The Money They Throw at You During Elections May Be the Money Stolen From Your Future.
The ₦20,000 will finish. The bad roads, darkness, unemployment and poverty could remain for another four years. Nigerian youth, your future is not for sale.
An Oblong Media Global Intelligence Commentary
There is a truth Nigerian youths must understand before the next elections:
A politician who suddenly becomes generous during an election deserves your scrutiny, not your gratitude.
Ask yourself a simple question.
Where was this generosity when your community needed potable water?
Where was the money when your school had leaking roofs, broken desks and overcrowded classrooms?
Where was it when the health centre had no doctor, drugs or equipment?
Where was it when young graduates were roaming the streets without jobs?
Where was it when entrepreneurs needed small loans to establish businesses?
Where was it when your roads became death traps?
Where was it when electricity disappeared and businesses were forced to spend fortunes generating their own power?
Then suddenly, an election approaches and money appears.
Bags of rice appear.
Motorcycles appear.
Cash envelopes appear.
Transfers begin.
Politicians who barely remembered your community for four years suddenly know the names of your traditional rulers, youth leaders and market associations.
Nigerian youths must learn to connect these dots.
Not every politician spending heavily during elections is spending stolen public money, and allegations of theft must always be supported by evidence. But Nigeria has repeatedly witnessed public funds diverted, misappropriated or otherwise abused, while political patronage networks have accumulated enormous resources.
So when someone who has spent decades around government arrives during an election throwing around sums completely disproportionate to any visible legitimate income, citizens have every right to ask:
Where did this money come from?
Because public money has an opportunity cost.
Money stolen from government does not disappear into thin air.
It disappears from somewhere.
That ₦20,000 being offered for your vote could represent part of the road that was never constructed.
The ₦50,000 could represent medicines that never reached your primary healthcare centre.
The bag of rice could represent classrooms that were never renovated.
The motorcycle could represent agricultural support that never reached farmers.
The cash distributed to political operatives could represent cooperative financing that might have helped hundreds of young Nigerians establish small businesses.
The billions deployed to capture an election could have helped provide water, electricity, healthcare, education and employment opportunities.
And after impoverishing the population, the same political system can exploit that poverty during elections.
That is perhaps the most dangerous dimension of vote buying.
First, poverty is created or allowed to deepen through bad governance. Then that poverty becomes an electoral weapon.
A hungry man is offered food.
An unemployed youth is offered ₦20,000.
A struggling mother is offered rice.
A desperate community is promised a borehole.
And politicians calculate that immediate survival will overpower long term thinking.
Think about the insult contained in that calculation.
They are effectively betting that Nigerians can be made poor enough to sell four years of their future for what may barely sustain them for several days.
They are betting that hunger will defeat memory.
That poverty will defeat reason.
That ethnicity will defeat competence.
That religion will defeat common interest.
That cash will defeat conscience.
And, most painfully, that young Nigerians will continue repeating the same political mistakes while expecting different outcomes.
Prove them wrong.
YOUR VOTE IS WORTH MORE THAN THEIR MONEY
If anyone offers you money in connection with your vote, understand something fundamental:
your vote is secret.
No politician owns your conscience.
No political godfather owns your future.
No party owns your destiny.
And nobody has the moral right to purchase four years of your life with a few thousand naira.
Where possible and safe, vote buying should be rejected and reported to the appropriate authorities. But poverty creates difficult realities, and nobody sitting comfortably in an air conditioned room should pretend that hunger is an insignificant temptation.
The deeper message is this:
Never surrender your vote because somebody gave you money, food or gifts.
Your vote must remain yours.
If inducements reach communities despite the law, they must never become a contract surrendering the voter’s conscience. A gift cannot morally purchase your children’s future.
Vote for the candidate you genuinely believe possesses the competence, character, courage and capacity to improve your life.
Whatever political party that person belongs to.
APC.
PDP.
ADC.
NDC.
Labour.
Or any other legitimate political platform.
Nigeria’s salvation will not come from party acronyms. It will come from competent leadership and an electorate courageous enough to demand it.
We must begin looking beyond ethnicity.
Beyond religion.
Beyond political godfathers.
