In a move that can be described as generous, the federal government has ordered the payment of February salaries to enable workers travel for Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Mr Lai Mohammed, said this on Wednesday in Abuja. He said the move is intended to help workers go back to their voting place to vote after the postponement of the presidential and National Assembly elections from February 16 to 23.
“This (measure) is just to ease the burden of people who want to go back and cast their vote,’’ he said. The minister said the council reviewed some of the palliatives put in place by other stakeholders to help people return to cast their votes.
And such stakeholders must be appreciated. They include the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), with a membership of about 50,000, which agreed to reduce the pump price of petrol from N145 to 140, from February 21 to 25, 2019.
There’s also the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), with about two million members operating in motor parks in all the 774 local governments of the federation, which had offered to reduce transport fares.
Of course, airlines are not left out the stakeholders’ goodness and readiness to make the votes count. Arik and Aero contractors have offered 50 percent discount to all travelers who present their Permanent Voters Card (PVC) at the purchasing point.
Of course, other than voters, other people will take advantage of this window and travel more often when they can save money. They can go to locations that they might not have gone to, otherwise, because they can afford the airfare.
This means that more people are able to travel the country than before, politicians get the votes they need and airlines can make more money. What a win-win situation!
After all, airline travel is seen to be for the elite, but with lower fares, it will, at least for few days, become an option for more people as travel packages that include low-cost often encourage travel.
Agreed, the measures are all aimed at encouraging voters who might have been disenfranchised by the postponement of the elections exorbitant fares.
This must not be allowed to happen. Voting, ideally, every registered voter must do for in a democracy, all eligible voters are given chance to select their leader through their right to vote and to be voted for.
In fact, in a truly democratic society, the representatives or candidates who have been elected are liable in many ways to the people who elected them. Voting is a right of all eligible voters in the country. It is seen as the normal or typical form of political activity and it remains the primary means of political participation for the common people.
However, the goal of any voting system and, by extension, democracy, is to establish the intent of each individual voter and translate those intents into a final tally or reality. In essence, each vote, after tomorrow’s much-awaited elections, like President Muhammadu Buhari vows to ensure, must count!
