Voting at an Election is the True Soro Soke

Soro soke is a Yoruba phrase that means speak out/ speak up…..

A very perfect avenue to sorosoke in a democracy is through the ballots. When you cast yours, you have sorosoke, when you do not, funny, you have also soro soke. The former, however, has more clarity, it tells all stakeholders your preferences, the latter on the contrary, could be taken as a concurrence or indecision.

Two elections held in the Lagos East Senatorial District, yesterday 05/12/2020, one for the district seat at the Senate and the other for the state constituency seat, where prior occupiers passed on from Covid-19 complications. May their gentle souls rest in peace.

Somolu and Kosofe local government areas in the district were quite active during the #EndSARS protests, so I was quite keen on seeing if the desire for good governance, a latter-day smuggled objective of the protest would have any impact of the elections results and the demographics.

Following official declaration of the results, I put the numbers for the Senatorial seat together and did a few percentages to understand pattern. I have attached an image that captures this small analysis.

It is difficult to get the demographics of actual voters, but with the knowledge that more than 60% of eligible voters in Nigeria are under 40, my inference is that youths (especially urban youths) do not yet understand how democracy should work, hence, plenty noise on social meadia and no actions to back-up their complaints. It was clear, that the elections, some sort of opportunity to communicate to the status-quo, was not taken seriously. Let’s see the below;

For the Senatorial seat, only 8% of the registered voters came out to elect their senator. The total registered voters is 1.26 million, but only 102,128 of this number came to vote. There were 5 LGAs, Ibeju-Lekki, Kosofe, Epe, Somolu, and Ikorodu. The most urban of these 5, Kosofe and Somolu, had 5% and 7% turnout respectively, while the most rural, Ibeju-Lekki and Epe had 16% and 17% turnout accordingly. It is therefore safe to conclude that the more rural areas participate in elections more than the urban. It would therefore, be smart of any politician, to put more campaign efforts in the rural areas, because of more guaranteed results.

It is very sad though, that while the winner, Senator-elect Tokunbo Abiru won a landslide 87% of the total votes cast, this man was only elected by 7% of elegible voters. What this means is that minority 7% took a decision on behalf of the other majority 93%.

One more lesson, is that the fringe parties should rather concentrate more on the very grassroot elections. Local Government elections conducted by the states electoral bodies are mostly sham, but these fringe parties could put their efforts into state contituencies, one at a time. Senator-elect Abiru had a total of 89,204 votes, the runners-up Babatunde Gbadamosi, had 11,257, but the 9 other aspirants combined had 1,875, 17% of what the 2nd position had. While I commend their efforts for participating, their numbers indicate some clowning and no ambition to actually win.

In Bauchi state Dass state constituency elections, on the contrary, the participation and the keeness of the contest was quite remarkable in comparison. The winning party APC had 12,299, while the 2nd position PDP had 11,062. Bakura state constituency election in Zamafara state was also indicating a keenly contested election, until it was declared inconclusive, after some polling units results were cancelled due to over voting. Bottomline, however, is that in these two North-East and North-West states, the elections were taken with more seriousness demonstrated by the level of participation. When next, therefore, if we see huge numbers coming from the Northwest and Northeast, we should have an idea that it is because of the level of seriousness they have put into it, even though, they are less serious about making noise on the social media.

Take home- ONLY BALLOTS CAST ARE COUNTED, SOCIAL MEDIA NOISE DOES NOT COUNT TOWARDS ELECTION RESULTS