EDITORIAL: After The Debacle
What the debate over the transmission of results reviews the state of Nigeria.
The ongoing rancour over the method to be used in relaying election results will continue much of it as an academic exercise.
In any review of what is or should be in national embarrassment, the often quoted position of the Russian dictator Josef Sterling comes to mind.
Sterling said, “It is not the voting that matters, it is the counting”. Those who are determined to gain electoral advantage from keeping Nigeria in the dark ages have turned out to be very bright students of Sterling. They have learnt well from the master anti-democrat!
Nigeria should be in all areas of human endeavor, the beacon and shining light of the entire African continent, setting the pace and continuously improving standards. Sadly, it is not. The economic interest of those who benefit from the continuous economic access to the treasury means that simple issues such as the electronic transmission of the election result becomes full-blown crisis.
A significant sections of the political establishment are not bothered that we are behind other African countries who will should be showing the way.
And it is not just about the method of transmitting election results alone. During the last presidential election in Kenya, the international News organizations stated that citizens of Kenya voted as voters in the diaspora in 15 countries. Kenya is not the only African country where Diaspora voting is allowed.
On the contrary, Nigeria, with a Diaspora contributing 18 billion dollars to the country annually, does not have Diaspora voting and it is clearly not anxious to have Diaspora voting anytime soon. This, of course, has an economic effect. We ought to be motivating our Diaspora to do more. A good way of achieving this is to make them active citizens by being able to vote in our elections.
Those against the electronic transmission of voting are clearly advertising Nigeria as a backward, uncompetitive country. There is a cost to this, especially for those who advertise their obsession, which is clearly contrived to attract a largely illusory Foreign Direct Investment.
The people of this country are the losers in all of this and the price to be paid in advertising the country as a backward entity would be very high.
