Stampede to 2023 General Elections Is a Journey to Doom – NINAS

This is the first time in Nigerian history that a grassroots-based movement has mobilized the populace to resist the government’s program for the conduct of general elections. Elections in Nigeria have been marred by violence and sporadic regional boycotts, even as back as the halcyon days of the First Republic parliamentary democracy. Today, the Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance for Self-determination (NINAS), through its Constitutional Force Majeure (CFM) declaration of December 16, 2020, has enjoined the Nigerian electorate to resist the march to the INEC-scheduled 2023 general elections without first addressing the widely repudiated and rejected 1999 Constitution because it is imposed and fraudulent. The primary task of an election in a democracy is to extend the life of the country’s constitution.

The imposed fraudulent 1999 Constitution is the cause of all the woes that bedevil the citizenry of today’s Unitary Nigeria, just like the White-minority-imposed Apartheid Constitution terrorized and enslaved the Black South African majority for decades. The solution to the untenable situation in South Africa was not the mere use of an electoral body to stampede the traumatized electorate to elections that no one believed in. The South African President of the era, Frederick De Klerk, chose instead to listen to the voice of reason by bringing the Apartheid Constitution to its terminus and constituting a transition entity called the COSATU to spearhead the production of a new constitution that brought majority rule to the troubled country. President De Klerk’s act of courage set the stage for transforming a highly polarized society into a peaceful democracy that was ruled over by President Madiba Nelson Mandela for two terms. Contrary to the predictions of many, Apartheid was defeated summarily in South Africa without firing a shot or stirring a violent revolution that would wreak havoc to future economic growth and development in that country.

That Nigeria has become a failed state in the eyes of its citizens, especially in the South and the Middle Belt, is a reality that only the foolish and uninformed would have any modicum of doubt about. Even the Far North, insurrectionists and bandits have gone to the extent of taking the law into their hands by rendering large vast territories in the Northeast and Northwest ungovernable. The status quo, propped up by the imposed fraudulent 1999 Constitution, has failed to provide basic security and cater to the socio-economic wellbeing of the Nigerian populace. The reasonable thing would have been for the country’s leadership to have borrowed a leaf from the statesmanly act of President Frederick De Klerk of South Africa and declare the subsisting constitution to be no longer capable of keeping Nigeria together as a functional modern state and then, mobilize all the stakeholders to renegotiate a more acceptable way forward.

Emphasis on proceeding with the INEC-scheduled 2023 general elections in Nigeria’s failed-state environment is akin to what the Igbo regard as covering a stinky fecal mound with loose dirt so as to focus instead on feasting on the winged termites first. The NINAS’ Secretary-General has painstakingly explained the interest groups that are spearheading this self-serving adventure. The architect of the constitutional imposition over Nigerians and the writers of the fraudulent 1999 Constitution are the scions of the Sokoto Caliphate and their handpicked minions from the Middle Belt and South. They are determined to sustain the otherwise widely repudiated 1999 Constitution at all cost because such a scenario shall allow them to retain power and exercise control over the vast wealth with which Nigeria is endowed for eternity if possible.

Public attention is called again to the ongoing Constitutional Force Majeure (CFM), which was kickstarted on December 16, 2021 by NINAS with a goal to stop the stampede to the cyclical renewal of the life of a fraudulent document which is solely responsible for the nightmare that torments the citizens of Africa’s most populous country. That the scions of the Sokoto Caliphate would do whatever they could to sustain their feudal heritage might make sense to some people. But that the victims of this feudal rule in the South and Middle Belt would offer themselves as the champions of their own damnation befuddles the mind. These are the political traitors of our 21st Century world. They must all be smoked out sooner and dealt with accordingly.

A line has now been drawn in the sand by the INEC-scheduled 2023 general elections. The scions of Sokoto Caliphate and their minions are on one side, while the 200 million stakeholders of the rest of Nigeria are on the other side. NINAS is openly cautioning the partisan political junkies of the South and Middle Belt that the die is now cast. It is not going to be business as usual, going forward unless the senseless stampede to 2023 is totally halted now – long before lots of resources and animus are committed to this utterly senseless venture. This video tacitly forewarned that every effort shall be made by NINAS and its stakeholders in the South and Middle Belt to impede and thus scuttle all the INEC plans to railroad hapless Nigerians toward another electoral charade that has already been rigged to perpetuate the imposed fraudulent 1999 Constitution.