SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER

Electoral Contributions and Political Compensation

The late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, while assessing his campaign efforts and the resultant harvest of votes from different parts of the defunct Western Region was reputed to have likened the entire population to his farmland. He described, proverbially, the then Ondo Province, today’s Ondo and Ekiti States, as part of the plantation he hardly had time to weed and tend the crops therein but ironically produced the largest and best harvests. Baba Olayinka was to pay dearly for the lopsided arrangements in the 1983 elections particularly with his attempt to influence, if not veto the choice of candidates for the UPN electoral positions then.

Growing up, we heard that those who work in and for the Church should eat therefrom. The Scripture recorded that among the tribes of Israel, the Levi were not to do any other job than keeping the Synagogue and so were fed and maintained from the tithes and allied collections. They simply and rightly eat where they worked, period! At least, so the Theologians and Bible Scholars explained to us.

In the last general elections, the All Progressive Congress Party (APC) and her Presidential candidate, Mohammadu Buhari scored 5,995,651 from his native North West geo-political zone being 72% of total votes recorded in the area. Closely following and in the second position was the North East where it got 3,283,783 representing 74.36% of the region’s ballots. In the thiers position was the North Central that gave the Party 2,465,599 as 54.92% of their total polls while the South West sat at the fourth position for scoring 2,036,450 votes that meant 53.41% of her valid votes.

Sharing the “spoil of war” as major offices could be seen; generally acceptable practices and sense of reason should ordinarily suggest that #equity should determine who gets what. The North West in first position, as to be expected, have ran away with the President, the South West, by the pre-arranged choice already have the Vice President’s office and the Party have zoned the Senate Presidency to the North West that came second. The obvious and agonizing imbalance here is that the Party which claims to be progressive, equitable and believes in social justice is zoning the #Speakership of the #House of #Representatives to the South West who is in distant fourth position and already produced the Vice President.

The North Central that gave the Party the third largest votes, 421,149 ballots more than the South West is being left in the lurch in the calculations. It’s bad enough that the same North Central have not produced either the #Speaker or the #Deputy #Speaker of the House of Representatives since 1999, APC shouldn’t make things worse for the Region by zoning the #Speaker to South West in addition to the 2nd best office in the land that’s already in their kitty. It’s trite principle that equity is the solid foundation for stability and so, #Hon. #Mohammed #Umaru #Bago of Chachanga Federal Constituency of Niger State should be allowed to become the Next #Speaker of the 9th Green Chamber to give the good people of the North Central geo-political zone the deserved sense of belonging.

Ignoring their yearnings and legitimate desire of a unit as important and with same equal rights as others in the Nigeria project would be grossly cavalier of this government and its parent Party, the All Progressive Congress (APC). It has to be #fair to be #equitable as they say in Warri, pepper-soup must have pepper!

Credit - Ibitola Babatunde Sugarito