body-container-line-1
27.04.2011 Feature Article

OUR NYSC MARTYRS AND THE BRAVEST VOTERS

OUR NYSC MARTYRS AND THE BRAVEST VOTERS
27.04.2011 LISTEN

The right to vote our conscience can be taken for granted when you are in your neighborhoods or around people that have the same political views as we do. No matter who lost and who won, the sacrifice of our youths for the Country of their future cannot be quantified especially when facing hostilities in an unfamiliar environment. The reason they are posted out of their states is to get familiar with their countrymen in order to foster unity. They share more risk than those voting for unpopular candidates in their communities, but risk they all take.

It must be emphasized that this election is not the first time National Youth Service Corps members have been threatened or died in the line of duty. They face hostile environment whenever they leave mums and dads to start their own lives. So, some of them sacrificed their lives all over Nigeria. As we console their families and must compensate them generously, we must remember those that also lost their lives for no reason other than voting for an unpopular party in their areas.

This is not about how gruesome they die, their families suffer enough. It is how courageous but defenseless they were. They did not go outside their country to fight or impose democracy; they were enforcing and exercising that right at home. When people talk about freedom as not free, this may be what they mean. Some die so that the rest of us can enjoy that freedom to vote for whoever we want. Those that say Nigeria export what we do not have at home will now take out the freedom to vote in an election.

Those perpetrators behind the mayhem are still the same privileged few that refuse to give up exalted position and power. Nobody relinquished power voluntarily, we have to take it away from them. They will be brought to justice at some point and time but verily we say unto you, they know that their time is numbered. We must go to the source of fire using messengers to commit their atrocities. If the messengers are even eliminated, they will find others to do their dirty jobs. The wretch they visit onto their messengers is worse than their sins to others.

There are those that claim that until we passed the banner of democracy from one elected government to another, we have not entrenched freedom. We did that, however crooked. But power always stays in the hands of incumbent in Africa, they noticed. Well, until we passed power from the ruling government to an opposition in a fair and free election, without force as in Ivory Coast, our democracy is still not solid, they claimed.

We have to be careful how we go about our own way of freedom or democracy. Those they want us to copy have parties based or different ideologies. Sometimes we pay lip service to it in Africa and if foreigners do not like some African ideology they look for ways to overthrow that government as they did in Congo to Lumumba. But in most cases our parties are not based on ideologies, they are based most of the time on greed and many times on ethnicity. Realizing this, we agreed on at least two thirds of all the states, not a state, to win presidential election.

Before we go into two thirds of the states in Nigeria, we must tackle the notion of passing power from an incumbent to an opposition in a free and fair election. If all the parties are the same “you chop and I chop more”, passing the banner from one to the other does not change their ideology of greed. We have to look for other methods. In Nigeria, the best method, unlike other countries may be a clean up and take-over of the same parties by dedicated individuals. In fairness to Buhari, he was able to start CPC from scratch. In that case it becomes a party of an individual. We already have those and do not need more. As the party gets bigger than the founder, collective interest must surpass personal interest or insatiable pocket.

Without our youth coppers involvement in a big way in this election, many of us wonder if Jega can be everywhere at the same time to conduct a free and fair election. The involvement of our young men and women in a special way designed by Jega and his colleagues provided a cautious environment for a congenial election that prevented massive rigging compared to the past elections. These young men were so dedicated, after all, it is their country and their future. They use their magic phones to communicate results and trouble spots instantly. Election riggers and trouble makers could not stomach their vigilance, so they snuffed lives out of some of them. It was a callous and dastardly act that kin brothers and sisters ashamed, condemned.

Many of us think it is because the youth coppers do not belong, and rightly so because they did not grow up in those communities. However, what about their own kin and blood with the same religion within the same compounds they slaughtered for voting for candidates they do not like. These are not infidels, they are not kaferi and they still vote for presidential candidates outside their areas. Fortunately, it happened across the land, North and South. All we have to do is look closely at the areas that gave a couple of the presidential candidates a geographical spread outside their home base.

Unlike the map we see dividing us into North and South, let us look at what the framers of two thirds want. Starting from the North, Ebele was able to carry more than twenty five percent in in about 31 out of 36 the states. Some are: Gombe – Buhari 60% Ebele 38%; Kebbi – Buhari 54% Ebele 40%; Adamawa – Ebele 56% Buhari 38%; Jigawa – Buhari 58% Ebele 37%; Katsina - Buhari home 71% Ebele 26%; Zamfara - Buhari 66% Ebele 25%; Niger - Buhari 64% Ebele 32%; Plateau - Ebele 73% Buhari 25%; Kaduna - Buhari 51% Ebele 46%; Nazarawa - Ebele 59% Buhari 40% and Sokoto itself – Buhari 59% Ebele 34%. Many of them voted for Ebele at the risk of their lives.

In the West we see Ribadu that could not get his home state catching more than twenty-five percent outside. Oyo – Ebele 56% Ribadu 29%; Ekiti Ebele 52% Ribadu 47%; and Osun – Ribadu 58% Ebele 37%. Of course those states that were far out were not included because the point that we are still one and the same Country is more pronounced in the states highlighted. The credit must be shared with most of the individuals in all states that made this election possible as free and fair without the interpretation of the Supreme Court. If nobody did, Praise Nigeria!

body-container-line