Editorial
PVCs in Lagos gutters: INEC must explain
Nigerians were assaulted again on Monday morning by a trending video of a man caught with dozens of Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs), he allegedly stashed away in a soakaway pit. The sight was anything less than gory. It was completely shocking.
Recall that this would not be the first time the public would be assailed by such a scandalous spectacle. It was the same thing in the morning of July 14. 2022, when residents of Rumuodara axis of Obio-Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State were confronted with sacks of PVCs, dumped inside a drainage system.
A conservative estimate of the number of the dumped cards, at Apa-Ogwu Estate in Rumuodara community, discovered while the residents were clearing the debris from the drainage, was put at about 10,000.
In that particular case, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) claimed it was investigating. If anything eventually came out of the investigation, assuming it has been concluded and the result released, few Nigerians seemed to know. In other words, that incident, remains a mystery to many Nigerians till date.
Now this! The latest development, where a man was seen pulling out tens of the PVCs, the only instrument, which by law qualifies voters to cast their ballots in next year’s crucial election, was reported to have taken place in the Oko Afo area of Lagos State, according to reports accompanying the video that has gone viral on social media.
The fact that this is coming less than three months before the general election, which is supposed to commence in February, makes it even more instructive, given the narrow and wider implications, especially with the feeling in some informed quarters that the said exercise could make or mar the country.
We at Whirlwindnews, must stress from the outset that INEC is solely responsible for the success and failure of the 2023 election. That responsibility can neither be shirked nor passed to any other person, group of persons, agency or group of agencies.
That is why the latest incident, must not be allowed to fade away or die a natural death. The stake is simply too high. In this regard, no amount of fine language must be allowed to explain the incident away. It bears repeating that the commission is charged with the responsibility of conducting general elections in Nigeria. No other person is so charged. So, Nigerians are not supposed to look elsewhere for explanation, but INEC.
There must be an official explanation for this development with cogent and verifiable reason(s), on why such a sensitive material should be found in the hands of private individuals, let alone in the gutters. It is simply unacceptable, especially for a country that is currently bleeding and has become visibly emaciated and anaemic from the impact of too much loss of blood and vital nutrients.
We have been told that PVCs are eternal. They do not expire. Meaning that even if their owners do not collect them, they remain there in the INEC vault. But assuming, but not conceding that they were occupying too much space and needed to be discarded, dumping them in gutters, does not represent the best option. The optics are completely uncanny, outlandish, eerie and unacceptable. Nothing could be further said to stress the point further.
It is even worse considering the various other revelations that have been put in the public domain of recent. Only a few days ago, another video of some people copying information from the same PVCs belonging to various prospective voters in Lagos State into their mobile phones, went trending. The commission, was quick to own up that the people in the said video were its staff and what they were doing was official and approved. Not a few Nigerians had their doubts, given the countenance of the so-called INEC staff, whose rather laissez faire attitude and arbitrary composure seemed to tell a different story.
By the way, was it not through the same INEC process that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Nigerians went to the registration centres for several days, weeks and months and returned empty handed without registering to vote? The only plausible explanation was that they ought not have waited till the last minute, as if anyone is reinventing the wheels, given that technology has made everything easier to make the process a walk-in-walk-out action.
Was it not the same commission that we heard infused their system with fictitious names, with males registered as females and foreigners registered as Nigerians? Was it not the same INEC that most recently, pushed out voters registers with pictures of children as young as six, only to hide in the torn and heavily-leaking canopy of its claims and objections provision, to push a duty that is supposed to be clearly its brief in the domain of Nigerians, who would now have to prove to them that the said images belong to children – something even imbeciles could spot with little stress?
These are clearly disturbing signals, which should worry every Nigerian compatriot. INEC must not be allowed to mess up the 2023 election. The result will be severe, if not fatal. There is no other way to achieve this than Nigerians, being on their toes. We must, as they say, shine our eyes to ensure that vested interests, to whom a credible election would be bad business and end to their notorious empires do not hijack the process.
