Good morning,
The young woman outside the Chatham House event in London held a placard that said “INEC, save our democracy.” Her voice cracked as she shouted. I understood her anger. I have shouted in newsrooms. But I would also like to ask her, gently, when she last voted. Protesters confronted the INEC chairman in London yesterday, and their frustration is real. But a placard in London does not transfer to a polling unit in Ondo. If you can afford the flight, you can afford to register and vote at home. If you cannot go home, you can call ten people in your village and make sure they do. High turnout is the only anti-rigging technology that works at scale. It is much harder to rig an election when the queue stretches around the block and the results are watched by neighbours who know each other’s faces.
The same week, President Tinubu set a 12 million vote target for Ondo State. Ondo does not have 12 million registered voters. It has roughly two million. This is not a target. It is a fantasy. As we argued in this newsletter back in August, this spreadsheet mentality reduces voters to digits and strips them of agency. And as we saw in Edo, promising every registered voter in a state is not a strategy. It is a confession that you have no idea how to earn a single real vote. Targets are easy. Turnout is hard. Targets do not queue in the sun. Targets do not ask questions. If the party spent half the energy it spends manufacturing targets on actually mobilising real voters, the ballot would be harder to manipulate.
In Enugu, four students died at a house party. The university has not explained what happened, but the parents do not need an explanation to grieve. In Abuja, the Senate summoned telecom companies over airtime charges, which sounds small until you remember that a ₦200 recharge card is a meal for some families. And Amnesty International and SERAP have demanded the release of journalists from the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, detained for doing the work the state should be doing. Each of these is a thread in the same fabric: the state is present at the ceremony and absent at the point of need.
64,000 Nigerians have fled across the border to Niger Republic, a silent exodus that barely made the front pages. In Kaduna, youths clashed after a death, another community pulled apart by grief and rumour. And in Lagos, Floyd Mayweather is launching a boxing venture, because even in a country bleeding at the edges, there is always room for spectacle. The spectacle is easier than the solutions. The spectacle gets cameras. The exodus gets a paragraph.
So here is what I want to say to the protester in London. I am glad you are angry. Anger is the right response to a system that has failed you. But anger is not a strategy. Go home and vote. If you cannot go home, call home and make sure your people vote. The ballot is not glamorous. It is a queue, a card, a thumbprint. But it is the only thing that makes rigging harder. The placard is not a ballot. The target is not a turnout. And the protest is not a plan.
Warmly,
Lolade