Nigeria: Countdown To Elections; "Let the die be cast"

Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) have bought 250,000 rechargeable lamps for the 120,000 polling booths all over Nigeria to provide light if power outages occurred wherever voting would be conducted at night, because power outages are very common in Nigeria where thousands of villages in the rural areas do not have power supply.

The President has put security forces on high alert to make sure the elections are conducted in peace and not in an atmosphere of violence. But, most people in Nigeria know that bribery and corruption will be the order of the day, as both the voters and law enforcement agents at the various polling booths are going to be tempted by those desperate to win the elections. How would a hungry dog reject a piece of meat being offered to it or would a starving rabbit reject a carrot?

The Nigerian police are like Cerberus and we know that Nigerian police officers behave like hungry dogs and many of them are actually like rabid dogs and they are dangerous when unleashed. So, the Nigerian politicians know that all you have to do is, "To give a sop to Cerberus" and the Nigerian police officers will let them have their way at polling booths.

President Olusegun Obasanjo is the Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces and he who feeds the police dogs controls them. So, they are going to obey his instructions and since he has already vowed to ensure that his ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) retains their power of incumbency and remains in power in Nigeria, he is going to use them to favour the ruling party.

What will the opposition parties do to wrest power from the PDP?
The best option is to form a united front to defeat the PDP.
But the increasingly individualistic and opportunistic ambitions of the presidential candidates of the two major opposition parties, Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Action Congress (AC) and Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd) of the All Nigeria People's Party (ANPP), will be their undoing and prevent them from achieving the consensus required to defeat the ruling party, PDP.

This will be the first-ever civilian-to-civilian transfer of power in the history of Nigeria and the results of the historical elections will determine the fate of the most populous nation in Africa.

As Julius Caesar said on crossing the river Rubicon to invade Italy in
49, Before Christ (B.C.), "Let the die be cast"