Republic of Failed Elections, By Tony Afejuku
POLITICS DIGEST – I am not too sure if my present title fits exactly what it exactly wants to say. But I will stick to it.
Never have we been confronted with the electoral realities or electoral fictions under our country’s electoral umpires. Never were we as electorate freer than the electorate and electoral umpires that General Olusegun Obasanjo handed us in 1979. Yet everywhere today we seem not to be better than captives who cannot enjoy any form of electoral joy. And even as ruthless and mirthless as General Abacha was, we never witnessed in our polity what we have been witnessing since GMB became our political helmsman two times consecutively. We may not be in the wrong to call him our country’s most unpopular political helmsman regardless of his being put where he is now by the Living Spiritual Masters for a purpose: the sole purpose of punishing us severely and severely for our transgressions of yesterday and of long before yesterday. But, spiritually speaking, it is better to be a victim than to be a victimizer.
As he is being used to whip us to follow the path we don’t want to follow, so, at the appointed time, will he equally be whipped punitively for his punishment of all of us and of our country, no matter what we do – or do not do willingly or unwillingly or joylessly. This is an unfailing spiritual law that never ever fails. The punisher can also never escape punishment. Never!
But let me now leave the spiritual plane and enter the hectares of politics where we are reminded every now and then that we are a banal people who must be treated to the full banally.
The often atrocious circumstances of our elections at whatever level announce and underline how truly and tragically banal we are as a people and as a country. Our elections and the politics and intrigues that inspire them every now and then, and which ultimately influence their outcomes and results make it impossible for us to have successful declarations of them by our electoral umpires.
Stories of unbearable, heartrending electoral situations which have become known and recorded as our human condition are rife in the land. Without an ounce of exaggeration, more than several of them have been inked in a candid, unvarnished way that can register in the consciousness of many as our lot, our unmistakable destiny. And when contestants who fail and wobble in our elections, eventually wobble to the court, the fundamental meaning of their wobbling court movements and its symbols stares at us in its true banal reality.
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From the court of first instance or of first hearing thence to the appeal court and thenceforward to the Supreme Court, as the case and situation may demand, we see the vile, insipid pictures and photographs of judges, electoral umpires and our oppressors who often are electoral contestants in our dreary land of certificate forgers and of certificate-less leaders and rulers.
The Imo State gubernatorial case of former Governor Emeka Ihedioha and the present governor, Senator Hope Uzodinma is a worthy example to cite. It does not matter to me if the two gubernatorial gladiators sweat it out to the end of time – after all the two politicians are of the same class of oppressors – but what matters to me which must matter to you as well is this: will the apex court that nullified Ihedioha’s election take a new dose of aspirin capsule to revive its failing (or failed) heart yet to cease permanently and now see clearly, impartially, fairly, firmly and independently and restore Ihedioha to his gubernatorial hectare of space? Will the apex court re-declare and re-instate Ihedioha as the Governor of Imo State in view of alleged “fresh facts” that have “showed that Governor Uzodinma of the All Progressive Congress, APC, did not score 25 percent of votes cast in at least 18 of the 27 local councils (two-thirds) required to be declared governor contrary to the ruling of the Supreme Court”? (See Tuesday Vanguard) of February 18, 2020, page 15). Where these “fresh facts” came from we can consign to the algebra or arithmetic of conjecture. But I know as a factual fact as well as mathematical fact that Professor Francis Otunta, Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Agriculture, Umudike in Abia State, who was Imo State’s returning officer, is a mathematician of note.
In fact, he is a high flying elite mathematician who knows and understands perfectly the nitty-gritty and rigours of his discipline. He will rather die than be toyed with banally by Imo State’s oppressive, cruel and conscienceless politicians.
Professor Otunta would not have announced an incorrect mathematical figure that did not give victory to the victor in terms of valid total majority votes and two-thirds (25 percent) spread in at least 18 of the 24 local councils in Imo State. But because ours is a republic of anything goes, because ours is a republic of failed elections and of failed electoral umpires as well as of conscienceless, pre- and post-election judges, who truly can resist the forces, internal and external, that boundlessly have the right of the wrong on their side? This is not a mere rhetorical question.
To answer it a-right we must form a Resistance Brigade. Are you ready to enlist? But you must note this if your answer is yes: all politicians are useful only to their self-interests, or, better, most politicians are useful only where and when their interests count profitably. Always are they willingly ready to assassinate legitimacy for legality. Our apex court judges have seemingly joined them. They are becoming their fellow assassination bugs of our republic. But the Living Spiritual Masters who see what we don’t see and who know what we don’t know will sooner than later fumigate all of the questionable ones out of the hectares of our judiciary unfailingly. DON’T ASK ME HOW I KNOW THIS. May the blessings be! Peace profound.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
