Right now, behind me, the votes are being counted. It's rather a jovial
atmosphere, with the returning officer holding up the ballots so that the small crowd that's gathered can count them. It's really a rather sad reminder that if things do stay calm, and they're reasonably well-organised, democracy is quite a nice thing to see in action."
But I cracked up today when I saw BBC monitoring's review of African newspapers' coverage of the elections. How can't this not make you laugh?
"I want to appeal to Nigerians not to lose faith in democracy... The fact that President Olusegun Obasanjo has made a complete mess of our democracy and turned Nigeria into his chicken farm doesn't mean democracy is bad.
4 comments:
I wonder why you are not using more Nigerian newspapers as part of your sources for information.
You too dey rely on oyinbo people wey dey wait for us to fail.
My uncle was watching NTA all day yesterday and I watched it for like a quarter of the day and honest to God I did not know where all of these foreign newspapers were getting their information from.
"Former Prime Minister of Canada Joe Clark said Saturday that he visited several polling stations and had not personally witnessed any serious irregularities" (Globe and Mail, Monday, April 23, 2007)
Then he goes on to say that he HEARD there were irregularities. Na dem say, dem say a whole ex-prime minister is following and we are quoting. Which I find very amusing. You are a journalist and you know how the western media can be so biased about African countries but yet you seem to think that what they say is WHAT IS. Makes me wonder.
Had African shirts relied solely on African newspapers would he too not be doing the dirty on Africa? The Oyinbo, Will Ross, gives a very positive view.
"It's really a rather sad reminder that if things do stay calm, and they're reasonably well-organised, democracy is quite a nice thing to see in action."
Yeah a positive and in my opinion patronising view... "its really sad reminder..."
Anyway, the word I used was "more Nigerian newspapres" and not "only".
The fact that one man can mess up a democratic election this big, and in your words, "turn Nigeria into his chicken farm," obviously show big time flaws in the democratic process, at least, as we have it in Nigeria.
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