Like every election, these two elections did not fail to
come with their own jitters of what would likely happen, in terms of violence
and who would or would not win. The rate of violence that heralded the electioneering
campaigns was a major headache to all well-meaning citizens. Accusations and
counter-accusations flew freely. Negative propaganda was rife with different
rumours emanating from different camps against their most perceived electoral
enemies. Personality and character assassinations became the other of the day
with many hitherto angels and heroes becoming the devil and the villains just
because of their political leanings, ideologies and colourations.
The razzmatazz of the Principal actors and their supporters
was ebulliently enjoyed while it lasted. A few millionaires were made silently,
especially in the entertainment world and amongst top politicians who knew
their ways. Some artisans who were well connected also got their fingers oily
in the event of things. Events unfolded, but are now folded back. The frenzy
and flurry of the die-hard supporters that made them unnecessarily step on toes
are now gone, and as it is said in some quarters, “their eyes don clear.”
In the ensuing event of things, many friends became enemies and vice
versa, just because of their conflicting personal political interests. Many
broken bridges were mended while many very healthy bridges cracked, and some,
broken beyond repairs. The axiom that
“there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics” became frequentative as
major players gullibly and frenziedly embraced the new political course,
introduced right from the national assembly, jumpology, which describes the sudden and unusual defections as
well as secret alliances amongst principal political actors. The question of
whether these alliances were made in good faith with the downtrodden millions at
heart is furiously begging for answers. How long the said alliances would stand
is yet another matter altogether as some of the Jumping Masters have found that
their known devils were far better than their new-found angels. Where all these
leave their hopeless sheep is best known to God; not the masters, not the
following sheep.
Before these two elections which were frantically fought for
by the two principal parties, the PDP and APC, there was no gainsaying that
most people, especially the opposition at the center were nervous as to what
the electoral umpire, INEC, was up to. They accused the body of bias even before
the exercises, thus predicting the gender of the chicken even before the egg
was hatched. This undoubtedly heated up the polity as many types of rubbish
were written on social media and the print media. When the Ekiti election came
and it fell to the lot of the party at the center, Nigerians were treated to
the best of what I know is the exclusive best asset of the APC, unrivalled
intelligence, as a new English was added to our dictionary, photochromic and photochromism. While
many battled within themselves to crack the meaning of this new political
vocabulary, many of us with curious minds fled to our dictionaries. When we
found it not, we took to Wikipedia; many thanks to Wikipedia that delivered us
from the brain-cracking grammar of APC. Now, we know what that means!
Interestingly and as providence would have it, the election
in Osun turned out to favour the opposition, and the margin between the parties
was cognate with what we had in Ekiti. Many have now started asking the
question as to whether the electoral umpire accused of having photochromically
rigged the Ekiti election for the ruling party at the center has done same for
the opposition party in Osun. To me, I strongly believe that this shows the end
of human cogitations in the dynamics of God’s workings.
To be continued . . . .
