To ensure the bickerings generated by the 2019 general election do not set the nation on a collision course, a coalition of youths across Nigeria’s ethnic divide under the aegis of the Nigerian Ethnic Nationality Youth Leaders Forum (NENYLF) has called on spirited Nigerians to seek redress on the various aspects of the election that threaten the continuous existence of the Nigerian state.
Chairman of the youth coalition, Yerima Shetimma, said the fallouts of the elections pointed to several injustice meted out on the Nigerian people.
Speaking with The New Diplomat at a peace and unity rally organised by NENYLF in Yaba, Lagos on Monday, Shetimma, who is also the President, Arewa Consultative Youth Forum, noted he was sad that the general election in the country was marred by violence which led to the death of citizens, demanding for an immediate action to foster post-election peace, as well as re-tool the processes in future elections.
“Our outing is a result of the injustice meted on Nigerians. We intend to go across the six geo-political zones and ensure that we speak to the people and let them realise the consequences of what is happening in the country because democracy has been raped already.
“For some of us who have a passion for the people, having spent over 20 years in the trenches and made sacrifices, it is our responsibility to ensure that people of like minds come together and ensure the right thing is done.
“For instance, we do not understand why the military is playing a major role in an election in a constitutional democracy such as ours. This is not the kind of democracy we all envisaged; we thought that our democratic process would have improved by now.
“That is why some of us feel that we need to draw attention to it and tell Nigerians the consequences of this recent election. Both the presidential and governorship elections, there was nothing to write home about. They were marred by violence, voter intimidation, and suppression and is an abuse on the sensibility of Nigerians.
“If you observed, there was a high turnout of voters during the presidential election, but you could see the low voter turnout in the second elections; that was a clear indication that Nigerians are not happy about some of the events that took place in the first election.
“Some of us saw this coming and when we drew the attention of Nigerians to it, many people felt that we were just talking because we wanted to talk.
“For us as activists, we will mobilise and rally people around. We won’t just fold our hands and allow people to run the country as if the country is being ruled by an emperor. We won’t sit down and allow Nigerians to be treated as if we are in a Banana republic,” Shetimma said.
Also, while addressing newsmen at the rally, Secretary General of NENYLF, Oladotun Hassan canvassed for peaceful coexistence, asking Nigerians not to dwell on the issues that further expose the nation’s fault lines, but concentrate on forging a united and prosperous alliance.
“The crux of the matter is to unite ourselves first and ensure that those issues that disintegrate us: the ethnicity issue, the political affiliation issues, religious issues are played down and that’s why the various youth leaders across the nation have come together to seek peaceful coexistence. If you look at what happened in Lagos and other parts of the country you could read in-between the lines that the election was more of the ethnic bigotry than the election itself.”
Hassan, who doubles as the President of the Yoruba Council of Youths Worldwide (YCYCW) said the way forward is for the National Orientation Agency (NOA) to start orientating “our people from the primary to secondary schools and even to the society. Let the people properly know the extent of our sovereign life through civic education. Let churches and mosques teach our democratic principles for citizens to know that our unity is better than our division.
“We’re still at incubation when it comes to electoral process, we have not gotten to the maturity level of how to free the electoral process from the hegemony of structures of the party, religion and nepotism. These are real harbinger that hamper our democracy as a nation and it’s quite unfortunate that, where we pride ourselves as giants of Africa we cannot even move our democratic process from where we were before now.”
He lamented the postponement of the general elections few hours to the commencement of actual voting for the Presidential and House of Assembly positions, saying that it’s an indication that “INEC itself is an interested party in a process where it suppose to be an umpire. And considering the process itself, one will see that it was well monetized and when are we going to stop monitizing our electoral process because it kills value, interest and the real essence of a democratic process. It will get to a time when foreigners will come and by voters in our own land and buy us out if we feel money should dictate the process.
“From Maurice Iwu to Jega to today, it’s just a representation of precedence of our failures. We have not learnt lessons from the past. Look at the 2015 elections, it was postponed like this one, which means nobody learnt any lesson from the past. Marred by violence and heavy militarization, the 2019 election was an advancement of what happened in 2015,” Hassan said.
