Rerun elections will hold tomorrow in some states and, like in the past, Buhari will not intervene in the process to give his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), any advantage. In fact, the president rightly said that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is in charge of the electoral processes in the country.
Instead, what the president wants is for the INEC, politicians and electorate in the places where rerun elections will hold to be law abiding and ensure that the process is free, fair and credible, his Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr Garba Shehu, said in a statement.
Tellingly, the president, in the statement, described as unfair and ridiculous claims made by some APC faithful that he shows disinterest in the upcoming elections and concludes that the president will not abuse power by changing results to favour them.
Of course, in many ways, those APC faithful accusing the president of not intervening to favour the party can be excused. After all, in the past, some presidents of Nigeria were alleged to have interfered in the election process to favour their party candidates.
The president is a different kind of leader and, so, he won’t do that. Why should he? The process by which the votes of the people are gathered and counted is critical to his government’s legitimacy, and to the continued faith of the people in the government.
Agreed, while election and vote counting sound straightforward in Nigeria, ensuring the accurate counting of votes is, in reality, quite difficult process that always generates controversy.
No doubt, in as much as the president desires credible process, many obstacles can obstruct the democratic process, including inadequate access to the voting process, inaccurate counting, late results and results that are not convincing to the electorate.
Some of these obstacles are structural, others are due to human error. Regrettably, computers, which seem to offer the promise of increased speed and accuracy of collecting and counting votes accompanied by the possibility of decreased costs, could, in Nigeria, offer new challenges to the legitimacy of the voting process, including high-tech election fraud.
Still, democracy offers the potential for realising self-governance and politicians, especially now, must realise that the legitimacy and effectiveness of democracy will suffer when it falls short of the ideal and standards desired by the president.
Thus, politicians and electorate, in areas where rerun elections will hold, should know that responsibility for having free and fair elections falls on them and, therefore, it is incumbent on them to, as the president wants, promote and maintain the country’s democracy, through mainly the conduct they exhibit tomorrow.
Essentially, like the president says, party leaders and members in states where there will be supplementary elections, should work hard to earn their people’s votes, rather than expect the president to manipulate INEC in their favour.
They should know that the president is a man of integrity and conviction and manipulation of election results to favour someone or his party is not his stock in political trade.
We can’t celebrate HIV/AIDS rating yet
This week, President Muhammadu Buhari said the country has reason to celebrate as far as HIV/AIDS in Nigeria is concerned.
Speaking while unveiling the 2018 Nigeria HIV/AIDS Indicator and Impact Survey (NAIIS), a national household-based survey on the prevalence of Human Immune Deficiency Virus (HIV) and related health indicators, the president said less Nigerians now, unlike in 2014, live with the HIV virus.
However, the president is quick to caution Nigerians against what could be early celebration, saying about a million Nigerians living with HIV are not medically catered for.
But, the president said the federal government has ensured that the “HIV treatment programme in Taraba and Abia is properly funded this year and accommodation made to resource future expansions in the coming years.’’
Still, when the president said the availability of accurate and reliable HIV data is crucial for planning effective health intervention to arrest the HIV epidemic and, ultimately, rid the country of this health threat, the joy by Nigerians can only be imagined.
HIV/AIDS disease is a cruelly potent killer, especially when combined with the poverty in which many of the countries of the developing world face. In the absence of good nutrition, sanitation and health care, HIV/AIDS is certain to end lives of people who would survive and flourish elsewhere.
AIDS has taken more than 20 million lives and may take millions more if the trends continue and, therefore, like the president said, the survey and its results came at the right time with the government starting the implementation of the National Health Act aimed at ensuring that Nigerians have access to comprehensive healthcare services while HIV is targeted for elimination in Nigeria.
Of course, the importance of health in personal life cannot be minimised as it is nationally regarded as a prerequisite for optimum socio-economic development of man. Better health is central to human happiness and well-being. It also makes an important contribution to economic progress, as healthy populations live longer, are more productive, and save more for investment and job creation.
In fact, it is on this note that the president’s promise to add 50,000 Nigerians on HIV/AIDS treatment every year must be appreciated. Investment in health is not only a desirable, but an essential priority for most societies.
However, the country’s health system faces tough and complex challenges, in part derived from new pressures, such as ageing populations, growing prevalence of chronic illnesses, and intensive use of expensive yet vital health technologies. Other than that, health performance and economic performance are interlinked. Wealthier countries, which Nigeria aspires to be among, have healthier populations.
And it is a basic truth that poverty and diseases adversely affects life expectancy and needs adequate resources to combat, it’s regrettable that health expenditures are determined mainly by available resources which are scarce.
Still, the effects of health on development are clear. Countries with weak health and education conditions find it harder to achieve sustained growth. Indeed, citizens’ good health is associated with a rise in economic growth.
Disease hinders institutional performance too. Diseases and lower life expectancy discourage adult training and damage productivity.
Similarly, the emergence of deadly diseases such as HIV/AIDShave become obstacles for the development of sectors like the tourism industry, on which so many countries rely on and Nigeria hopes to follow suit.
Thus, concerted effort to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic must be mounted now while the move by the Nigerian private sector to establish a national HIV trust fund in the coming months should be supported with a view to ensuring that all Nigerians have access to high quality HIV treatment and prevention services.
