The EU people came prepared to monitor our polls. So prepared were they that they had their math wrong. For over 170k polling units they had 50 observers. They reckoned they were going to split themselves in different parts in one day. They were going to present one person like the American cluster munitions in which one unit could be a thousand. A little shall be a thousand? One person would have split into at least 3,400 parts to monitor all polls. The one in Damaturu saw all the polling units with an eagle eye at once. Just like the PDP agent who said he was at over 20 polling units during collation. The EU guys didn’t tell us they are superhuman. We might have asked them to locate our terrorists that the DSS could not hollow out. Maybe they did not want to convince us that they were sitting in the cushy succulence of their hotel rooms and waiting for hearsays and rumours.
Maybe they knew that we still suffer from colonial mentality that forces us to use observers whereas no African was asked to monitor the UK or American polls. They have to tell us what is right about us. Thank God they don’t agree with each other. The US report does not chime with EU, as Dele Alake noted. Our own Nigerian Bar Association had observers everywhere and gave it over 90 percent, just like Precious Umeh did in her science subjects at JAMB.
EU report was, for the most part, a rehash of familiar tropes that anyone familiar with the Nigerian story can write in his sleep. That we sometimes have violence, people bribe, illiteracy plays a role. No evidence against what the Constitution requires. That is, a “substantial compliance.” 50 out of more than 170k is not compliance. It is not even 2 percent.
NB: Sam Omatseye is a respected columnist with The Nation Newspaper.
