(Opinion) My take-home from Saturday’s election

By Professor Charles Adisa
The good ones
1. Nigerians are generally peaceful people, with few violent elements sponsored by the political elites
2. Nigerians love democracy and are to a large extent willing to pay the price by exercising their franchise
3. Social media continues to play a greater role than traditional media outlets in information dissemination with the obvious challenge of fake news.
4. Aso Rock polling units remain a tough call for incumbents. Both incumbents in the last and current elections lost.
The bad ones
1. Nigeria’s institutions remain disorganized and inefficient despite huge sums of money allocated to them. INEC is a good example.
2. Nigerian politicians and political elites have not changed at all, they remain desperate, violent and are willing to shed innocent blood for their selfish purposes.
3. Our infrastructure remain dilapidated and when we buy technology from other countries, we go for the unreliable, inefficient ones as shown by the failure of the card readers in most centers.
4. Vote buying before and during elections is rife with a political elite boasting of bullion vans to carry money to his home at the eve of the elections.
5. Violence, intimidation and thuggery remains a big problem with the Nigerian security agencies still grappling with the solutions.
Conclusion
The peaceful majority need to remain focused and resist the violent minority.
However, the society and Nigerian state need to up their games to give confidence and credibility to the election processes.
State institutions need to be run in efficienct organized ways.
I am hopeful that the good will triumph over the evil. We have much more good people than bad ones.
▪ Adisa, a surgeon, is based in Aba, Abia State.