2019 GENERAL ELECTION; WAITING ON ONE MAN

Na wah o.

In the APC in my State of Oyo, it is not about the wishes of the generality of members nor even the consensus of a conclave of elders and stakeholders but about the wishes of one man.

They are in feverish mood waiting for Governor Ajimobi to decide who their party will field in the next Guber election.

This is not a democracy.
This cannot be a democracy.
Democracy is about the people.
It is about the wishes of the people.

At the Federal level, nobody "who him mama and papa born well" dares to collect Presidential Nomination forms to challenge President Buhari.

In Oyo State, the clowning is so much at the nadir that gubernatorial aspirants now paste posters with pictures and caption of "Ajimobi for Senate, Oyo South" clearly inscribed on it just to show the emperor they're on his side.

This is not a democracy.
This cannot be a democracy.

The APC, give it to them, have notched propaganda a step further that Buhari is now forming poverty and so because he's unable to pay, (is it N55million or N45million?)some amorphous group has stitched the millions together and bought him the forms.

Of course, they are merely copying a party that they so much love to drag in the mud - PDP.

In 2015, the PDP unabashedly declared that they had no other candidate for President apart from President Goodluck Jonathan.
And they went ahead to show their seriousness with this position by refusing to sell forms to any other aspirant.

But it has not always been like this.
You may say whatever you like about President Olusegun Obasanjo, but he remains the only incumbent President who went through elective primaries for his own re-election. (Death didn't enable us to know what President Umar Musa Yar'Adua would have done).

Obasanjo was declared the PDP's candidate for the April 2003 elections after he scored an overwhelming victory to beat off the challenge of three rivals at the Eagles Square, Abuja on January 5, 2003.

Obasanjo scored 2,642 votes, more than 75 percent of total votes cast by delegates, leaving his closest rival Alex Ekwueme, a former vice president, trailing with 611 votes - just over 17 percent. The other contestants, Abubakar Rimi, a former state governor, and ex-party chairman, Barnabas Gemade, scored 159 votes and 17 votes respectively.

A little while before then, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who had the UPN in his grips still allowed a primary election to hold in his party in the old Oyo State in 1979.
Chief Bola Ige went into a shadow election against his old teacher and former Principal, Archdeacon Emmanuel Alayande to determine the UPN flag bearer for Oyo State of that time. The election was held at Shaki. Ige defeated Alayande.

These were 15 & 39 years ago respectively.
You would expect that after all those years our primaries would become more transparent and sophisticated.

Mais non, what do we have?

The whole nation or a whole state is waiting on just a man to pick for them a "favorite" as my dear aburo Sikiru Akinola put it on his blog this morning.

This is not democracy.
This cannot be democracy.

Everything is just in reverse gear.
The #NotTooYoungToRun law has been made a mockery of by the prohibitive cost of Nomination by the parties. That's more of # TooPoorToRun, isn't it?

The people are too impoverished, too supine to act, because daily they are too preoccupied with diurnal existential matters.

Of course, something will give.

Sooner than we expect!

Happy weekend , folks!

Omi Tuntun, Igba Otun.

 

By Rt. Hon. Kehinde Ayoola JP

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