One cannot stop being amazed at Nigerians? collective amnesia, and lack of seriousness in the most serious of things even when whatever is involved is posing an existential threat to the country and people. And this annihilation will be after mind-boggling punishment, starvation and dehumanisation. Nigerians love suffering and living a lie. Otherwise tell me why Nigerians, individually and collectively, all her civil societies, political parties and indeed all functioning units will not rise in one voice and demand electoral reforms after the heist that passed as an election in 2023. Is it not an unquantifiable disaster that is calamitous and evidence-based enough that a country spent trillions of naira on an election that produced nothing? Yet everybody, both the political parties, the opposition and the party in power, civil societies and so on went mute till date after the infamous 2023 charade that went for an election.

Now again the same heist has been repeated in Edo State and we are going through the motions again ? elections manipulated, protests by people who were hopeful of winning and they will be asked to go to court. And very unfortunately, they will go to court that everybody knows that are compromised and go through the motions, wasting everybody?s time. And after further wasting of everybody?s time and billions of naira, the so-called judges will give their predetermined judgement that will legitimize an illegitimate process. And we will go mute again and wait for another cycle of madness and wastage that is called election. This time, may be, in Ondo state and we wait till it happens again in 2027. Are we normal as a people and indeed a country?

Even if some people were powerful enough to conquer the whole of Nigeria through an electoral heist, why will we not all rise and insist on an electoral reform that will make our electoral system rigging-proof as in other countries, at least going forward. Is it not a very troubling sign of myopia and self-destruction that after the glaring abuses of the 2023 election, Nigerians will not rise with one voice and demand electoral reforms and nothing but electoral reforms?

It is indeed curious how everybody, the political parties including the opposition, have kept mute since the 2023 elections. Are we under a spell?

I am really amazed that the main opposition parties, the PDP and the labour parties are crying over the Edo election. Their cries are, at best, hypocritical. What did they expect? Is it that Yakubu Mahmoud is no longer the INEC Chairman or that the courts they intend to go to have changed? Well, let us keep fooling ourselves. Unfortunately, everybody wants to go to the off-season elections and even the 2027 election expecting a different result from the last charade. No. Nothing different will happen unless there are radical electoral reforms. Please we can take this to the bank. It is only a mad person that will keep doing the same thing the same way and expect a different result.

Why Nigerians with their so-called political parties especially the opposition parties and the civil societies are not pushing and building momentum for radical electoral reforms is indeed as curious as it is astounding, especially after seeing elections work transparently, hitch and rancour free in South Africa and India which are comparable to our own country. The elections worked in those countries and were transparent not because the people are any better than us but because as the votes were cast, they were directly transmitted and reflected on their election viewing portals and everybody was seeing it in real-time. There was no room for any scoundrels to manipulate the results in the name of collating them. Technology does better collation and gives you the results as it does so hassle-free and in real time. There was no room for anybody to collate and manipulate results in all these elections in other countries. Why will it be only in Nigeria that human beings will be collating election results even when they have severally proven to be incapable of doing that honestly.

Everybody accepted the results in these countries because there was no reason not to. In addition to preserving their sanity and love for one another, there was no use in using the money to be used to develop the country to their legal system and when the winners enter into offices, there will be fewer risks of corrupt practices to recover money spent on litigation.

Mr Peter Obi is arguably the most prudent and meticulous notable politician in Nigeria today. He is the only one who has given an account of his campaign expenditures so far and he spent a whopping N800 million naira on prosecuting court cases to retrieve his mandate, an amount that was over two-thirds of his campaign expenditure. If Peter Obi could spend this amount on litigation, the expenditure of the other two more established and bigger political parties who had bluntly refused to give any account of their campaign expenditures can be better imagined. So our electoral system as presently practised is horrifyingly wasteful, impoverishing, hugely corrupting and MUST be changed if there is going to be any hope for us as a country.

So, having seen the evidence that elections can be transparently conducted and are actually being transparently conducted in other climes using the aid of technology, why is Nigeria not reforming her electoral process and leveraging on technology as other sane and modern democracies? Why are the political parties especially the opposition, civil society groups and activists not pushing for these electoral reforms that will eliminate human foibles, and waste and allow technology to aid us not to tip over the cliff into the abyss that is imminent and waiting?

If we like, let us promulgate death sentences for electoral offenders, until the results of the voting in elections are transmitted electronically from the polling booths straight to the screens and computed electronically and the final results are displayed for all to see in real-time with the aid of technology like in other countries, Nigeria will indeed end in, there was a country. And the reason is very simple. All the calamities we are suffering in this country are because of one simple reason ? the citizens are not electing their leaders so they, the leaders, are not accountable to them.

We should make no mistakes about it. Fighting for electoral reforms will not be easy because of the illicit and unquantifiable gains those who benefit from it make and these forces are now very entrenched in all facets of the country and will oppose it with all they have. However, the issue is now an existential threat to the country itself. It is now a question of reforming the electoral system or saying BYE BYE TO NIGERIA.

?Dr. Chidi Esike is an Associate Professor and a commentator on public affairs.

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