NigeriansTalk

It appears the entire world paid close atten­tion to the recent Ekiti elec­tions. News out­lets from the BBC, to the Finan­cial Times and Reuters, to papers across the world reported on the elec­toral ten­sion and even­tual con­fu­sion and vio­lence which marred the process. While these news orga­ni­za­tions and many of their read­ers could observe these events detached, an incred­i­ble amount of Nige­ri­ans fol­lowed the elec­tions emo­tion­ally and tire­lessly. Using blogs, and social media forums like Twit­ter, they shared infor­ma­tion and their opin­ions on the situation.

ELECTORAL PROBLEMS & ISSUES
Prior to the April 25th Ekiti elec­tions, Sokari of Black­looks focused on the ris­ing polit­i­cal vio­lence and elec­toral fraud issues across the nation in states where polling occurred. This was obvi­ously a pre­cur­sor and bad omen for the even­tual Ekiti elec­tions which were marred by vio­lence, attacks on jour­nal­ists and ordi­nary civil­ians.  Once the elec­tions took place, Solomonsydelle of Niger­ian Curios­ity pre­sented a brief his­tory of the events that led to the con­fu­sion dur­ing the elec­tions and ana­lyzed the var­i­ous issues related to not just for Nigeria’s upcom­ing 2011 elec­tions, but democ­racy, national image and even the pos­si­bil­ity of export­ing dys­func­tional Niger­ian elec­tion prac­tices to other African coun­tries. Nze­sylva dis­cussed the res­ig­na­tion con­fu­sion sur­round­ing Ayoka Ade­bayo, call­ing it “The Re-branding of Con­science”. Jeremy Weate of Nai­jablog, kept read­ers updated with numer­ous pic­tures from Ekiti such as this one illus­trat­ing that local women resorted to tra­di­tional naked protest, all be it semi-naked, to chal­lenge many of the obvi­ous shenani­gans that took place dur­ing the elec­tion and afterward.

Addi­tion­ally, Akin’s post “When women rage with the pudenda and the paps”, reviewed the Ekiti sit­u­a­tion, women’s role in protest and other related issues.

RESULTING OPINIONS
The over­whelm­ing atti­tude towards the Ekiti elec­tion reflected much sad­ness, dis­ap­point­ment and anger against many of the main actors. As to the vio­lence that occurred, Chinedu Vin­cent Akuta, of Briefs From Akuta, pointed out that there were an esti­mated 10,000 police offi­cers in Ekiti to pre­vent vio­lence. He then won­dered if those offi­cers couldn’t pre­vent vio­lence what would hap­pen in 2011? Imnakoya, of Grandiose Par­lor, focused on the role of the Police in the elec­toral con­fu­sion and called for the fir­ing of Mike Okiro, the head of the Niger­ian Police Force. ‘Omoluwabi Oke­badan’ put the blame on the fed­eral gov­ern­ment which he said con­tin­ued to to whit­tle away any good­will it had left.

Obie Pre­cious, an Abuja res­i­dent blog­ging at Diary of a Naija Youth, dis­cussed his dis­like of every­one involved from the PDP, the AC, INEC (Nigeria’s elec­toral body), and the Police. Furi­ous Frank Talk admit­ted to laugh­ing when he learned that neigh­bor­ing gov­er­nor of Ogun state planned to send in hood­lums to Ekiti but quickly sobered up because he real­ized that he was wit­ness­ing the “demise of democ­racy in Nige­ria”. Ifejem’s Blog focused on the unfair manip­u­la­tion of the demo­c­ra­tic process and polit­i­cal blog­ger, Ade­ola Ader­ounmu of Thy Glory O Nige­ria! called the Ekiti elec­tion “Another Use­less Elec­tion” that reflects the abuse of the word“democ­racy”.

TWEETS ABOUND
On the micro-blogging ser­vice, Twit­ter, inter­ested users learned from Eki­tirr that the anti-corruption body, EFCC, was inter­ro­gat­ing INEC offi­cers over an alleged N250 mil­lion bribe, less than 24 hours after the final poll closed. Eki­tirr, a sup­porter of the AC chal­lenger, had updated oth­ers using his phone through out the elec­tion. In response to the bribe dis­cus­sion, Plas­tiqq noted that he was await­ing the “out­come” of the inves­ti­ga­tion and oth­ers ques­tioned whether or not there would be any con­crete results. And Elcij pro­claimed “On a more seri­ous note, this non­sense in ekiti is becom­ing quite dan­ger­ous.” This view was shared by many not just on Twit­ter but also, the many Niger­ian blog­gers that focused on the elections.

Over­all, Niger­ian observers of the Ekiti elec­tion expressed gen­uine con­cern for the future of democ­racy and elec­tions in the coun­try. Time will tell exactly how these elec­tions will impact others.

Solomon­Sy­delle
www.nigeriancuriosity.com