In Nigeria, the ritual of elections has too often resembled a theatre of shadows, where the choreography of democracy is enacted without the substance of choice. The Independent National Electoral Commission, popularly abbreviated as INEC, is increasingly rebranded in the street’s cruel pun as “Eye-Neck,” for it is believed that votes are counted not with impartial eyes but with necks twisted toward the interests of the powerful. Thus, before ballots are cast in 2027, the haunting question resounds: is Nigeria condemned to another selection masquerading as an election?
The cynicism is not without ancestry. From the annulled verdict of June 12, 1993, to the fractured arithmetic of 2023, the Nigerian electorate has been tutored in betrayal. Promises of transparency dissolve into thickets of litigation, while the will of the people is transfigured into the convenience of the ruling cabal. As Tacitus lamented of Rome, “They make a desert and call it peace.” Here, elites manufacture a parody of legitimacy and christen it democracy.
Yet elections are the ritual heartbeats of republican existence. When they are hollowed, nations descend into the fatalism of despair. Nigeria’s political class treats the vote not as a covenant but as a commodity, to be purchased, distorted, or discarded at whim. The result is an electorate trapped in Hobbes’s grim circle—expecting disappointment and yet compelled to participate, lest silence be mistaken for consent. In this grim cycle, the INEC of Nigeria has become both arbiter and accused, both umpire and undertaker.
One need not search far for metaphors. The Nigerian ballot resembles a mirage in the Sahel: shimmering with promise from afar but evaporating when grasped. Or perhaps it is closer to the Greek myth of Sisyphus—citizens straining to push the boulder of democracy uphill, only for it to tumble back under the gravity of fraud and impunity. Each cycle, hope is announced with clarion calls; each cycle, despair returns with mocking laughter.
Rarely has sovereignty appeared so fragile. For when the custodians of the vote are suspected of partiality, the very architecture of the republic trembles. Edmund Burke warned that “Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.” INEC, by its actions and inactions, now teeters dangerously between the grandeur of promise and the abyss of perfidy.
The tragedy is not merely institutional but existential. In the streets of Kogi, Lagos, Enugu, and Maiduguri, ordinary citizens no longer debate manifestos but survival. Elections, once imagined as ladders of renewal, have degenerated into carnivals of cynicism. The vote, once sacred, has become banal. And still, the nation marches, weary yet restless, toward 2027.
Thus the question stands, sharp as a blade upon the national conscience: will 2027 redeem democracy or merely recycle deception? Will Nigerians finally witness an election, or once again endure a hollow selection? And in the final accounting, when history inscribes its verdict, will the name be INEC—or Eye-Neck?
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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