OPINION: Edo Sham Election: Let’s Boycott Elections Until…

By Steve Osuji

This Column, Expresso, is at pains to suggest that Nigerians must elect to boycott further elections until the following conditions are met:

MAHMOUD YAKUBU  MUST GO:
First, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, the incumbent chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC,  must resign immediately. He has proven over and over again that he has neither capacity,  integrity nor courage to effect a free and fair election that can pass muster in the eyes of reasonable people.

After the February 25th, 2023 Presidential Election heist, it has become clear that the crafty professor is not man enough. He is not upright,  he doesn’t have the strength of his convictions, he has no sense of magnitude of his academic standing or his elevated position.

Most of all, he has the mentality of a plumber who is not possessed of a sense of history nor legacy. Yet he’s supposedly a professor of History. He will probably be annotated as the worst INEC chairman of all time. To think that we have seen the likes of Professor  Eme Awa and Humphrey Nwosu who delivered highly acclaimed elections under dictatorial military regimes. Prof Nwosu has a prime place in Nigeria’s electoral annals for declaring MKO Abiola winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections even with a gun virtually placed to his head to do otherwise.

Prot. Yakubu has proved resoundingly that he’s a puppet of President Bola Tinubu and the ruling APC therefore,  it stands to reason that Nigerians, and particularly,  the opposition parties must ignore and boycott his so-called elections forthwith. Elections coming up in Ondo and Anambra are test cases!

LET’S BOYCOTT TINUBU’S ELECTIONS TOO:
President Bola Tinubu has turned 360 degrees from pretending to be a democrat and rights activist to a power-mongering megalomaniac. Most of us were fooled believing he was a fighter for democracy and civil rule, but now that he has hijacked power,  it has become obvious that he’s an arch-kakistocrat… all he wanted was power after all; autocratic power!

Though  history is replete with transformational despots and benevolent autocrats who deploy  their untrammelled powers to lift peoples and develop nations. But not so for Tinubu. He has acted like a popinjay president so far, using the high office to soak up perquisites like a sponge.

Though he’s a notorious election rigger right from his days as state governor in Lagos State (untutored acolytes call him political strategist for his ability to pervert elections). But as president of the Republic, he has gotten brazen and drunken from the cask of impunity. After openly stealing the presidential mandate February 2023 in cahoots with Prof. Yakubu, he now openly calls elections ahead of time.

During Tinubu’s presidential campaign in 2022, he had vowed to Edo APC members that he would return the state to the APC family if he became president of Nigeria. There was no mincing of words nor equivocation in the video clip: “I will deliver Edo to APC if I become president.”  Now he’s president of Nigeria and he simply returned Edo to APC by deploying federal might at his disposal.

BUHARI A BETTER DEMOCRAT THAN TINUBU:
In 2020, Muhammadu Buhari was president and Edo was going to an election.  The atmosphere was charged( again, by a certain Adams Oshiomhole who wanted Edo in his pocket.) Governor Godwin Obaseki,  Oshiomhole’s protégé-gone bad after he had installed him in 2016. Oshiomhole went to the ends of the earth seeking to topple Gov. Obaseki in his 2nd term election.

To achieve his aim, Oshiomhole forced incumbent Governor Obaseki out of APC in the last minutes. Obaseki smuggled his way into the PDP to contest against his erstwhile godfather,  Oshiomhole. As in 2020, the September 21st,  2024 off-cycle guber election was a charged contest between APC and incumbent PDP.

President Buhari openly insisted on a free and fair election in Edo in 2020. He made it public that the people’s choice must prevail; he didn’t try to deliver his party APC by rolling out federal might. It’s on record that President Buhari consistently allowed INEC to carry out elections without interference throughout his time.

ADAMS’ DESIRE:
Mr Adams Oshiomhole has not lived down the humiliation he suffered in the hands of Gov. Obaseki since that electoral defeat of 2020. He fancys himself as the Tinubu of Edo and he desperately seeks to pocket Edo as Tinubu pockets Lagos and southwest.

A megalomaniac and moneygrub like Tinubu he would do anything,  tell any lies and pervert any system to have his way. After eight years as Edo governor, like Tinubu, Oshiomhole has no other article of trade than dark politics.

To his chargrin, he couldn’t move Buhari to rig Edo Election for him in 2020, but with his fellow rigging machine in Aso Rock, Oshiomhole has eventually installed his lapdog as governor of Edo.

THE OKPEBHOLO BLOWOUT!
Monday Okpebholo epitomises Oshiomhole’s and Tinubu’s vile politics. They do not care for the people,  they care not for the state… all they care about is their personal aggrandisement. It has been settled that after Tinubu, anyone can be president of Nigeria (much less governor of a state). Okpebholo as governor of a state must be the lowest limit. It is below low! And for Oshiomhole to dig into the ground to exhume an Okpebholo to be governor of Edo State must he the worst thing to happen to Edo State since its creation.

A seeming retard with apparently borrowed biometrics, Okpebholo couldn’t make a simple sentence in English all through the campaign. Like Tinubu,  Okpebholo shunned all debates and all interviews. Instead,  Oshiomhole campaigned as if he was the candidate on the ballot. After his declaration,  pictures are already viral of Okpebholo kneeling down to his god, Oshiomhole for doing the impossible.

Never has Edo election won on the strength of Edo north numbers, yet Oshiomhole and INEC scripted Edo North results to have their waý… with APC, anything is indeed possible in Nigeria.

REMORSELESS STATE CAPTURE:
Oshiomhole has now joined the league of APC big boys who own their states. Starting with Tinubu in Lagos,  Dave Umahi of Ebonyi, Hope Uzodinma of Imo and Yahaya Bello of Kogi (no wonder he can’t be arrested).

Since APC is  poised to capture every inch of the Nigerian political space, Nigerians must snap out of their sheepish docility and fight for their lives and their country. The first and less injurious option they have is to boycott all the stupid elections organised by Tinubu, APC and Yakubu.

It seems most idiotic for any reasonable human to go stand on any election queue, unless you’re one of their paid voters. It’s even a worse proposition for any so-called opposition party to participate in Tinubu’s and Yakubu’s elections henceforth.

BOTTOMLINE:
Professor Yakubu must resign and Tinubu must immediately initiate an election reform to make elections in Nigeria fair (electronic) and their results credible.

Anything short of this, EXPRESSO avers, must be boycotted.  It is time Tinubu’s sham elections were disregarded and indeed, Nigerians must initiate a benign civil disobedience,  going forward, to begin to drive home their point. We, the people, must fight Tinubu’s remorseless state capture.

▪︎Osuji is former editor at The Guardian, Thisday and NewAge. He was until recently, Editorial Board Member, The Nation.