It was always going to be Kaduna State. Wasn`t it?
With the 2023 elections just around the corner, Nigerians especially the security experts within them, have experienced sharp spikes in their anxiety levels over what the elections will bring.
Many everyday Nigerians have had cause to worry that Nigeria’s seemingly overwhelmed security architecture would struggle to hold firm in service of historic general elections.
They fear that it would completely crumble under pressure from non-state actors when they set in motion their well-oiled strategy to disrupt the 2023 general elections.
Some parts of the country give stakeholders more cause for alarm than others. The Independent National Electoral Commission which is a chief stakeholder in the elections has already warned that insecurity threatens the conduct of elections in about six hundred communities scattered all around the country.
If INEC in expressing such morbid fears sounded alarmist, then those who think so should note for themselves how much insecurity has disrupted life in Nigeria,and the fact that many Nigerians struggle to sleep with both eyes closed, not to talk of thinking about participating in elections they doubt would count.
A political dark horse
Thanks to the considerable weight being pulled by frontline presidential candidate Mr. Peter Obi, the Labour Party is experiencing something of a renaissance.
Considered the party of workers for the fact that the Nigeria Labour Congress, which is the collection of Nigerian workers claims a stake in it, the party had inexplicably lurched about in obscurity until now.
In elections around the country, its candidates have been left bearing the wooden spoon, never even threatening to make a serious dent on the final outcome of elections around the country.
Until now.
It appears Mr. Peter Obi has bewitched Nigerians with his spectacular brand of politics, his antecedents while he was governor of Anambra State, and most importantly, his plans for a country that looks irredeemable even to the most incurable of optimists.
Whatever potion Mr. Peter Obi has slipped into the otherwise stale brew Nigerians have been served for years by bad governance, it is working a treat as many Nigerians, many of them very young, have bought into his vision, and are at the forefront of pushing his bid to become the president of the country.
It has also helped Mr. Peter Obi’s case that his main challengers for the office practically have zero credibility in the eyes of Nigerians as they continue to be dogged by accusations of drug-running and sleaze.
A heinous assassination
Mrs. Victoria Chimtex will go down as yet another victim of the insecurity that convulses Kaduna State, and yet one more casualty in a long line of political casualties in Nigeria.
On Monday, November 28,2022,gunmen stormed her house in the Kaura Local Government Area of Kaduna State, shot her dead and left her husband with life-threatening injuries.
Mrs. Chimtex was the Labour Party woman leader in the state and the suspicion is that her assasination is connected to pivotal elections coming up next year.
Of course, security agents are investigating the assassination of Mrs.Chimtex but many Nigerians already know that very little if anything at all will come out of it to further confirm the fears that many already nurse that the elections next year will be marred by insecurity.
However, it must be clear to all those who are hatching plans to disrupt next year’s elections however they can that Nigeria cannot afford to have lives and properties wasted by those who cultivate chaos.
Many people have lost their lives before and during previous elections in Nigeria with very little done to get them justice.
Nigeria cannot afford to lose anyone else. This is even as everything must be done to expose, apprehend, prosecute and incarcerate those for whom elections provide opportunities to kill and destroy.
Kene Obiezu,
Twitter: @kenobiezu