Beyond stomach infrastructure.
Beyond empty slogans.
Beyond recycled politicians whose principal qualification for office is that they have always been in politics.
Ask candidates questions.
What have you accomplished?
What is your legitimate source of wealth?
What did you do with the previous opportunity you were given?
What is your economic programme?
How will you create jobs?
How will you improve education?
How will you provide healthcare?
How will you attract investment?
How will you improve electricity and infrastructure?
How will you account for public money?
If a politician cannot satisfactorily answer these questions, why should dancing at rallies, distributing money and shouting party slogans qualify that person to govern millions of human beings?
NIGERIAN YOUTH, YOUR PVC IS A WEAPON
The Nigerian youth population possesses enormous electoral power.
Yet power that is not exercised is useless.
Stop saying:
“My vote will not count.”
That defeatism is precisely what entrenched political establishments benefit from.
When millions stay at home because they believe elections are predetermined, organised political structures require fewer votes to dominate the process.
Register.
Collect your PVC.
Protect it.
Turn up.
Vote.
Remain peacefully engaged with the democratic process.
Encourage your friends to participate.
Educate your communities.
Demand transparency.
Remain at the booths and the collation centres until the proper results are announced.
Reject any results that don’t mirror what was announced at your booths, LGA, state and federal collation centres.
And above everything else:
VOTE COMPETENCE.
Nigeria cannot continue electing people because they distributed the most money.
We cannot keep exchanging four years for four thousand naira.
Calculate it.
Even ₦20,000 divided across four years is approximately ₦13.70 per day.
Is your future worth ₦13.70 a day?
Is your child’s education worth that?
Is your healthcare worth that?
Is your electricity worth that?
Is your security worth that?
Is your dignity worth that?
THE MONEY WILL FINISH. THE CONSEQUENCES WILL REMAIN.
The rice will finish.
The cash will finish.
The alcohol will finish.
The campaign T shirt will fade.
But the person you elect may control billions of naira belonging to you for the next four years.
That decision can determine whether your road is built.
Whether your hospital functions.
Whether your children receive a decent education.
Whether businesses survive.
Whether jobs are created.
Whether your community develops.
And whether another generation of Nigerians is forced to leave the country simply to find the opportunities their own nation should have provided.
This is bigger than politics.
This is about survival.
Our generation has complained enough about corruption, insecurity, unemployment, police brutality, poverty, electricity, bad roads, failing schools and incompetent leadership.
Eventually, complaint must become political action.
And political action begins with understanding one fundamental truth:
THE POLITICIAN NEEDS YOUR VOTE MORE THAN YOU NEED HIS MONEY.
Never forget that.
Election season is one of the few moments when the powerful political establishment comes looking for the ordinary Nigerian.
For once, recognise your power.
Look them in the eye.
Listen to their promises.
Examine their records.
Interrogate their competence.
Question the source of extraordinary campaign wealth.
And when you enter that polling booth, remember your unemployed brother.
Remember your mother’s hospital bill.
Remember the road destroying your vehicle.
Remember the school without equipment.
Remember the business struggling without electricity.
Remember the community without clean water.
Remember the graduates without jobs.
Remember Nigerians dying because basic healthcare is unavailable.
Then ask yourself:
What future am I voting for?
Your ballot is not a thank you note for an election season handout.
It is an investment in the next four years of your life.
Nigerian youths must become the generation that finally breaks the cycle.
Take back your independence.
Take back your conscience.
Take back your political power.
And above everything:
NEVER SELL YOUR FUTURE.
VOTE YOUR CONSCIENCE.
VOTE COMPETENCE.
VOTE CHARACTER.
VOTE CAPACITY.
VOTE FOR YOUR FUTURE.
Because the greatest punishment corrupt and incompetent politicians can receive is not your anger on social media.
It is your refusal to return them to power.
The future of Nigeria will ultimately belong to the generation courageous enough to stop selling tomorrow to survive today.
Get your PVC.
Use your vote.
And shock the system.
Chimazuru Nnadi-Oforgu
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
For
Oblong Media Global Intelligence
http://www.oblongmedia.net
Tel: 08072313955
oblongmedialtd@gmail.com
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