This last Saturday, February 16, 2019 will go down as a day every conceivable negative reaction hit most Nigerians, home and in diaspora who had wished the elections held.
From shock to disbelief, disappointment to anger, dismay to sadness you name it. Some feelings were bottled up in a mix of emotions hard for the carriers to describe.
Now we are in a new week, a week of hopeful polls as promised by INEC. It's a second pregnancy for a nation in just 7 days and that's quite unnatural for the wellbeing of a nation. I do not know of any creature that is pregnant twice in one week.
I remember the late iconic Artist, about the best this nation has produced. The late Prof. Ben Enweonwu in one of the interviews he granted in the late 80's to The Guardian Newspaper, where he said something that generated a lot of controversy, of which he defended until all the contrasting views petered.
He had said that:
"pregnancy is a distortion of beauty, much as its natural" He went further to argue that the womb of a pregnant woman carries a foreign body for which it must release to regain beauty and reset to its natural design.
I personally did not agree with him, much as I was a student then. And I am still not convinced about his professorial views on that, although he was an authority in arts. For me most women are a lot more beautiful when they are pregnant. A lot others are happier at the prospect of motherhood. But can I argue with a Prof?
So, Nigeria is in that unnatural double pregnancy in seven days, an aberration of sort. And what have we? It's a week of INEC and the political parties going back to their meeting rooms, out from the trenches of last week. And the citizens, the electorate readjusting to the beat of the days much as some are still digging in to the various places they had traveled to vote. It's a week that is preceded with all manner of videos and pictures of those caught with ballot papers and the so called sensitive materials.
You read one story that it's APC agents here or there that are caught and the moment you scroll down the same videos and pictures change the narrative that it's PDP agents that are caught
The scenes keep changing like a hurricane weather, from those to other accusations and counters. APC blames PDP for postponing the elections, PDP turns round to blame APC for same misadventure, then suddenly IPOB is drawn into the blame safari. It's all drama!
Suddenly the blame jumps to INEC, who blames everything and everyone without a single blame to self.
As it's all getting interesting the same INEC finally blames weather, poor visibility and difficult terrains for their operations.
And that is where I remember Mark Antony in that all time funeral of Julius Caesar after his assassination in the Capitol, with his epic oration in the speech... "Friends, Romans, Countrymen Lend Me Your Ears"... where he sorrowfully lamented that if the dagger wounds inflicted on the morbid body of Caesar could talk, they would speak a thousand words. He begged them to speak, but there you are. Non living things don't utter words. They belong to the category of poor weather INEC talked about.
Dear elements, where art thou mouths. Speak! Speak!! For INEC finally laid the blame on you, as the mother of all logistics
By Pat Uchendu
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