Time is ticking for President Muhammadu Buhari to sign the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2021into law. Two major features of the the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2021 which initially sparked controversy are direct primaries and electronic transmission of results. The President is expected to sign the bill on or before the 19th of December, 2021. However, even while the bill is on his table, pressure from the side of the governors keeps mounting, urging Mr. President NOT to sign the bill. Why? It is obvious that the indirect primaries gives state governors an upper hand in deciding who succeeds them no matter how incompetent or unpopular a candidate is. Secondly, it is cost effective for them considering the fact that they may not have enough resources to buy all party members at the polling units. The matter of e-transmission of election results doesn't also sit well with many of the traditional politicians i.e the expert riggers. Anyone who has keenly followed the 2019 elections will understand how much scam the electronic transmission of results will uncover. I remember waiting for nearly two days for results of House of Representatives and Senatorial election results to be collated. In the case of the Presidential election, the result was finally announced on Tuesday evening. To a very large extent, the e-transmission of election results will douse the tension of those waiting anxiously for too long. Additionally, it would serve to corroborate the physical votes that will be collated. NASS is (surprisingly) ready and INEC is also ready but will the President sign? That's the question no one from the villa is prepared to answer. Any right-thinking person should know that the President's assent to the bill should have been done yesterday. Again, will he sign it? Even Garba Shehu can not answer that one.
Meanwhile, insecurity is also another big challenge whenever we are talking about elections, and we don't have to always see insecurity from the prism of the north alone. For example, the operatives of the Imo State Police Command have arrested 35-year-old Pastor Izuchukwu Anoloba and others for kidnaping a Catholic priest, Fidelis Ekemgba. The kidnapping operation fetched them 5 million naira and Pastor Anoloba's share was 1.5 million naira. One could imagine the testimony he would have given had he not been nabbed by the police. These guys are not your regular bandits but they are kidnappers alright and they pose the same security threat with the bandits. However, a pastor involved in the kidnap of a priest seems awkward to me, but it still means that there is hierarchy of wealth even among men of God.
Generally, one must always be careful about giving security information because you may not know who intends to have you kidnapped especially if you have resources. However, no matter how careful you are in this life, que sera sera. Consider Sylvester Oromoni in Dowen College, Lagos, who was practically killed by his school mates. The second school is located in a serene environment and the students are treated well but the innate evil of man still had a way of manifesting even among the students of the school. I'll skip the events that led to his death on the assumption that you are already familiar with the story. However, bullying in secondary schools, especially in boarding secondary schools, is not new in Nigeria. It is a tradition we have been mostly silent about - and in some cases proud of - and it still happens. Bullying is not punishment, it is wickedness. Should we now close boarding facilities because students bully themselves? We can't finish counting the number of people who attended boarding schools and are still contributing to national development. Some habits are brought to the school from the home. For example, a child who is taught love and empathy at home is more likely to transmit those values even as a senior in school. Generally, the matter is more complex than reducing to a boarding affair and if we put it on the table for national discourse we would be closer to finding a permanent solution. In the meantime, I suggest that the management of Dowen College and the students involved should face the law.
Nigeria has now become the latest African country to join the UK's travel red list - along with South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, Angola, Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia owing to the spike of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. This is what some critics refer to as "travel apartheid". Now it doesn't mean that Nigerians can't travel to the UK, it just means that irrespective of one's vaccination, one is still expected to be quarantined in a hotel for ten days at one's own expense that is if one is coming from any of the red-listed countries. Ironically, if you are a citizen of the UK, you will not be quarantined. Just like the Delta variant, the Omicron variant was first discovered in South Africa among Europeans.
Now it has become an African strain and restrictions are being put on Africans. Well, deaths in Europe, due to Covid 19, have created vacancies and it seems as if Africans are taking new jobs hence the need to restrict their travel. What's the use of vaccination if it can't mitigate other strains of the same disease? I believe that there is still a lot to decipher from all the hoaxes that come with COVID-19.
Mallam El-Rufai is planning to remove Friday from the working days of Kaduna. Don't know if he has done it already. Is he aware of the full implications? Is he also aware that his tenure is running out? Let me know what you think.
See you next week!
#FreeLeahSharibu
#SecureNigeria
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