Quick one on voter suppression and endurance

You can always find data points for anything. This map is from a presentation that SBM Intelligence made to INEC, the army and the police after the 2019 elections. Note the places in which you had state-backed actors engaging in violence. Opposition strongholds.

Today’s nonsense in Alaba was the same thing, just earlier in the process. Voter suppression is a thing. You can download the full report here.

Present at that report were people from INEC, the army, the police, civil defence and a host of other actors in the election and security matrix. The report was adopted, and INEC promised to do better.

Having pointed out all of this, we must come to terms with the flaws in our system and figure out ways around them.

INEC started CVR. There’s really no reason why we should be doing lastminute.com voter registration and creating choke points politicians can exploit. To put it simply, if the guys from Alaba hadn’t spent so much time listening to charlatans such as Nnamdi Kanu, they could have mobilised to register in bits over the last two years, thus depriving thuggish would-be rulers the ability to (attempt to) prevent registration.

It’s a lesson we all in Nigeria have to learn. Rescuing this country, whatever that means, is a marathon, not a sprint. The 2023 elections will come and go. The time to start preparing for the 2027 elections is immediately. No time to rest on oars at all.

As you were…