Adeola Aderounmu

There was a court injunction issued recently in Nigeria that the Electoral Agency should rearrange the election time table to what it was pre-2003. That is the presidential election should be the last in the sequence of elections.

But INEC and PDP preferred it the Obasanjo way in which the presidential election is conducted before governorship election. Even common sense dictates that the biggest should be saved for the last.

The riots, violence and terrorism that trailed the presidential election of April 16th have now put the forthcoming governorship election into jeopardy.

In the North of Nigeria more than 48 000 people have been displaced. The real figures could be higher. Youth corpers that have been used as cheap labour for the last voting process have been murdered and the rest of them are unwilling to continue to take the inherent risk especially in terror-prone Northern Nigeria.

Prevention is always better than cure. INEC disregarded the court injunction and PDP preferred it this way. Now we are at this point where no one knows what is going to happen on the 26th of April 2011.

Already elections have been postponed by two days in Kaduna and Bauchi. What type of miracle will bring about accelerated changes that will ensure that elections can hold in these states where people have been slaughtered like lower animals?

The security of lives and property are not guaranteed and we want people to leave the comfort of their homes to go to the polling stations. It’s easy to predict a low turnout across many parts of the nation.

Those who voted for the PDP in the last elections were marked for extermination in Bauchi and Kaduna. Many were killed even by uniformed men who went from house to house to slaughter them.

One of the mysteries or myths of terrorism in Northern Nigeria is the role of real/ fake uniform men who raid homes and commit genocide. It will happen again.

Where do we go from here?

There are many questions and arguments on my mind.

When the season of elections are over Nigeria and Nigerians really have a lot of internal cleaning to do. It is time to scatter things and re-arrange them like we used to say.

It is certain that a substantial part of the North is against the Jonathan presidency. Why not give the north their North and their candidate? Must Jonathan or anyone for that matter be the president of Nigeria?

Let them have their groundnut pyramids to cater for their needs. Give them their region and their candidates so they can go back to their agriculture to sustain them. Give them their freedom so that they can stop killing my brothers and sisters.

What stops the East and the West from going back to their original life styles and means of sustenance? What is holding each region back? They should be set free again.

Nigeria had regions pre-1966, why is it impossible to go back to that arrangement?
These questions and many more are what the disjointed people of Nigeria should be seeking answers to when the dust is settled.

If Nigerians don’t answer these questions there are many more days of genocide ahead. Uncountable and unnecessary acts of terrorism will continue to be unleashed on innocent people especially the Christians and southerners living in the North.

Retaliations there in the North and elsewhere in the South may escalate to the point of a new civil war and Nigeria may eventually disintegrate in a violent manner even before the predicted 2015 date.

The level of ignorance and illiteracy in Northern Nigeria is a bad omen for one Nigeria. Why the rest of Nigerians shy away from these obvious facts beats me.

Nigeria will undergo Apoptosis if we want. But if the people of Nigeria disregard the situations and signs, Necrosis is a much fatal option. The signs of the last few weeks point to the latter and remind Nigerians of 1967.