I willfully accept the risks associated with advancing an ideological position from what many may interpret as conscious panelbeating of a battered opportunity to gain or political advantage. But I will not, for the sake of self-serving “personal correctness” discountenance an opportunity to highlight germane issues of our political evolution as a people. I have therefore elected to pen these thoughts with hopes that the minutes it takes to read them may yield for us a better nation.
The 2019 General Elections have been archived in Nigeria now as a further reflection of the deplorable collective state of the Nigerian people. In a nation with over 882 million registered voters, the combination of votes, supposedly won by the announced winner and runner-up stands at about 28.5%. This translates to President Buhari being only able to secure around 17% of the total, eligible votes available for determining who would be president.
The unmistakable revelation of those percentages is that the electoral process is non-representative at present. What we have at best is a quasi-democracy, sonambulating indecisively on uncertainty and providing grand cover for the concealed weaknesses of the human prongs of electoral victories in Nigeria.
If Lagos State has a tally of 6.5M voters and the PDP and APC scored under 1M in the totality of votes cast, can the parties be said to be active and actual representative democracies? If more than 5M eligible persons preferred to honour an unproclaimed sit-at-home over stepping out to vote, shall we, by any stretch claim that our leaders are truly representatives of the people?
Lokoja in Kogi State has a long history of national prominence. It was once home to the leadership of White colonialists who inhabited our land. And while it plays a hugely significant role in that epoch of entrenched human domination of humans, very little can be said to have changed in almost 60 years of Lokoja in Nigeria today. It could, perhaps be a stint of fate, that the elections in Kogi are now off-cycle, removed from the mainstream calendar in order to provide a window for re-caliberating preponderant socio-infirmities of the Nigerian state with eyes on the ignoble outcomes that have been recklessly registered by parties in other parts of Nigeria.
Shall we not seek aggregated measures to correct the flawed claims of ‘Representative’ by persons who do not control up to 30% of eligible votes at elections? Will we not lead the charge to employ what I call “creative socio-political activism” to force an ideological re-direction of Kogi through the ballot?
There are around 1.6M registered voters in Kogi. Shall we not seize the inherent opportunities of November to make a statement about #TRUE Representative Leadership by getting lackadaisical, indifferent voters out on election day to exercise their rights?
Getting it right in Kogi has symbolic capacity to actively re-direct Nigeria to sustainable prosperity and to be home to happier, more fulfilled citizens. We should not allow holders of only 25% of eligible voters beat down our resolve for point-able growth and development for another 4 years again.
We are to clearly become Kogites in my opinion to permeate the minds of the people and to re-shape them along lines of our ethos as a movement.
The next, most viable electoral window for TAKE IT BACK is Kogi State. We must not let that chance slip. Our party, the AAC remains the only one with demonstrated capacity to provide standardized political engagement pre-election and post election and so must be advanced exponentially – and in every wise. An electoral victory will sound the real drums of freedom from concentrated and historical oppression.
It is only impossible to poor students of History but we live in full recognition of the inevitable reconfiguration of Nigeria for the better – whether anybody likes it or not.
LET US TAKE KOGI BACK.
– Oluwole Aguda, a gubernatorial aspirant with the African Action Congress (AAC) in Kogi, writes from Lokoja.
