I spend a lot of time watching people line up in front of tables. Other people sitting on the other side of the same tables quietly waiting on those in line.
Sometimes the same people line up in front of some curtained booths. They go in. They come out. Just like the way the piston works. In and Out. Very mechanical but very functional.At the end of the day, those sitting at the tables begin to count. All those who stood in front of them earlier in the day had since long gone home and are now, like me, in front of their television sets watching them do what they do best. Count.
While this may not be a preferred way of spending your evening, you must admit that there is a certain fascination watching people vote all day and others count all night. Sheer exhilaration!
Like many others and particularly those with direct interest, I wait for what the guy with the microphone will say. Then will follow the praises, condemnations, acceptance in the main.
That would be the end of the show and the rest would be taken over by the media. Dissecting, Analyzing and Projecting. It all will be meaningful at the end. We all would walk away having learnt and understood why things turned out the way they did. Until next time when we have to count again.
Now just how difficult was that?
While a lot of what I so fascinatingly follow occurs elsewhere around the world. I am particularly glued to such events due to the battering I take when viewing what is meant to be exactly the same process in my own country.
I don't see people lining up. I see naked wrinkled old women on the streets.
I don't see people patiently waiting for those in line to do their thing, I see uniformed men thrashing about wildly at anyone that fidgeted ever so slightly.
I don't see people count all night,
I see bald old fat men and strange geriatric looking women announce results.
Just how hard is it to have people line up and vote, walk away to continue their daily chores while others stay back and begin to count to completion?
1, 2, 3, 4, we all learnt this basic numbering technique quite early in life didn't we?
UK Local Elections, EU Parliamentary Elections, US Presidential Elections, Even in South Africa recently they came out in numbers and in the cold and in the rain to do the same thing done elsewhere around the world.
By the end of the day you always knew which way the decisions of the people were going to go. Maybe one or two people upset. Maybe one life or two lost due to heart attacks from the heat. Maybe a few collapsing but still gripping their voters' cards and insisting on ticking a name or the other.
Elsewhere the next day in full of informative and analytical reports of what may happen next. How change has or has not occurred. They even fascinate us with graphs and 3D views of what their hallowed chambers would look like if and when. Interesting stuff.
Back home all we get the next day is pictures of naked old women, beaten and battered women and young men with strange crawling accessories around their necks or a few pictures of the dead from the day before. Even they get no respect in death. Many were not of much use when alive anyway.
Then the protracted, long-winded, meaningless processes of challenge. Tribunals. Appeals. Supreme Court etc all while the challenged 'winners' are given enough time to make you regret pissing them off by challenging their 'victories'.
For a nation that boasts as many street corner PHDs as there are people in the Gambia, why can't we find people who can count? Since we have lost the ability to count, like in our banks, why not get Phillip Emeagwali to invent machines that can count?
I bet if we gathered a bunch of 5 year olds, untainted by the order of the day, and offered them a sweet for each number they count, we would have perfect, indisputable and unbiased totals.
I just wish we could count. I guess it would take the fun out of politics in Nigeria. However, I think we would be better off for it.
How hard is it to count? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6........
