Welcome on board the new year of our Lord-2023. This is the day, the hour, the week, the month and the year the good Lord has made for us to rejoice and be glad in it. As people privileged to be alive, we must give God praise and thanks for His sufficient grace and mercies upon us all through the year. From January to December 2022, alot has happened and some incidents have consumed many people. To have survived the unprecedented and precarious insecurity, economic crisis, dynamic poverty, kidnappings, terrorism, floodings, misgovernance, etc is to thank God immensely. Many have died because they could not afford 500 naira to buy their daily medications for high blood pressure and many have died because they could not afford to know what is their medical problem. We are not more than those who have left, we are only lucky to be alive. Alot of people who started the previous year with us could not make it to yesterday being the last day of the year. Some even died minutes or seconds to the new year after every preparation for the celebration of the new year. Many things have happened to many people and none of us could explain. There is no one that is too big to die or too small to live. All of us are the same before the creator and none more important than the other. Whether you have mineynor not, occupying a position or not, it’s just a matter of God’s discretion to call or leave you.
So therefore, we must show gratitude to God for this kind gesture. We can only show this by loving ourselves and avoiding unnecessary bitterness towards on another. We must keep aside pettiness,envy, jealousy, malice, unforgiveness and anything that seeks to pull us down and embrace peace and love.
We have passed through alot in this country for us not to learn how to live in peace with one another. We were created with different ethnic, tribal and religious background for us to justify why we should have been created in the first place. God Almighty did that to see how we will conduct ourselves and whether we will show the difference as human beings. But we failed God in many ways and have disappointed Him severally. He is not man, but God who easily forgives when we realised our shortcomings and limitations. He has never refused to hear or forgives us and He has never punished us as we deserve because of His richness of love. So why can’t we do things differently to get His support, endorsement and blessings?
As we start the new year, I urge us to digest this simple but very important and fundamental message. We must resolved to practically and sincerely change our ways and actions. We must up our understanding and tolerance of one another to make our communities beautiful and peaceful, stable and prosperous.
As we face the transitional election come February 2023, we need to reflect on what we want and what we need as a people. We need to be deeply concerned about the leadership deficit in this country. Because every action and its outcome boils down to how leadership is driven, means that we must not play or take for granted leadership at this age and time. We have suffered severe outcomes due to bad leadership so therefore we must ensure that credibility, integrity, sound performance and compassionate guides our decisions.
At this stage, we must have decipher between good and bad people, those who are out to work and those who want to use the privilege positions to enrich themselves and look down on the people. There are those in positions of leadership today that are total regret to even those who voted them. There are those who have no respect for their people they were not voted into office, but were rigged and imposed. These category of persons have exposed their evil agenda in governance and need not come close to power again. We need Representatives who can respect the people regardless of their wealth and not those who got wealthy because of the people only to arrogantly reduce the people to nothing. Enough is enough to the wise.
Before I round up this new year column, I implore every registered voter in Nigeria to sit up and be vigilant. We must all collect our PVCs to enable us vote. We must vote wisely. The BVAS are in place to reduce or eleiminate any fraudulent irregularity and we must go and collect them to use on the election day.
2023: Fear Of BVAS, Beginning Of Wisdom
With increasing sensitization and enlightenment of voters by political parties and other civil society organizations towards political participation and the increasing rate at which voters are being registered, only hard work, lobby, ability to persuade can bring good results. A candidate can only be optimistic of winning elections if he or she is sure the people accepts him or her. No government can easily impose anyone any more. The old system of waiting in the wings and laying ambush at the collation centers to change or swap results of votes already casted at the polling units is no more. The anxiety and apprehension, insecurity and crisis associated with collation has been take off the shelve. The major work rests squarely at the polling units from where results are transmitted electronically into INEC server after the last person has casted his or her vote. By the new arrangement, counting of votes are done and the election results announced in the presence of everyone from where results are entered and transmitted. Even though there will still be manual copies of the results given to each participating political party, security agents and the INEC, the major development here is the immediate electronic transmission which was absent in previous exercises. In this way, everyone will see the result from all units as transmitted and monitored from the various situation rooms created by the different candidates, parties, security agents, observer and other monitoring groups. A situation where the ruling party connive with INEC to cancel results of opposition parties in some areas is now history. This level of electoral policing, checks and oversight has to a large extent, served as serious check against any electoral malpractice or fraud. It is an improvement that has been largely celebrated, though it wasn’t easy getting to this level.. Electoral criminals who cannot win elections through clean processes but rely on the old system to rig, can no longer be comfortable with the new system. The new tide is definitely against them. INEC must have taken into serious cognizance the possibility of criminal attempts at breaking the new processes and other technological manipulations and therefore put in place adequate safeguards that will make it very difficult and impossible.
Now that legal frameworks have been put in place to support the use of technology to make our elections more credible, it behoves on all democracy loving citizens to take advantage by mobilizing themselves to elect competent and good leaders for the purpose of good governance.
With the BVAS, incidences of manual accreditation and incident forms which has encouraged electoral fraud in the past will be no more. All results must be uploaded( transmitted electronically immediately voting is concluded) into INEC official website at the polling units before taking it to the ward, constituency ,LGA, state or collation centers. No more agreement between parties to share unused remaining ballot papers, no more massive thump printing and stuffing of ballot boxes. If you like, go and steal ballot boxes you are wasting your time. You cannot change the result. The people’s votes are now counting. But until you are registered and have your PVC, and until you go to the polling unit on election day to vote, this cannot happen. Elections have been made easier now with the new technological development. The security of sensitive materials and that of the votes have been taken care of, so we must all have our PVCs and vote. We now have the power in our hands to elect those we want and if we don’t do it, we should not complain again. Now that the power is in our hands, we must not play with it. Now that the system has taken care of all forms of manipulations to reduce fraudulent practices, it should be the voters joy to take advantage and do the right thing. People must wait at the polling unis to ensure that the exact results obtained are transmitted into the INEC server before leaving the premises. This is where fraud can take place under the new arrangement. Once results are fraudulently exchanged or swapped and transmitted, then it is recorded into the server and there is nothing one can do about it except going to court. If you allow that to happen so you can go to court, you may be shocked because of the nature of our judiciary. The recent Ekiti and Osun elections are excellent examples of BVAS. The results were generally accepted because everyone saw the processes. The issue of vote buying is next to be addressed. With continuous advancements ,time will come when one can vote from the comfort of his or her room, kitchen or toilet. For now, let us all get prepared as loyal citizens to do our part to vote for good candidates that will provide good governance and governance with integrity.
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