Photo Credit : Daily Trust The much-talked-about presidential election in Nigeria has been conducted and won. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the President-Elect after scoring the highest majority of the total number of the votes cast with a spread of 25% of the total number of votes casts in at least two-third of the thirty-six states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
Not satisfied with the declaration made by the INEC, candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, his counter in the Labour Party, Peter Obi have protested against the result and rejected it with the allegations that the election was rigged.
Although the results of the election. Was strange and peculiar to the Nation's electoral system since the return of the democracy in 1999, it however shows political advancement and a great development in the ways Nigerians now understand democracy. Hence, the thought that the election was seemingly rigged by the APC.
The fact that no one can clearly oppose is that the election was keenly contested by the three major political parties; All Progressive Congress (APC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party with the New Nigeria's Peoples Party (NNPP), Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, standing offside but uncaught to assist the winner realising his goal.
In a keenly contested free and fair election, mostly like it is happening for the first time in Nigeria since 1999, the results may seemingly look like it was rigged. In reality, the election wasn't rigged!
Let us look into the factors that might have convinced every living soul doubting the credibility of the election and get off the thought that the election was rigged.
The votes of the PDP were split into four during the last election and the party still expected to win such a keenly contested election. It would be difficult for anyone to establish the claim that PDP won that election with their divided house without bending to the fact that a keenly contested election will always produce a winner in such manner that is being regarded as being seemingly rigged.
No doubt, votes gathered by NNPP in Kano primarily belonged to the PDP while the Labour Party locked the entire Five States in the Southeast from giving their usual support to the PDP. Likewise, the South South was keenly contested, neck-to-neck by the Labour Party, PDP and APC to the extent that APC, for the first time since 1999, won Rivers State against the support that the state has been giving to PDP in the previous presidential elections.
Fact be told, except APC and PDP, there is no other political party that has the strength of winning presidential election in Nigeria. Unfortunately, the same PDP was badly divided to the extent that the five aggrieved governors of the party, gallantly lost their states to other political parties.
Now, we can ask ourselves, how possible would PDP win such a keenly contested election with their house divided into four toothless factions? Like it or not, the story might have definitely be different if the PDP Labour Party (what some people called PDP Lite), NNPP and the five Aggrieved Governora were to go into the elections one. If this had happened, PDP might have had a beautiful outing but the party was allowed to split into irrelevant factions, with Labour Party that lacked nationwide spread also seeing itself as a party that beat in the last election. All these are jokes and feeling of an illusions and imagination of what might have happened if the party were to be one. PDP and Labour Party are not receiving the results of the presidential election, seeing themselves as fractured parties but with illusion, imagination and fainted faith that they went to the poll as one undivided party.
Category: Forum
Tag: NigeriaDecides2023 Nigeria news
Written by Ejiro Hassan (ejiro)
Published 3/3/2023 7:26:50 AM