Of course, listening to the leadership of the commission speak and give assurance that the election would be tamper-proof, Nigerians are supposed to go to sleep and even be comfortable enough to snore. But could anyone afford such luxury at this time? The answer is no! Therefore, eternal vigilance is the price we must pay for our liberty.
Yes! The leadership of INEC may mean well. They may have put mechanisms in place to achieve a foolproof outcome. But where there are some rats and cockroaches that are infecting and poisoning the process, as has become obvious, the result is predictable. These people must be visited with powerful pesticides. Authorities at INEC must not fall to the allure of the superlative results they achieved in the recent off-season elections in some states.
Expectedly, the evil forces, may have returned to their covens to conjure and wrought more devilish plots to skew the system, reason being that the 2023 election, which will produce the next President, is the real deal. Because of what is involved, they will readily cross the proverbial seven rivers and seven forests to get an antidote to the INEC process. They will hire experts at whatever cost, just to get their hands on the pie.
They must not be allowed to succeed. It is good news when INEC told the world that it is already dealing with some of its staff discovered to be the aforementioned rats and cockroaches. Of course, their sponsors are not expected to go to sleep on their matter. Influences would be thrown here and there. They may even break the banks to attempt to compromise the top echelon of the commission. The devil will be in how much such a move is allowed to succeed.
Ultimately, the commission must realise that the implication of allowing a crooked process is the impunity which has put Nigeria where it is today – a country flowing with milk and honey becoming the poverty capital of the world – where the owner of the latest car that has just been minted from Japan, must have to drive it through a muddy road to his house in Banana Island.
Nigerians must not only elect a new set of leaders by next year, including the President, but they must trust the process that produced them. The responsibility to do so lies with INEC. Luckily they now have a trustworthy instrument in the new laws backing that process. The move to achieving that ultimate goal, must start from telling Nigerians the owners of those PVCs and how they got into the gutters. Then other things will follow.
It began less than 10 minutes after taking the oath of office. In his address to the nation, he uttered those three-letter words – subsidy is gone. The ink with which he signed the documents declaring him President was yet to dry.
That was it. From that moment, Nigerians have known nothing but poverty, tears and death. It was a declaration that came out of impulse rather than articulacy. It was not even contained in his original speech prepared for the occasion. But it sprouted out – from a rash, unthinking and impetuous mental construct.
But the effect was instant, the impact direct. From that moment, Nigerians have never known peace. Every thing took a cue. Minutes after, the news broke that the price of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise known as petrol had jumped from N189 to N550. It was that instant. Today, it hovers around N1,500.
The effect: Within minutes, transportation cost quadrupled. So too, commodity prices. Caught unawares, marketers, who had earlier thought it was a day of the rains as customers rushed to their shops, soon became suspicious and then got wiser – these were not ordinary customers but smart alecs playing a fast one on them.
They stopped selling, retrieved the items they could from those who had not disappeared with their goods and closed shop to study the situation properly. Hours after, they responded. A plate of eba and soup, went up from N200 to N1,000. Prices hit the rooftops.
In fact, the vehicle transporting what used to be Nigeria, which had been moving at a horse and buggy pace in the days of Muhammadu Buhari, stopped abruptly, engaged the reverse gear and began galloping backwards. That has remained the ugly, parlous tale of the Tinubu days, since May 29, 2023.
Now, the expectation would be that the President and his government that wrought such a horrendous punishment on the polity, would themselves take some blows. But nada! Instead, the opposite was the case. Within months of plunging the citizens into the untold hardship Tinubu went on a binge, spending money – in the words of Olusegun Obasanjo, former President – like a drunken sailor.
Few weeks after, as Nigerians were reeling and gasping in pain from the impact of their new situation, 469 newly-minted Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), rolled out from factories in Japan, where they were produced into the premises of the National Assembly for the just inaugurated members.
Put the cost at N100billion – that is N160million for each unit, plus other charges. Reason: The lawmakers needed the vehicles because of their good suspension system, to navigate the so many bad roads in Nigeria. Yes, you heard right. How could they think well and make good laws after the hassles of the bad roads? Tinubu saw reasons, acquiesced and voila!
