Elections In My Country// written by @davchi

Canva design

I'm very much happy to join in this week's contest with our community, and below is my contribution to the following questions. Just patiently go through as I believe you'd enjoy it.

The governance method in my country and its effectiveness.

I'm a citizen of Nigeria in the first place and we practice a system of government called the federalism and this type of government separates power between the regional and general government or better put "it is a system that shares authority between two or more governments that operates in the same geographical location"

Nevertheless, in my country's participation in this system of governance, the process of power is shared between three tiers which are: Executive, legislative, and the judicial arms.

Hence, the executive arm which comprises the president and his cabinet are conferred with the power of enacting laws of the federation.

The legislative arm is conferred with the power of making laws that guides the federation, and the members of this arm are the Senate and those in the house of representatives.

The judicial arm are the law interpreters of the federation and they consist of legal practitioners in the supreme court, appeal court, high court and every other legal embodiment of Nigerian terrain.

All these bodies have been working assiduously since October 1st 1963 to see that the Nigerian economy is properly managed and effectively working.

Nonetheless, the system hasn't been without hitches in response to the vast nature of the country, where there is lopsidedness in appointment of offices most times to favor a particular region and this has caused poor performance of personnels appointed into offices due to inefficient experience in their field of appointments thereby retarding the process of development in some part of the nation's economy.

The effectiveness of the election methods in my country and my participation in them.

Since our independence from Britain in 1960, there have been a series of elections in my country and we have resorted to the ballot system of electing people into offices.

It has been through this process (ballot system) that my country has been able to produce different representatives who have held one office or the other all through the military regime from 1966 till the transition into democratic rule in 1999 but prior to this, the first general election was held in my country in September 20th 1923 specifically in the cities of Calabar and Lagos.

This method of election is used specifically in producing the State house of representatives, the 36 State Governors, 360 federation house of representative members and 109 members of the red chambers or senators. Moreso, we have other offices in the federation which are only by appointment; like the state commissioners and federal ministers.

I consider this process very effective but the height of illiteracy in my country has forced many people to believe that the election process is not efficient as they believe that the election process is always rigged.

The datum remains that the election process can only be rigged using the popultion of the non registered voters as there isn't any possibility of rigging the election process using the number of registered and eligible voters onless on rare occasions where voters where disfranchised or votes where cancelled to favour a particular person or party.

Finally, I wish to emphatically State that I do participate in the different election processes starting from the presidential election to the counsellors since I became eligible for voting. Though there are ballot snatching in most of the places but as a good citizen of our dear country, I normally do the needful, unless in cases when I'm not that strong to go out to exercise my franchise.

My experience in one of the election processes and my rating

pix with my PVC

I participated in the last election of 2019 when president Buhari was elected into office. Although I supported the people's democratic party candidate who then lost to the now incumbent president (Buhari) because of the northern population, the process wasn't that fair because the people voted based on regional base and brotherhood and not on personal exposure and professional know how.

At the state level, I supported the APC candidate Uche Ogah but the process was rigged by the ruling party's PDP's candidate Okezie Ikpeazu and Uche Ogah lost to him but was later compensated with a ministerial position by the incumbent president (Buhari) These are the major exercise I participated in during the last election.

Nevertheless, I rate the election process bad because of the rigging that was involved in it, where the permanent voters card (PVC) of most eligible voters weren't given to them and also the use of tugs to disrupt the election process. But it's laughable that this has been part of the system even from the military regime.

My suggestion in the method of electing leaders into power.

I believe that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) knows what to do to stop the menace of rigging which is a major Achilles heel to my country's electoral process.

According to the latest United Nations demographic data, my country has a population of about 217,737,683m people and INEC, the body in charge of our electoral process, has listed that we have eligible voters or registered voters of about 96.2m people. If the recent card reader process can function effectively, we will have a credible process of election without doubts.

Nonetheless, I would also suggest the process of the card reader electoral modus-operandi to be fully initiated, as it will strongly aid in retarding the pitfall of rigging and snatching of ballot boxes in the country's election processes.

I would also suggest that the card reader be built separately as an app on playstore which can be accessed by all our nationals both those at home and diaspora as it will assist everyone to vote even from the comfort of their homes while INEC takes the central control.

My preference in other forms of governance over the one we have.

I don't have issues with the type or even any form of governance already in place but the problem is the inhumane attitude of those in power as most of them don't think about the masses that elected them into power but their selfish interest alone.

If those in power would do the needful, there wouldn't be the need for other forms of governance since the system is already democratic. So what is paramount is the availability of men who are ready to serve and salvage the country from the impeding public fund ransackers and regional bigotries.

Conclusion

I wouldn't conclude that my country is either the best or worst in the world but a very lucid scrutiny will aid any jurist that we are still developing.

We have not been able to optimally perform because we are verbally codified by those in power that we lack the resources to be where we ought to be and this has posed a great threat even to our electoral processes, giving room for rigging and other anomalies in the economy.

I strongly believe that in days ahead, we will get to our dream nation, with such men that need to be elected and a proper routine that must be maintained for us to be the real Giant of Africa we have acclaimed because I know that we as a people have been to the mountaintop and we will all enter the promised land even as we've seen it. Love you all bye.

I wish to invite @talktofaith, @kingworldline @gabikay, @bukkyi4u to join in this contest.