One of the greatest feelings for Nigerian politicians is knowing they have people who are in love with them enough to do anything for them.
And love makes you do strange things, but some people on this list like to overdo things. We need them to think more before they act.
Showing your naked bum bum to the internet
Nothing prepares you for logging onto social media and seeing the bare asscrack of someone’s grandfather at the beach calling on God to help his candidate win. Yet, Nigerian actor, Ebun Oloyede, didn’t consider this when he subjected millions of Nigerians to a video clip of himself completely naked, with a back view no one asked for or deserved.
We’re pretty sure Oloyede hasn’t dedicated this much to a film role before, so why do it for politics? Let this be the last time, sir.
Drinking gutter water
For most people, voting for a candidate who goes on to win an election is always a cause for celebration. Most normal people would put an extra piece of meat on their rice or go out for a few bottles of beer with friends. But for Aliyu Muhammad Sani of Bauchi State, Buhari’s re-election victory in 2019 was his excuse to take a full dive into a rubbish-filled gutter.
[The Guardian]
Sani had promised to swim inside a gutter and drink drainage water if Buhari won, but maybe this is the one time it was okay to act like a Nigerian politician and not go through with a promise. To clarify, swimming in a gutter of rubbish is bad for your health and for our eyes.
Trekking interstate
Nigerian voters have upheld a tradition of doing interstate treks as a declaration of love for their favourite candidates so much that it’s got weird. The most infamous of the trekkers is Suleiman Hashimu who walked 750 kilometres in 18 days from Lagos to Abuja to celebrate Buhari’s 2015 victory. Buhari rewarded him with a handshake and eight years of whatever Nigeria currently is.
Dahiru Buba, another infamous Buhari trekker, who made a trip from Gombe to Abuja with his legs in 2015 needed financial help in 2020 to treat limb pains that developed after his unnecessary walk.
You’d think these consequences would dissuade future trekkers, but some supporters are already trekking from state to state for 2023 presidential candidates.
Fighting your friends for politicians
The trend of severing ties with longtime associates over support for politicians has grown over the past eight years as online political discourse has become more toxic.
The big attraction of democracy is it allows everyone to responsibly table their points of view without fear of bad blood, but that isn’t always the case between supporters in different camps.
What’s worse about this hostile trend is the politicians they’re fighting these battles for are publicly friends when elections are over and don’t care about your private relationships. Yet, there you are, cutting off your own friends.
Election violence
Electoral violence is a feature as old as Nigerian politics itself, and it’s just sad that the pawns of the game are yet to realise they mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. People who’ll be abandoned to their fates after elections are the ones physically manipulating the process for unqualified people to march into office.
The trend of electoral violence has tipped downward over the past few election cycles, but those who haven’t got the message must realise they’re running a fool’s errand.
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