By Larry Oyims
I ran into a beautiful and dashing young lady yesterday. In the course of our animated discussion about the situation in Nigeria, she said to me, “Thank God that I am Obedient”. On hearing her say that, I asked her if she has voted before in her life time. She said no. I asked again if she registered in the last registration exercise by the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC. Her response again was another, “No”.
Confused about her riposte, what she meant by being Obedient, I asked her which of the four leading presidential candidates she was supporting. She replied, Obi. Then I asked again how she was supporting Obi when she does not have her PVC to flesh out and translate her support into action. It was at this point that she realized that mouthing support for this or that candidate without a voters card to translate the support into action was the height of deceit.
We have millions of people like this young lady in Nigeria today. Upon the fact that our country is undergoing a serious and convoluted economic and political meltdown as a result of the previous choices we made, many of them still don’t understand that there is power in PVC. They don’t understand that they can change the narrative today by the judicious use of their card in the coming elections.
A market woman or the ordinary trader in Ochanja market or Alaba International market or Idumota does still not understand why a cup of garri is N100 or why the dollar is shooting up to N800. They don’t understand why a loaf of bread is now above N1000 or why a family of five cannot have a quality breakfast in the morning unless they spend over N8000. They don’t understand that the decision that is made in far away Aso Rock by a select privileged few affects them in the kitchen, in the school and in the market.
They all boil down to the political choices we made in the previous elections. The PVC is a portent weapon against bad leadership. It is an amor against tyranny, against unemployment and sleaze in high places. With the PVC, we can hire and fire. We can dismantle the structure and bench the unproductive politicians who see politics as their private estate and leadership as an opportunity for selfish gain. And with it too, we can re-elect someone whose performance is stellar, who has used his or her position judiciously to touch our lives in concrete and discernible terms, not those that feed on histrionics or theatricality.
Are you ready? Then get up, stand up! The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has designated January as the last date for collection of PVCs for the 2023 general elections. There are many PVCs at INEC offices waiting for their owners to come and collect them. Go and collect your card if you have not done so. It is a worthy sacrifice to make for the sake of our dear country and the future of our children. We cannot say that we are BATists, Atikulated, Kwankwasiyans or Obidients without a weapon to translate it into action. We cannot be social media warlords and not be PVC-compliant.
During the last registration exercise, there was stampede in most of the registration centers, with INEC netting into their portals over 12m fresh voters who were mostly youths. But now that the cards are ready, the steam and zeal seems to have gone, many are reluctant to collect them and the few that have done so, as I heard, are selling them for a pot of porridge that is not even enough to last for a breakfast.
Your PVC is the weapon you need to cause a serious revolution in Nigeria. Don’t sell them, don’t give them out for any reason. It is your future. With it you can transfuse hope to a hopeless country. With it you can kill Goliath. With it you can cast and bind, you can raise up and bring low.
Please go today and get yours if you haven’t do so. And on the day of voting, prepare early in the morning. Dust up your card, go to your polling boot, wait patiently to vote. If you are the first to vote, make sure that the reading in the BVAS machine was not tampered with, it must start from 000. And after that, stay, don’t go away until the votes are counted and uploaded into INEC server.
In the past, majority of Nigerians were nonchalantly avoiding voting with the pretext that their votes don’t count. That was the reason for the poor turnout every election season. And that was understandable. But today, President Buhari has told us for the umpteenth time that he has no favoured candidate, that he will give Nigerians a free, fair and credible election as his last legacy. Let us believe him. And INEC too has come up to assure us and promise us with their blood that our votes will count. With the BVAS machine, they say no more magomago, no more ballot stuffing or ballot carrying. They used it in Anambra, Edo, Ekiti and Osun. The magic worked! The BVAS machine must see your face, see your eyes and nose and lips and feel your fingers before you can vote, shikina! That’s it. No more excuses. The way you can perform your civic duty as a citizen and ensure that your voice is heard is by voting your candidate of choice.
Enough of sitting on the fence. Go out and collect your PVC and vote, please!
