“Aunty, come and see o, they are sharing wrapper with 10,000 naira notes, cash for that matter”, I had gotten that call a few hours to the State Governorship elections, here I was perambulating the streets of Abuja looking for where I could get 2k for 600 naira, at that moment, I almost wished I could fly off to the state to get my share of the “national cake” and return back without doing a thing, this was our national cake after all, but this national cake was being shared so that we could all vote for a party, a party that only God knows what they would do for the next four years.
I wondered at the state of voters’ literacy in this area where 10,000 naira was being shared and this was when it dawned on me, these people had no access to quality education, I had visited the only school in that community and it had no roof, no desk, no floored grounds, no blackboard, not even doors, goats and chickens roamed the classes in the absence of children in the day time and rented the class rooms for the night, the state of this community was deplorable to say the least but 10,000 naira could be shared to buy their votes, isn’t that something to think about?
Already an NGO I know started building a school at one of the communities to even the gap of illiteracy but a lot of work still had to be done, one question that never left my mind was why the people never reached out to their representatives at the state house, they said they were abandoned by their reps but the same people sold out their votes for money; it would be quite easy to want to blame them for making such an “irresponsible” decision, but would you blame a group of people who have to live from hands to mouth just to get by each day, to them also, this is their own share of the national cake and it may take another four years before any one in Government remembers them again.
For a very long time, people believed that their votes never counted, I also did until I learnt that the wasted ballot boxes could be used by someone else if I did not use it, I also found out that I could recall anyone who I felt was not doing well with the power of my votes and I decided to take full accountability of my voting rights, and my guess is that so did a lot of us Millennials and Gen Zs; unfortunately, we all have not woken up to that discovery, in fact we have a lot of grounds to cover most especially in our rural communities and the first way to correct that is to ensure that every one has access to quality education.
In many rural areas across the nation, there are no proper schools, neither access to good water or quality health care, many youths roam around during the day time due to lack of employment and some get involved in thuggery and drug addiction to help them forget the lacuna that seems to plague their lives, these issues have given an opening to unscrupulous politicians to take advantage of the lack and used their clamour for a fast change to entrap them into selling their mandates for a quick fix.
I repeatedly asked myself, why? Why would they sell their votes for a meager 10,000 naira and spend the next 4 or even 8 years wallowing in severe hunger, unemployment and mass poverty and the answer is simple, they do not even understand that they alone have the power to influence the next four years of their lives; if the thugs causing havoc on the street and at polling units knew they were selling away every opportunity of a better life that they could have, chances are that they would sit down to fight for something worth it.
The only solution we truly have is to ensure that every boy and every girl child not just on our street but also in the communities we left behind in a bid for a better life in our urban areas is educated, with education, they get a chance, an opportunity to dream bigger than what they are used to it, their minds get the opportunity to see that they can be more than just puppets, but they can be true agents of change. If we get our educational system right, we can surely put a stop to Ten Thousand Naira for a vote.
By Ajayi Titilope
