After the 2019 elections, I looked at the results and saw 50 million reasons to be hopeful. That’s the number of registered voters who did not vote in that election. True. Some were ghost voters. Some got the PVC for ID purposes only. Some changed location. True. But, looking at that number, I saw many who were simply disenchanted – completely – with the status quo. For whom ‘APC or PDP?’ made no difference.
And, yes, I know, there were 71 other options to pick from. And, at that election, 800,000 voters clutched at those straws. But, I tell you, the last time all the alternative candidates standing in a Nigerian presidential election together got more than 2 million votes was in 2003. Since then, the number of registered voters who bother at all has only fallen. Imagine? That in 2003, Obasanjo won with 24 million votes in an election in which 39 million voted and 21 million did not. And in 2019, Buhari won – the same seat – with 15 million votes, in an election in which 28 million voted and 50 million did not. Imagine? That in 16 years, the number of registered non-voters in this country had grown to outnumber habitual voters by almost 2 to 1. Imagine?
This is the demand the current system is no longer able to meet. That system of chwa-chwa politics, man-know-man politics, turn-by-turn politics, chop-I-chop politics, vote-for-contract politics is broken, working only for a group that shrinks with every election. The completely disgruntled are now in the majority. And that gives me hope. For frustration, like fire, is destructive. And we only need to look around us to see that destruction. But frustration, like fire, can also be harnessed. For those who are no longer listening to the music the status-quo is playing are open to new songs. And that is what Peter Obi represents to me. A society tired enough to give an alternative candidate a real shot. Trust me. There are 28 million people who, come what may, will vote the same way. But the future – near and distant – is in the hands of the majority. So, come out and vote.
