Yesterday on my way back from work, the sun was really shining out of fashion so I couldn’t help but jump in the moment I found an empty taxi. Sadly the driver couldn’t get to my destination but I found an amazing reason to get into this taxi though he was not taking me to my final destination.
“Good evening, sir, I said.
“Evening,” he replied as my eyes raced through the Buhari/Osibanjo poster and flags decorating his dash board.
“Whaoo,” I exclaimed trying to hold a discussion, “Are you voting Buhari?” I asked’.
” Sai Buhari.” he replied.
I gave him a good smile so he relaxed and I had an amazing opportunity to ask other questions.
“Oga. driver, so you like Buhari and that is the only reason you are voting him on Saturday?
“No, Madam no be say I like am be reason why I dey vote am, na the place my friends dey vote. so I no get reason why I wan vote Buhari but I dey Sai Buhari, we want change, na just the change we want. Jonathan na good man oh but we want change. I never chop government money before for my life so nobi say I fit gain anything from Buhari, all the money wey I don get for my life na me work for am so nobi anything, we just want change, I dey go Bauchi on Thursday because na there I go vote,” he replied.
I was humbled at the rate at which someone should die for someone without even knowing why he is dying. The passion he had in his voice for someone he was going to vote for without even knowing why he wanted the person to be his president.
I asked him yet another question, “Oga, but do you think that in the last 5 years that Jonathan has done very well for this country?”
“Yes,” he replied, “Goodluck has done very well but the problem is that he no advertise him work very well. People wey dey do the work no dey advertise am, for example na only people like us the drivers that know that roads have improved and the money flow in Nigeria is very good now to compare with before. Goodluck did very well but he needs advertisers to advertise him work well. Nobi only during election them go dey advertise am because they get plenty things wey he do wey I no even know until they start campaign last year. Apart from that he is a good man.”
Hmmmm, I gave a great sigh of relief, paid him and disembarkted from the taxi but entered yet another one that gave me the shock of my life.
I didn’t intend to go on with this my interview session as I entered the second taxi but his response to the wailing siren weakened my spirit and I gathered the momentum to ask him who he would be voting for come March 28.
“Goodluck, of course,” he replied. Then I pushed further by asking why Goodluck, and not Buhari?
“I am voting Goodluck because he is a Christian and he is a southerner,” he replied and that ended our discussion. I stepped down and thought aloud comparing the two taxi drivers and their responses to the questions I had asked only to come to the conclusion that;
Some people will just vote Buhari on Saturday just because they just heard the word ‘Change’ for the first time and has come to like it without analyzing and understanding the type of change the Buhari/Osibanjo ticket is bringing on board.
Some people will vote Buhari because Goodluck’s achievements were not advertised sufficiently five years before the electioneering campaign came knocking.
Some people will vote Goodluck just because he is a Christian and a southerner and not because of his potentials, the transformation agenda or the things he has done in the past.
Others for Buhari because he is a Muslim and from the north.
Whichever way votes are cast, a considerable number who will not vote just want peace to reign, and not the tension and fear that has come largely from the activities of the opposition
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