I am your friend, Dr. Charles Apoki. His Excellency Peter Obi joined thousands of Nigerians to protest the recent Electoral Act that is being debated. Has it even been passed yet? Because I heard they are holding an emergency meeting tomorrow. Peter Obi joined the protest. I saw Mama P. I saw Peter Okoye and other Nigerians.
You see, when things like this happen and we just sit at home, fold our hands, and start complaining, these people who are in positions of authority think that we are stupid.
We have reached a situation in this country where people must speak up, where people must stand up, and where people must act peacefully.
Some people send me messages saying, “Why have you not spoken about this? You don’t have a mouth? You don’t talk? Nigeria is not affecting you?”
As Peter Obi went there, Atiku also went, and other politicians also went there. It will be a more formidable force than only one person being there.
If all those people who have decamped to ADC, and the senators who have moved from Labour Party to ADC, House of Representatives members, and House of Assembly members all come out, it will be stronger.
I know it is quite unsafe travelling around Nigeria now, and it is also expensive flying to Abuja, but you can still raise your voices wherever you are.
If our clergymen come out and join this protest, we must insist that we have spent enough money on IReV and BVAS. We cannot allow them to lie idle and not be used. We cannot give INEC the option of still doing the rubbish we have been doing, where a lot of manipulations take place.
We must insist on very good elections.
We must insist on peaceful and credible elections, right from the voting process to the collation and the announcement of results.
We must not tolerate results being announced by 3:00 a.m. or 4:00 a.m.
We must not tolerate results that were written with rough scratch handwriting in some of these states, particularly Rivers State.
We must not tolerate the intimidation that took place in Lagos State in the last elections. We must not tolerate it.
It is either we have credible elections, or we don’t have credible elections. It is either we have credible politicians, or we don’t have democracy.
We cannot continue like this. Those who make peaceful change impossible ask for an alternative that is not desirable.
The crookedness, the duplicity, and the civilian coups that have been plotted recently in this country – enough is enough.
You cannot pass three different versions of a tax bill. You cannot have different versions of an Electoral Act. This is not good for our democracy.
I thank Peter Obi for coming out. I thank all those who came out. I also thank the Nigerian Police for their civility, and the security agencies who acted in a very mature manner. I thank the protesters as well, because they were not violent and they were not destructive.
I pray that Senator Godswill Akpabio and his fellow senators will do the needful and insist on real-time electronic transmission of election results.
After all, bandits collect money with telephones. They do TikTok videos in the bush. Ransoms are paid by bank transfers and electronic means.
So don’t take us backwards, unless you want us to go back to lining up manually. That has been the only election method we have used that produced truly credible results.
I am Dr. Charles Apoki.
God bless you.
