While You Slept, They Rigged.....

I had an early night last night (10pm is early in my books o) and needless to say, I woke up by midnight (I used to chair Twitter's InsomniacAnonymousmeeting. Lol). I, of course, went to catch up with news on twitter and my oh my, wasn't it agog with near tangible excitement over the results of the PDP gubernatorial primaries election.

Apparently, the election within the PDP was rigged with figures clearly not matching. Reports claim there were 806 accredited delegates while total votes counted were 875!! It's a shocking disgrace that such blatant tomfoolery can occur within a party such as PDP, but even more scary for me is that this just might be a reflection of what's to come next year during the presidential elections!!! If indeed the election was rigged, then the whole idea of democracy in Nigeria is a sham and a travesty.

There have been all sorts of bants flying all over twitter, some hilarious and others downright malicious. Even more worrisome for me is the fact that someone present at the scene of the rigging voting claims a party chief tried to stop one of the contestants, Gbadamosi, who then lashed out at him claiming that the party chief collected 1.5 million Naira from him to secure his vote. If this were to be a sane country, Gbadamosi would be cooling his heels with the police by morning and breaking that statement down clearly but this is Nigeria, sadly, a land of "anyhowness"! Mind you, this same Gbadamosi also allegedly came to the venue wearing a bulletproof vest, while encouraging people to come out to vote. He clearly has the safety of the people in mind. -_-

For the life of me, I would never truly understand Obanikoro's campaign promising Lagosians better toilet facilities! I still think that campaigns stinks like the one of an empty promise of "fresh air for Nigerians"! (What pun?) Clearly, we've still not learnt from our past mistakes that any politician who cannot make tangible promises in a clear manifesto to do right by the people is just a sham. These politicians would only begin to take us seriously when we take ourselves seriously. It's time to wake up, think and act fellow Nigerians. It's time to catch up with the times and progress from the dark ages we seem stuck in and fixated with.

We need to be able to separate the chaff from the wheat with these politicians by their utterances and actions. We need to ask pertinent questions and stop celebrating mediocrity. Nigeria can do so much better than we presently are because we have more than enough resources to achieve this but first our mindset needs to catch up with life and the reality of the times we are in.

I hope we get things right time, for our sake and  our children's.

I'm off to bed now. Pardon any typos there might be, it's 1.56am. :) Sleep well.