On the first day of January 2023, Mike Igini, a past Resident Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in Akwa Ibom State used the occasion of the New Year to pass some profound messages to Nigerians which are worth reflecting deeply upon.

“The future direction of Nigeria is up to the people…The 2022 Electoral Act, INEC processes and procedures, have returned power of the ballot fully to voters at the polling units where elections will now be won or lost and not at wards, LGAs and other stages or points of result collation centres, which, in the past, have been centres where voters’ collective will were upturned and disempowered for decades. All the loopholes for rigging and manipulating elections have been blocked by INEC,” Igini told Nigerians.

If an Act of the Parliament, like the 2022 Electoral Act, is the sole determiner of free and fair election in every country, then the ex-electoral commissioner would be absolutely right. Although in fairness to him, there are other items in his message which show he recognises that there are other factors that will make for a free and fair poll in 2023. Igini also acknowledges that Nigerians are aware that the 2022 Electoral Act is insufficient. Hence, he sounded motivational by asking Nigerians “not to dissolve into despair but resolve to act firmly”.

One of the biggest factors, apart from the 2022 Electoral Act, that will determine free and fair election in 2023 is security. Here, the behemoth that needs to be engaged are our armed forces. Still, it is not as if all our men in uniform are evil or fundamentally different from us. Policemen and soldiers are also humans, and many of them, with their families, also pass through the same sufferings which common people experience.

The nature of the armed forces, in terms of its command structure, places its control in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief. But it is also the people that elect the Commander-in-Chief. So, even if the election is rigged, once the people are determined to reject it, the fraud will never stand. We were all witnesses to the mass protests of March 15- November 14, 2022 in Sri Lanka where the people trooped out in their numbers, poured into the Presidential Palace, defying bullets and armoured tanks, and sacked the President, Prime Minister, the cabinet and other key officials of the government.

Similarly, we also saw the power of the people when in 2020 an estimated 15 to 26 million citizens of the United States of America poured into the streets, protesting racial discrimination against Black people and other minorities, sparked off by the strangling of George Floyd by some White policemen. The Black Lives Matter protest was one of the reasons Donald Trump and his Republican Party lost the 2020 presidential election.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who incidentally is not seeking re-election, stands in a good stead to use the power, given to him by the people, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, to provide security to Nigerians as they troop out en masse to cast their votes in the forthcoming general elections. This is his last duty to Nigerians, and one upon which he will be judged by history and posterity.

He must seize the moment without fear or favour.

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