In the last 48 hours reports from around the country pointed to a couple of violence and disruption of elections. It is that bad. Every election cycle one holds on to a highly elusive hope that the balloting will come and go without any major incident, even if there may be, not the one that leads to death. This year, it has been ugly. We still have the governorship election to go next week, perhaps after that we can all sit down to talk. But for now, the concern is to ensure that what happened over the weekend do not repeat itself next week.
The most disgusting sight was when I saw a member of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC lie dead. She was cold and lost forever. This was a hope for her family. Who knows what the future held for her and what she thought of it? Who knows her story and all the trials and tribulations? Who knows what she or her friends or her family have endured to see her graduate? But on one of her best moments, serving her motherland she was caught by the evil of hatred and bullets of our political ambitions. She is no more. But the elections go on anyway. Without her but with the burden of her soul which honestly should not rest in peace. How we contrive these things and move on baffles me. But we are yet to know the circumstances and the details. But mourn, we must.
Rivers has been melting pot of bitterness since 1999. Perhaps I should be a bit kind, even in the second Republic, politician’s generated animosities that led to deaths-even of politicians. So. The altercations in the oil-rich state is an old tactic. What has changed is the numbers. Too many people keep dying in avoidable circumstances. It is pathetic. And after every election the politicians there dust off and move on as if nothing happened. But what is troubling is how the people follow them, excuse all excesses as though they were nothing. The pain in the hearts of the people in Rivers is deep. What they are pained about are ego and the resources of the land. For me, I think that state needs a rebirth. But the question is who will bell the cat?
There is also Bayelsa, the sister state to Rivers always suffer these millings. Just like Rivers, there are too many gangs. These gangs are fed by petro-dollars. They are used as thugs for good or for ill. They cause mayhem at polling units in the morning, turn to armed militants in the afternoon and kidnappers at night. The politicians know these facts, instead of looking forward to end it, they rather adopt factions to fund. It’s a pity. We also have them in Delta. On the eve of the election, a pickup van loaded with different categories of explosives was intercepted in Delta. Only God knows where those materials were headed to.
In terms of numbers, there was less killings during the weekend’s elections than the 2015 presidential election. But we cannot continue to draw equivalence, especially numbers about death. It’s a morbid pastime. Yet, it is what it is. Heard an army officer lost his life too, so did a former local government area boss and a couple of others. I’m equally aware of the situation in Lagos where it was said that a ballot bag snatcher was stoned to death. It turned out that the man didn’t die, but he was seriously injured. The incident has generated intense ethnic bent. This is so because the area of Lagos where the incident occurred is dominated by folks from a section of the country. The would be box arsonist was initially thought to be from another section. Well, it turns out, the alleged arsonist is actually from the same section as the offended.
There were a few other skirmishes at some parts of the country, but I am more gutted by the death of people. The essence of election or democracy in general is the acceptance of modernity and elevation of the human mind to personal choice and order. When we kill or do something that leads to death on a day to celebrate freedom, then we talk in vain those of us who pretend to be purveyors of democratic freedom in every form. It is a shameful serious blight that we must bear until we see our reality and combine to find solutions to it.
As we await the official results from the polls of last weekend, this is an opportune time to begin to define what should be important to us as a people. We can’t afford a retrogression to the stone ages. This time, security agencies may have been overzealous in some instances, but the greater blame reside with the people. I saw a video in parts of Rivers showing community thugs engaging law enforcement agents in shoot outs. That is not bravery. That is bunkum. Wherever, the means of coercion lie in the hands of non state actors or where these non state actors willfully engage authorised persons in war of attrition, that society is walking towards Golgotha.
It may look smart to bystanders; the down side is what we see today in Borno and Yobe states. Playing politics with non state actors with guns will normally lead to gang wars with all its accompanying underbellies. None of the political clans or factions in Rivers can claim innocence. This piece isn’t also about abetting or excusing anyone. Rivers state and Nigerians need to have an open conversation about the gangs of Rivers. The blood can’t continue to flow while we move on like everything is fine. Rivers needs to quit this thug mentality, it has so much to add to the country socially, economically and otherwise.
