Howsoever one chooses to look at this matter, it is certain that our Nigerian politicians don’t rig elections. Neither does INEC, the Independent National Electoral Commission, entrusted with the task of managing federal and state elections in Nigeria. We the people do it for them.
Neither the politician nor their party agents rig. Agents observe and countersign what voters stuff in the ballot boxes, as counted by those entrusted with the authority. Nigeria invests INEC with this authority. But it outsources the primary task of capturing votes cast to our youths on national service.
You may argue that the politician and his agent ae complicit because they plan the rigging. It is a fact that they do not directly execute their plans. We perform the dirty deed, we the people selected from the population on whom politicians inflict maximum suffering. Yes, we know ourselves, those of us who conduct this murky task for the politicos?
We are police officers whom INEC and the law invest with implicit trust during election cycles. Any election result we push forward is more acceptable in the eyes of the law than those of party agents. Some of us collude with party agents to alter the results. It does not matter that we perform a thankless job – protecting citizens while enjoying a dehumanizing welfare system. We wait for each election cycle to collect crumbs from the masters’ fat corruption tables. We thereafter return to our beats to plan more citizen extortion to augment our meagre incomes. Corrupt politicos we empower force us to live below the poverty line, but we repeatedly empower them at election time.
We are also military officers. When candidates of a ruling government are in deep trouble, they commission us to forcibly disorganize the process. We collaborate with them to organize an outcome that disrespects the wishes of the people. And we enforce a different outcome from what the people wanted, using our guns and uniform. Like the police, we perform a thankless job, a job for which we sign our own death warrant during training. We are canon fodder in the battle against insurgents, fanatics, separatists, and “unknown gunmen.” Our battle non-state actors whose angst is traceable to the actions and inactions of those we empower with our guns.
We are National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members serving as INEC ad hoc staff during election cycles. INEC gives us the primary job of capturing votes in polling booths on paper forms or electronic devices. Social media cameras caught one of us in Enugu altering votes to favour Rabiu Kwankwaso. We are in a vantage position to alter voting figures for politicians. And we are willing and ready to accept handouts from the politicians to rig. It does not matter that we sometimes suffer terrible consequences, including violent death. It also does not matter that the handouts are no insurance against unemployment when we pass out. We return to the real world to spend donkey years looking for jobs that they promised to create. They however never get around to facilitate job creation initiatives during their tenure.
We are university student cultists hired to disrupt elections, snatch ballot boxes, and shoot to maim or kill our neighbours. This heavy lifting enables corrupt politicians return to power and inflict more suffering on all. We protect integrity-challenged youth corps members and INEC workers to perform the dirty task on election day.
We are university lecturers – professors to boot – who accept bribes to alter election results. As chief of the returning officers, we allow corruption to repeatedly ascend to power. When we finish, we return to our campuses to plot ways of fighting the same politicians we empowered. We fight them because they habitually refuse to improve our conditions of service. But it never dawns on us that we cannot retaliate against the politician that we empowered. We merely turn our anger on other people’s children, holding their education hostage to negotiate better conditions of service.
We do all of this because the Mafia bosses – officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission – endorse our work. In our election cycles, they accept the results we altered to enthrone candidates people reject and reject those they want. Their shoddy preparations make this possible.
So, there you have it. We the people are the backbone of corrupt politicians. We make rigging possible.
Do not blame the politician. Do not weep for Peter Obi, the cornerstone that we instigated INEC to reject.
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