After the Election...

The two contenders in the upcoming Nigerian election (Photo Credit here)

For weeks I've been hearing that phrase now. After the election. After the election. After the freaking election. If I hear it one more time I am afraid I might scream.

People are postponing returning to the country until.... after the election
  Businesses are postponing opening until... you guessed it... after the election
     Mothers are even putting off birthing their children until after the election
- OK I may be exaggerating on that last one, but I do so to make a point. 

The country feels like it has been temporarily suspended, and the suspense of it all is stressing me out

Why does it stress me out so much? I seem to hear you ask. Well, apart from being a type-A personality delusional nut-job, I hate it because "After the Election" gives some sense of false hope. When you say it to me it conjures ideas in my head that "After the election" Nigeria will be better. "After the election" there will be change. "After the election" hope will spring eternal.

POPPYCOCK!

I actually wanted to use much harsher language, but then I thought of all the impressionable young children that read my blog... see? delusional

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Personally, I don't foresee much change!

Best case scenario, Nigeria goes back to the same that it has always been. Same corrupt politicians. Same lack of constant electricity. Same inefficient government that cannot muster up enough military might to defeat the terrorists currently invading its territory.

Just yesterday, a bomb blast hit a presidential rally in Gombe...foreshadowing?

Think I am being overly pessimistic?

From the Daily Beast (on Boko Haram)

...the upcoming elections won’t make things better. “We seem to be very complacent or lackadaisical at Boko Haram’s activities, and I don’t know why,” he says. “We are losing ground on the levels of violence, the numbers, the accountability issues—we shouldn't be losing ground on everything.”

 One of my new favorite authors, Chimamanda Adichie (on electricity)
   (Read the amazing piece this quote is excerpted from, Lights Out in Nigeria)

Like other privileged Nigerians who can afford to, I have become a reluctant libertarian, providing my own electricity, participating in a precarious frontier spirit. But millions of Nigerians do not have this choice. They depend on the malnourished supply from their electricity companies.

From this piece "Buhari vs. Jonathan - Beyond the Election"

However, it is my considered view that none of them has any credible agenda to deal with the issues, especially within the context of the evolving global economy and Nigeria’s broken public finance. 

In fact, if there is one thing I am almost certain of, it is that this election is not really about change.
In other words:

At the end of the day therefore they (Nigerian swing voters) will vote “against” the candidate that they dislike more and their collective actions will determine who wins. (The Ugly side of Buhari and Jonathan, by Atedo Peterside -  more here )

If anything, it seems possible  that after the election Nigeria will erupt into mass chaos (well more than already exists). Or,  in the worst case scenario, split in two. After all, if history is any indicator of things to come, in the previous election (featuring the exact same two candidates might I add), human rights watch estimates that post-election violence killed more than 800 people and...

More than 15,700 people have been killed in inter-communal, political, and sectarian violence since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999. (Human Rights Watch)

So be honest. When you say "after the election" you mean, after the election... if and only if the country has not gone to hell in a hand basket.

Photo credit here

For Nigeria to change EVERYTHING has change... and that, if it happens at all, will be excruciatingly slow and not anytime soon "after the election". In the meantime, I need the election to be over, so we can go back to our normal lives in Nigeria, living with the certainty that nothing is certain. Hurry up February 14th...

Photo credit here

<End Rant here>

p.s. FYI all highlighted words are links, which, when clicked, will take you to the source page.