POSTPONEMENT:WHEN WERE WE LAST SAFE?

A couple of days ago, an INEC Commisioner, Amina Zachary said elections could be postponed if PVC collection hadn't improved by February 8th 2015.That was the only ground a lot of us envisaged would be cited if ever they were postponed to a later date.But we witnessed a dramatic turn in the few days preceding INEC's postponement of the first round of  Elections to March 2008.From the NSA's letter advising it to shift due to security challenges to the Nigerian Army stating that Security won't be provided if Elections do hold on February 14th.
As a well meaning Nigerian with no political affiliations,I am  privileged to still have my objectivity and rationality intact at the risk of sounding immodest.Security quite frankly,shouldn't have been our problem at the moment.Reason being elections in the troubled states of the North East should never have been contemplated in the first place.
A lot of people put undue pressure on the INEC Chairman when he hinted elections might not hold in those states.We had APC faithfuls who thought it would be unfair to them; all three at that time being their states on one hand and a President very eager to prove to the World, to borrow his popular phrase-'He had things under control'.The INEC Chairman succumbed to pressure and had some handy mumbo jumbo about liasing always with Security chiefs to support his position. I ask-From that moment till the postponement, did anyone actually think the areas were safe?.
Even before the Military cited a major operation to restore normalcy as its reason for not guaranteeing security,we all knew it wasn't.The obvious truth is we would be making our brothers and sisters over there sitting ducks in long queues across hundreds of polling centres.It is baseless to suggest an ulterior motive on the part of the President.His reputation before the outside world is in shambles.

Never have personalities as eminent as the likes of John Kerry and Hilary Clinton made a go at our corrupt system in one fell swoop until the kidnap of the Chibok School Girls afforded them that opportunity.His self-esteem was so battered, his NSA reportedly refused an offer to help just prior to the AU's deployment of 8,750 troops to help combat the Boko Haram insurgency.
If ever anyone needs a scape goat,it has to be Prof. Attahiru Jega.The thing with scape goats is they don't necessarily perpetrate the real or perceived wrong but they just happen to be unlucky to be in the best position to take all the blame.We all as concerned citizens have been observing happenings in the North East.I have seen figures of outstanding PVCs but i am yet to lay my hands on the number of PVCs disbursed in the affected states and it makes  you doubt INEC's Integrity.There can't possibly be an effective disbursement in those parts.This ought to have necessitated a move as drastic as cancelling elections there or everywhere till it was safe to do so long before now.It didn't have to be a week before.Now we are faced with a problem capable of unnecessarily heating up the polity.Declaring the troubled states unsafe maybe 5 or 6 months ago would have prevented all the confusion surrounding us now.
His critics and that of the President would bite as hard as they could but there is no running away from the truth.Maybe we would have gotten concrete foreign help like a lot of us had been advocating for and not just help in surveillance and monitoring our negotiations with the insurgents.
We are in an era where Asari Dokubo and company are threatening to wage war if Jonathan loses and opposition supporters have stoned the President on some of his campaign trips and even burnt some of his campaign vehicles.These are very trying times for all security agencies.

Either way,there is a high chance of post-election violence and with Boko Haram trying really hard to own the North East (for now at least),it is important they set their priorities straight.The Military has promised to conclude a major operation against the insurgents in the next six weeks and only then would it be able to render its traditional support to the police and other agencies during elections.At this stage one can't help but hope things go well.The reinforcements from our African brothers make that very possible but we have had so many false hopes as far this war is concerned,we are scared of setting our expectations high.If God forbid,things don't change substantially in the next six weeks, i am afraid the best possible option open to us would be to exclude the troubled states.I don't see any other way.They were never safe and we have deceived ourselves for too long.
Political parties and critics of government can rant all they want but the truth remains we were never safe enough to conduct General Elections all across the country.