secondmost, and also with extreme jubilation, i just arrived in the us of A and spent an amazing 2 days in chicago. i really love this place! looking forward to the rest of my trip elsewhere and my foray into best-man-ing!
thirdmost, and not-so-jubil-ious, nigerian elections! so the 3 part elections were set to start on saturday, april 2. however, due to some ballot boxes not being received in certain locations, the decision was made to postpone the elections by a week. the new dates: parliamentary elections will be held on the 9th, presidential on the 16th, gubernatorial on the 22nd. about 15million people had already voted before the elections were postponed.
for the past couple of days and hrs, i've been gauging people's reactions to this on cyberspace and it aint pretty. granted, the sheer mention of postponement or hint of annulment or malpractice brings back ghost of past botched elections and stolen votes and disappointments. i get that. but, as i mentioned in my previous post, the chairman of the election commission is a widely respected man . based on that, i can't help but think he's a bit embarrased by how this has all started. that being said, it seems he would only postpone this if he was witnessing already some malpractices and things that were simply not right. the whole world is watching. nigerians are on the edge. he needs to get this right. im i being overly optimistic?
i think we, nigerians, should chill for a moment and give this some thought. yes, some say a developed country would have had a plan b and would not have allowed such a thing to happen. well, guess what?. nigeria aint a developed country. some say that we should expect more from our country already and stop lowering our expectations. well guess what? our expectations should be pretty low, seeing as nigeria has rarely held a valid and credible election, ever! lets take things a step at a time. in the US, hundreds if not more lawsuits get filed on and after election day citing malpractices. in the US, millions of people get disenfranchised and turned away from voting when they shouldve cast their votes. this is supposed to be the most matured democracy in our time. so lets face it shit always happens. elections will never be smooth. taking an extra week to get things righted is no problem for me. in fact take a month or so. whatever you need Dr. jega!
this site is awesome for following the latest: http://elections.234next.com/
soo impressed by this site: http://www.reclaimnaija.net/
and read about it here: http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2011/03/30/using-the-ushahidi-platform-to-monitor-the-nigeria-elections-2011/comment-page-1/#comment-8522
and fourthmost, i will unfortunately/fortunately be following the nigerian elections for the next month. likely more so on my twitter page, so people are more than welcome to follow me on twitter. for those that care little about politics, i apologise in advance (again) and promise to return to the regularly scheduled programme in may! :)
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