But it did not end there. Tinubu suddenly realised that Kashim Shettima, his deputy, needed a new home “befitting” his new office. Pronto! A voucher of N21billion was raised and he had it. Till date a haze still hovers over the project.
The last news that was heard was that Number Two refused to take residence because the entire environment, including the toilets was wired to the teeth to monitor him. And Number Two needed privacy.
Again, in the same weeks, Oga Patapata, also realised that Madam needed to transport more comfortably. Pronto! It was arranged. Another voucher was raised for cars for the Office of the First Lady. Cost N1.2billion. Of course, madam needed the comfort for peace at home.
Naturally, since transportation is not done by land alone, he also took care of that. For the sea, a yacht was procured. Cost N5billion. Because the birds in the presidential fleet were not good enough, Tinubu did the needful.
He enriched the fleet with the one befitting of his status and had it transformed to mimic the US Air Force One. To complete the status symbol project, he also added a replica of The Beast, the US presidential automobile.
Ironically, the funds used in procuring these luxury lifestyle, came, not out of productive ventures of Nigeria, but through borrowing. Today, Tinubu has practically borrowed Nigeria blind, doubling or even tripling that of his predecessors.
Meanwhile Nigerians had upped the ante from mere groaning and skreiching. Citizens, unable to take it anymore, now stop their hitherto sleek vehicles on the Third Mainland Bridge and plunge into the Lagos lagoon to end it all. The option is now more rampant than remote and occasional.
Many others, taking the Socrates option, now drink hemlock and many more simply sleep off without any intention of waking up. That is where we are. That is the new Nigeria – the Tinubu Nigeria. But there is more.
Terrorists and the landlords of the forest, having now discovered that the Commander-in-Chief has other fancies than security and welfare of the people – the constitutionally-declared primary purpose of government and scant regard for the citizens, have practically gone haywire. They have taken over and established their authority.
Presently, outside those wantonly slaughtered or butchered in their homes like animals at the abattoir, incinerated alive while sleeping on their beds, among other forms of decimation, many more citizens are now spending months, going to years as victims of captivity with them in various forests in Nigeria.
In their rampage, the terrorists have since broken all barriers considered out of place hitherto. One of their escapades is the present videos of the school children and teachers taken from Oyo State. The gory imagery captures the current Nigerian story.
For instance, on Thursday, just as the sound of heavy celebration was going on in neighbouring Ogun State as the world marked the Ojude Oba yearly carnival, two of the victims, one of them with a toddler on her back, were pleading for their lives, as others went through various forms of torture, including heavy whipping like beasts.
Don’t forget that the terrorists had earlier slaughtered one of their colleagues. In the new video, the totally terrified women, informed that they had chosen another victim to be similarly eliminated. Yet, no word about rescue! Terrible!
Interestingly, if not painfully, Tinubu’s response, in the few cases he bothered, was to see the crisis through the politics lens. His most recent reaction was to tell the world that the harvest of attacks and carnages ravaging the country, were sponsored by his political enemies, intent on shoving him out of power. That to him was all that mattered.
Now, where are your powers as C-in-C? They are mostly found in the most disgraceful economic and political acts of impunity. Nigerians now waking up to hear of the award of brain-dazing contracts such as the N15trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and Badagry-Maiduguri Highway – with scant regard for official regulations, is now becoming more common than rare.
Few days after one of the teachers was beheaded and the video of the hideous act made to circulate on the social media, the President and his All Progressives Congress (APC), party, rolled out the drums of his winning the party’s ticket to contest the 2027 presidential election.
To say that it has been three years of weeping, wailing, mourning and gnashing of the teeth, is a clear euphemism. There is no starker way of putting it than calamity – pure, unmitigated catastrophe – disaster.
Then comes the big question. Nigeria is already breasting the tape of these ruinous years of the first term. Suppose Tinubu succeeds in renewing his tenure by January next year? Will Nigeria survive five more years of a life like the last three? What will be left of Nigeria? Is there a way out, outside shouting – God forbid!?
