About 120 hours from today the much awaited Nigeria general elections would kickstart. The process will commence on Saturday, February 25th, with voters picking their choice of President and National Assembly (NASS) members (Senate and House of Representatives). The next set of elections to the state government houses(governorship) and the states Houses of Assembly comes up exactly two weeks later(Saturday, March 11th).
To some the once in every four years affair is a comedy of sorts while some others may want to describe it as a carnival of the absurd where different characters come up to seek for the peoples four years mandate which will end up been a project in futility as the electorates’ assessment of their representatives’ performance is often very poor. For the four years some of these merchant of politics claim they’re acting on the peoples mandate they got via popular vote nothing tangible can be pointed to as democratic dividends that they have made possible for their constituents.
While the electorates go around town sweating profusely, getting bashed while canvassing for the support that their choice candidates need to get elected, those that will benefit from the candidates’ victory at the polls will be no where to be found. Infact such individuals will be miles away cooling off only to emerge after the victory has been achieved amid sweat, loss of blood, broken limbs and in some cases death, to be offered juicy appointments by their political benefactors.
This time the advice to the citizens is that they should be pragmatic in their approach to these electioneering process and avoid biting their fingers in regret for taking actions that will not be benefitial to them when the chips are down. Trust the merchants of politics to devise different means to get the attention of the beautiful brides(voters).
The modus operandi of the politicians is sometime not easy to detect as they camouflage by hiding under the canopy of NGOs doing humanitarian services to the indigents, deprived, widows, orphans and the likes. You hardly can point to any of the candidates who doesn’t apply this tactics.
One candidate that is of interest to me in this write up is JOEL – ONOWAKPO THOMAS, who is the brain behind Elomaz Communications Limited, which publishes The Trumpet. Thomas, a former boss of the Delta State Internal Revenue Board, who is reputed to be a Harvard trained chartered accountant, is seeking to be elected as the senator to represent Delta South in the upper chamber of the National Assembly (NASS) on the ticket of the All Progressives Congress(APC) for the next four year’s(2023 – 2027).
He has been on the campaign trail for quite a while now trying to get the votes that will make his dream become a reality. In some instances when he gets to areas where the people are going through some form of stress occasioned by calamities they suffer he doles out large sums of money in the region of several hundred millions of naira to help in alleviating their problems. Just recently he was reported in the media to have paid huge sums of money running into hundreds of millions of naira for the examination fees of some secondary school students in his constituency.
Well, my link with him is that I was employed as a freelancer in The Trumpet newspaper which is his brainchild via a letter of appointment on 1st March 2022 after emerging one of those who were successful in a gruelling interview session earlier conducted by Elomaz Communications Limited. I was offered N30,000 as stipulated in the letter as monthly stipend for just two months. Thereafter, the story changed as the order that later came was that the charges applicable has now become N1,000 per published story per month which means that each reporter can get more or less than N30,000 every month. We operated in this format for another two months until all of a sudden I stopped receiving payment for no reason for upward of four months thereafter.
After having over two hundred of my published reports(N200,000) spanning about four months not paid for I decided to take the best option available which was to stop submitting my reports for publication. I called one of the editors of the publication, Sylva Obah, to request for the payment and also intimate him about my decision to opt out of the company. His response was so harsh and he dared me to do my worst. Thereafter, he spoke with Edafewotu Endurance, another of the editors who promised to pay me in the new year as 2022 was ending. When I called him in the new year he became even more hostile than Sylva and offered no respite for resolving the issue.
My grievance at the moment is that JOEL – ONOWAKPO THOMAS has so much money to throw around in his desire to become a senator while we that worked with his organisation suffer months of unpaid salaries resulting in hunger for us and our household.
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