By Austin Usman Okai
Elections are not conducted with the barrel of the gun. They are not conducted with bullets flying all about. Elections are done with our thumb prints. If we, in present day Nigeria, allow politicians that hire thugs using bullet to kill women in the day of elections and even burning a woman alive, including killing of corps members trained at great cost by their parents, it is unfortunate.
That corps member maybe the only child of the family, trained at the university and making his parents proud. That corps member, in furtherance of his service to his fatherland, availed himself for election, only for a mad man to come from nowhere and gun him down. We sure need to do something about it as a National Assembly and the nation at large.
When I saw how the elections were conducted in Kogi State, I felt disappointed. It wasn’t because of the All Progressives Congress (APC) or the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); it is about justice. I do not care who won the election if it was free and fair. What is important is for the people to have justice. It is not about political parties; it is about free and fair elections, that is, allowing the poor people to decide who will lead them. If the power to decide the political leader is taking away from the ordinary people and the politician becomes convinced that he can come to power by rigging elections, that politician will not respect the masses; he will not respect the poor people.
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