Now that Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has fully executed his plot against Siminalayi Fubara, Governor of Rivers State, where would it be placed in terms of identity, nuances, ethos and history? Where would it be placed in democratic arrangement and value? In other word, by what name would it be called?
So, this is what President Bola Tinubu’s much-advertised democratic credentials is all about? This is what being listed among the arrowheads in the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), the body that fought relentlessly against the late Sani Abacha and his henchmen has finally come to?
Is this where “The Last Man Standing” – apologies Tony Elumelu – has ended up? So, after wedging an epic battle for and through Lagos State, against then President Obasanjo and practically defeating him, even if perceptibly, in all the struggles – such as running government without federal allocation for years and surviving the political onslaught that took away other South West states like a tsunami, it has come to this?
Don’t forget that it was this selfsame Tinubu that served as the bastion of opposition in Nigerian politics from when he was Governor of Lagos State, not only standing up against Obasanjo, but undertaking the relentless battles that led to the All Progressives Congress (APC), winning the war eventually in 2015.
So, this is what all the struggles, the speeches, the colloquia, the meetings and the strategies have come to – the end result? So, the definition of democracy, to Tinubu, is selling the dog to buy a monkey – replacing democratic bad-behaviour with democratic-heist? So, this is it?!
Make no mistake about it. What you saw play out in Rivers is nothing but Tinubu at work. It is all about him, it is for him. Never make the mistake of adorning Wike in the toga of a powerful man. That would be a fatal error of judgement. Every power he exercises, real, imagined, inferred or contingent belong to and are exclusive to Tinubu.
Take away the President and Wike would turn to a political meek-lamb or a jellyfish. Fubara would have eaten him for lunch a long time ago. So, Tinubu it is – the reason the klieglights must be beamed on him. That is why he must carry the can in this odious construct in Rivers in particular and the entire Nigerian political scenario in general.
With the picture that assaulted Nigeria regarding the APC primaries that have just held, what is different from the edition we saw in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of old? Is it not worse or the worst in real and imagined terms? What then has Tinubu been fighting all these years?
Incidentally, where we have Wike today, we had Lamidi Adedibu, the Amala Politics exponent, Tony Aneni of the Mr. Fix-it fame and the Uba brothers in Anambra to whom the political firmament in Nigeria once bowed, among many plethora of examples.
So, there is nothing really new about the development, but for the fresh dimension that has been introduced into the narrative by the Wike phenomenon, which is totally novel. Before now it was a case of one behemoth in a political party rampaging the system.
But today, it has gone beyond that. Wike has developed the penchant for taking no prisoners. In his own strange construct, he has now coalesced the entire APC and PDP structure into his shoulder basket, from where he dispenses favours.
Imagine Kingsley Chinda, purchasing APC governorship election form, as a PDP federal lawmaker without first resigning from his original party. That is how wacky it has become. Wackier still is that nobody – not even the APC apparatchik has been able to raise a finger. Why? Obvious answer – the Tinubu factor.
Now, here is the danger. By the heist in Port Harcourt adding to the sequence of political oddities and absurdities since the Tinubu years, it has become obvious that Nigeria is headed towards a Paul Biya’s Cameroun, a Yoweri Musaveni’s Uganda and Zimbabwe under the late Robert Mugabe.
Tinubu, has shown obvious incapacity to tackle the parlous economic crisis in the country with 150 million Nigerians plunged into multidimensional poverty and many more growing the list daily, while also displaying uncommon powerlessness towards addressing the debilitating state of insecurity.
Under his nose citizens are daily being forced from their homes into the forests by terrorists, with some of them taken from their crutching positions, positioned before the camera and slaughtered – heads cut off like animals at an abattoir and video images freely displayed on social media.
Yet, by what has now happened in Rivers State, it has become obvious that Nigerians are not being factored into the whole equation and if they were, scant regard is paid to their opinion, ending in their powerlessness to change the situation. That is the tragedy!
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