A good friend once told me as I pondered my journey into the world of politics that if there is one thing that drives politicians the world over, it is FEAR.
Politicians, he said, are afraid of losing elections,they are afraid of becoming unpopular, they are afraid of the people who vote, they are afraid of not being relevant in the scheme of things, they are afraid of tomorrow. That fear, depending on how it manifests, will drive the desperation with which they will pursue their mandates and will determine to what lengths they will go in order to win an election.
That fear, if left unchecked, is potent and permeates through every fabric of an electoral process leaving behind, a trail of destruction that is hard to hide and difficult to repair.
I set out determined that I must find an answer to the malaise and a solution that would spare us as citizens, the death and destruction that unbridled fear brings. The challenge in itself seemed insurmountable when even before a single vote was cast,the by-word in Rivers State was insecurity & violence but to not face the challenge wasn’t an option & to not seek a solution was cowardly to say the least & so I embarked on a journey to entrench peace into our politics & to instill hope in the hearts & minds of the people.
Hope – this word and emotion was driven home to me by a study that showed human behaviour is driven by the two extremes of fear and hope, with multiple combinations of both in between. I reasoned that even though fear was a dominant short term emotion that delivered immediate results for the benefit of a few, hope was a far better long term emotion that delivered lasting results for the benefit of the majority, so I chose to anchor on hope to bring the Rivers People the succor that was so desperately needed.
Fast forward to Election Day.
My candidacy had since been halted and the platform from which I could speak on The Politics of Peace and The Power of Hope had been sidelined. The prevailing voices being heard were those that sowed fear for a living and the State had turned into a battleground of accusations and counter accusations. The voice of the people had long receded into the distant background as had hope for an outcome that would serve the true aspirations of the people. One side accused the security agencies of conspiring to steal the elections while the other side was accused of using the independent electoral institution to hijack the electoral process and steal the mandate.
In the wake of the accusations, all driven by what politicians fear the most, which is FEAR itself, we saw death visit us as a people & destruction lay siege on our communities. Like politicians do, each side was quick to blame the other where the one with more money & influence with the media ends up shaping the narrative that the world sees, hears & ultimately believes.
So what is the truth?
It seems to me that the truth is no longer relevant in the blame game that has now characterized the election of March 9th and the subsequent suspension that followed. Whose truth is one willing to believe in any case? Is it the truth of AAC that Awara won or that of PDP that Wike won? Is it the truth of the Military that their intervention was to save lives or that of the Rivers State Government that it was to take lives?
Is it the truth of the APC that their political machinery backing a little known politician delivered a shocking defeat to an incumbent or that of the PDP that an unknown politician, backed by an ‘unballoted’ party was run over by a sitting governor?
Is it the truth that as at the time of suspension only 7 LGA results had been declared and others were still being collated or that 17 LGA results had been collated and awaiting declaration? Is it the truth that collation was suspended for wide scale violence when there was relative peace or that collation was suspended in spite of the peace to enable one party rewrite the results? In the scheme of things, the truth has been buried very deep under a mountain of half-truths and lies, which leaves very little room for anyone to claim the legitimate right to the crown. Where does that leave us?.
I am constrained by the choices before me to take a stand on something. An oft-quoted saying by Edmund Burke goes “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.
The situation we find ourselves in Rivers State is extremely dire and having initially participated and then taken a ringside seat in the elections for Governor of the State, I have seen plenty and have gained substantial knowledge to know that staying silent at this time is akin to doing nothing so evil can and will triumph.
If there is one thing that I am certain of, it is that the entire election of March 9th is totally and completely compromised from head to toe. There are no results that would be announced today that would reflect the will of the people in any form or manner. There are just as many people who do not trust and will not accept an election that delivers PDP today because of the belief that the umpire has granted unfettered access to the result sheets and a yeoman’s job has been done on the collated results that is guaranteed to withstand any scrutiny through the Election Tribunals or any court of law thereafter just as there are as many people who will not accept a result that delivers the AAC because of the belief that the election day results were structured to favour them by the direct involvement of the military as insinuated by the PDP.
In neither of the scenarios above is the voice of the people heard nor are the pains and toils taken to come out and vote considered. Indeed, if there is any evil to contend with, it is this rape of democracy that completely ignores what the general voter thinks, says or does simply because politicians genuinely fear that outcome. Politicians will rather emerge with contrived results that stills their fear of losing elections, of becoming unpopular, becoming irrelevant in the scheme of things and most of all the fear of what tomorrow brings.
