Even as the Nigerian Election saga continues with cancellations, re-collation, supplementary elections and court cases, the 2019 elections will go down in history as one of the strangest, most confusing and complicated elections in Nigeria. Some will say it was a farce, a comedy of errors and one that reversed the recent trend of electoral improvements in the last two general elections. It promised so much and delivered so little, – the little it delivered, left violence, blood, tears, logistic failures, sheer incompetence, anger and bemusement across the country!

Even as the dust is yet to settle, I share my few takeaways from the exercise!

1. We were all losers!

Nigeria Lost the election and Nigerians were the losers! The country lost the opportunity to build on the gains of the 2011 and 2015 elections and deepen electoral integrity! Politicians lost their morality and mind, youths lost their lives, Public institutions like INEC lost their credibility, the Military and security agencies lost their neutrality and non-partisanship, technology lost its game-changing hype and words like integrity lost their meaning!

2. #ElectionNotWar was just a hashtag!

Throughout the pre-election period, we pretended as if we didn’t know and accept that election in Nigeria was war! But our actions and words proved otherwise.! One major headline pre-election event is the signing of a Peace accord by the candidates!  Doesn’t it make you wonder why peace Accords!  Isn’t it warring parties that sign peace accords?

Moreover, don’t we often hear the candidates and their supporters boast:

“We will return fire for fire”;

“we will capture those states”;

“We will battle them to a standstill”.

Are these not war slogans? And like war, all is fair in elections!

If we don’t consider election as war, why deploy the armed forces and all its arsenal?

No wonder we deployed more men and materials for election duties than we did for fighting insurgency! This is how the Nigerian military became one of the losers of this election!

3. An election of paradoxes and contradictions:

First, it was a classic case of Open and Secret System where voting was done in the open but collation was mostly in secret. It also adopted both Ancient and modern technologies- digital and analogue-. The voting process was digitized using Card readers for accreditation, but the collation process, even on national television, was done with analogue calculators!!! little wonder 2,533 became 25,533! In a digital age where real-time information is the norm, it took days to compute figures that can easily be done in minutes!

4. The Card Reader Lost:

Even the modern technology itself became another casualty of the election as the card reader that was supposed to be a game-changer became short-changed- in some instances, there were unused, misused, and sabotaged. This wonderful tool that was touted as the miracle bullet to stop electoral fraud, multiple voting, impersonation, underage voting and that could transmit data and results in real time to a state-of-the-art command centre- was rendered impotent as it was cleverly circumvented and deliberately sabotaged!

5. Political Power is cancer that kills morality:

.. and Nigerian politicians are a special breed of people- men and women consumed by their quest for power that human life isn’t sacred in their eyes, people with no fear of God who see themselves as gods.  A typical Nigerian politician will knowingly make fake campaign promises, loot to fund elections, buy votes, hire thugs to rig election on Saturday and on Sunday go to church for Thanksgiving!!! And dance, like they have won a lottery- But maybe indeed they have cause to dance the David’s dance, after all, winning an election in Nigeria is more lucrative than willing a lottery. In most lotteries, the amount you win is fixed but when you win an election in Nigeria you get to decide how much and how long you will loot. The litany of court cases that will follow might prove whether these victory dances are not premature.

As the saga and uncertainty continue as to who are the eventual winners will be, one thing is certain: that is, that once again, the country lost the opportunity to advance and strengthen its electoral process and democratic culture.  And while some of the eventual winners might yet be decided by the courts, the losers are certainly Nigeria and Nigerians!! We all lost!Related: president and ceo chamber of commerce salary, michael garnett obituary, lakeover funeral home obituaries, iacra received by airman registry, recent murders in riverside, ca, sula quotes about nel, homes for rent by owner in rio rico, az, where did billy football go to college, amber thomas obituary st louis, terrence williams sister keisha, campbell county ky mugshots, jest to have been called with, om617 for sale, coach day trips from birmingham 2022, who is the actor in the zebra insurance commercial,Related: california marching band divisions, michael crawford daughters, central regional jail flatwoods mugshots, northampton crown court news, lynxx battery replacement, what is the difference between autonomy and heteronomy brainly, barstool intern salary, nina inca goddess of fire, where did louis armstrong perform in new orleans, valle vista methadone clinic, ray mentzer cause of death, whiplash short film budget, joint special operations command fort bragg address, california fish grill dynamite sauce ingredients, lone wolf compensator for fnx 45 tactical,