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OPINION: How to steal 2023 presidential election

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OPINION: Buhari’s presidency at Nigeria’s expense [1]

The auctioning of the presidential tickets of the erstwhile two dominant political parties in Nigeria, the ruling All Progressives Congress [APC] and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] was concluded last week Wednesday. When the PDP conducted its bazaar late in May, no report mentioned the use of Naira, Nigeria’s official legal tender, in the bribing of delegates. The preferred currency for the transactional primary was the United States Dollars.

A senior bank worker said that during that period his institution had to mobilize and mop up the dollars in all their branches in Abuja and adjoining states to meet the huge and urgent demands for the greenback by the desperate aspirants. The bidding war was palpable and the outcome shameful. The PDP ticket was ultimately but expectedly awarded to the aspirant with the deepest pocket and who was at home with paying to serve us. The APC, which is the ruling party, was reported to have used the power of incumbency, to lean on the Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC] to extend the time allowed the 18 registered political parties to elect and submit the names of their presidential flag bearers. By that action by the INEC, the APC bought itself an additional one week to sought its obviously troubled road to the primary election.

The auctioning of the PDP presidential ticket was a shame but that of the APC was vulgar and in your face. One media report had it that as much as 50,000 dollars was on offer for each of the delegates who were willing and committed to cast their lot with one of the leading aspirants. It was bribe money and no receipts are issued, so there is no evidence that this sickening amount was actually paid to any delegate. But the aspirant eventually won. And by a landslide. As was the case in the PDP primary election transaction so it was with that of the APC. In the case of the PDP bazaar, one of the erstwhile presidential aspirants with verifiable credibility, Mr. Peter Obi had to drop out of the race when he realized that the ticket would go to the highest bidder. He was proved right. In the APC, an aspirant Pastor Tunde Bakare who had months earlier told Nigerians that he would succeed Gen. Muhammadu Buhari as President, came out of the primary election with zero votes. He was not alone in scoring nought. Apparently smarting from his abysmal performance in the primary election Bakare said: ”I am happy that I have passed the test of character by not paying any delegate. I passed the test of courage by speaking the truth in the midst of wolves, and the test of conviction by standing true to my beliefs. Those who will make a difference must be different”.

It is true that we had said earlier that there was no evidence of buying and selling in the primaries of the PDP and the APC, but given what Bakare said, what more evidence do we need to establish that the APC presidential ticket went to the highest bidder? And that the contenders were wolves. Now that the two highest bidders in the hitherto two dominant parties, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (PDP) and Alhaji Ahmed Bola Tinubu (APC) have bought and pocketed the presidential tickets of their parties, their attention and those of their supporters have turned elsewhere- how to steal the 2023 election. And the fear of an election that could be stolen has not been assuaged by the demonstration of lack of spine and neutrality by the election management body. For instance, the INEC had insisted since January when it published the 2023 election schedule and timetable that the programmes were inviolable. It had said that no item in the timetable will be changed or adjusted because doing so would amount to changing the rules in the middle of the game. But that same INEC altered the timetable and changed the rules in the middle of the game, a move that favoured the ruling APC.

That was a glaring indication that Nigerians should trust the neutrality and firmness of the INEC at their own peril. While Nigerians grapple with the suspect neutrality of the INEC, the political bandits in the PDP and the APC are busy crafting and propagating the narratives that they expect would help them justify the stealing of the 2023 presidential election should either of the parties succeed in stealing the vote with the aid of INEC. The kernel of their story is that no other political party has the nationwide structure to win the presidency. They are struggling hard to make legend out of ‘structure’.

Political structures are essentially human beings and trusted allies. They are hell bent on making a myth out of ‘structure’. And the earlier they began the propaganda the better, they must have reasoned. They are obviously taking lessons from a book from elsewhere. Ahead of the 2020 election in the United States of America, the then president Donald Trump had said that he would win reelection and the only way he would lose was if the poll was rigged. He kept faith with the narrative without wavering.

Whenever he was interviewed by the media and he was asked if he would accept the outcome of the November 2020 election he had said he would only do so if he was declared the winner. However, after the election he was adjudged to have lost. True to his commitment he refused to accept the result of the election and has continued to claim the election was rigged in spite of evidence to the contrary. Trump’s refusal to accept defeat has further fractured America. The two gladiators of the PDP and APC in the 2023 election in Nigeria can be likened to Trump.

Abubakar and Tinubu and their supporters are already borrowing from the Trump playbook that Nigeria’s presidency is theirs for the taking. They cannot contemplate the scenario where neither of the presidential candidates of the APC and PDP would be declared losers in election. Their confidence is in their ‘structure’ and their war chest [read bribe] to buy their way to the seat of the President in the inner sanctum of Aso Rock Villa.

For Atiku and Tinubu, Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party [NNPP] is a local champion while Labour Party’s candidate, Peter Obi is a neophyte and a paper weight in the upcoming contest. Another gimmick of the APC and PDP in preparation to steal next year’s presidential election is to sow the myth that many young Nigerians, and indeed a sizable population of the older citizens, who have determined now like never before to take back their country are merely social media and Internet warriors who do not vote.

They deride the youths and mock them by saying that there are no polling booths in the Internet. It’s either these two political parties are not paying attention to the level of frustration and anger and hunger in this country or they are playing their usual game. I am minded to believe the latter. With the latter they would have a handle to claim that they were rigged out in the event of mass turnout of youths at the polling booths to such an extent to significantly swing the outcome of the election. The PDP candidate bought delegates while his counterpart in the APC took the absurdity to a higher level by buying both delegates and co-aspirants. They will come to buy you. Take their money because it is actually your money but vote them out. We can no longer afford to make the Presidential Villa a retirement home or a hospice.

AUTHOR: Ugo Onuoha…


Articles published in our Graffiti section are strictly the opinion of the writers and do not represent the views of Ripples Nigeria or its editorial stand.

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