesigning of the naira. In the past, an officer in charge of some polling units in a Ward may be given N500,000 or one million nairas. From the money, he will take care of agents of the other parties, security agents and INEC officials and we will take charge of the process.

“With BVAS, things have changed. But we are politicians and we know how to play the game. We have mobilized real people, real voters, up to one million in some LGAs. We have started giving them allowances of N10,000 every month and it will continue till the end of the election. We transfer the money into their bank accounts,” reported Vanguard. What a country!

The redesigning of naira policy has now changed the criminal method of winning elections in Nigeria through vote buying or giving tomatoes, sachets of garri, empty promises and bags of rice et cetera to deceptive employment by some Nigerian governors as a means of rigging. I advise Nigerians to please accept these jobs but vote according to their conscience during the time of voting.

If we are not careful in handling this plot, Nigeria will sink deeper. In a situation where a state government employed more than two million new workers, and made sure that they got PVCs, and perhaps such state has about three to four million registered voters, it means that that state is already in the pocket of that state government.

Uzoma Ahamefule, a concerned patriotic citizen and a refined African traditionalist, writes from Vienna, Austria

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