Is Jonathan pushing his good luck? by Fola Ojo

Political party stakeholders and supporters must have gone into spending overkill, bank loans must have been accessed and properties sold off with proceeds expended on supporting candidates running for office. A thick stratum of emotion and piles of mental strain must have been infused into the electioneering, and the cost of preparation for the adjourned democratic process earlier scheduled for Saturday, February 14, must have been more than an arm-and-a-leg.

For those who are pulling for either President Goodluck Jonathan or Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), what they had anticipated would be a celebratory, champagne-popping romantic love day-out on Valentine’s Day hooraying their candidate’s victory, will be nothing but a saggy Saturday in Nigeria. The announcement by the Independent National Electoral Commission Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, last week that this month’s elections had to be postponed for six weeks because of the fear of Boko Haram’s butcher-knives, bayonets and tanks in some parts of the North, carves an ominous picture.

I hope I am wrong; I hope I am misreading the verbal and nonverbal languages of some people seated in high places; the postponement is an awkward genesis of a strange development in our polity, and the attending noises for and against are only the first leg in the roll-out process of a national horror-movie we all may be forced to watch. The apprehension and suspense among Nigerians about the future of the country thus linger on with no foreseeable end in sight. The truth, my friends, is that the likelihood that elections will be conducted in Nigeria this year is not only gasping for breath, it is sliding into a near-death situation.

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