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Only a
non-Nigerian, would read any sinister meaning into that debacle at the
airport this December 2010. As we love to say: ‘NA TODAY?’ For years
now Nigerians and other visitors to the country have had their luggage
pilfered at the airport; it’s no big deal! In fact, I am sure that even
people in ‘power’ have had the experience. Add to that the fact that we
do not expect the luggage to be found either; the only luggage we often
recover is that left behind by an airline in the country from where you
came, and that’s because you left it behind! Once luggage arrives here
and goes missing, perish the thought of recovery! It would be so
amateurish of airport ‘rats’ that are normally quite ‘sharp’ about
these things, with buyers and fences waiting to move the goods along
too. We just LOVE imported things and that is the attraction for goods
coming in through any of the ports.

The solution is to devise ways to frustrate the person who nicks your luggage.

Don’t put the parts of a whole unit together in the same package; for example,

separate your shoes
by putting all left feet in one bag and right feet in another. Take
pleasure in knowing that even the taker won’t enjoy the shoes.

And that seems to
be what saved the day for us! What was stolen were parts of a whole,
which meant nothing could be compromised as far as the elections were
concerned. Therefore the only reason we heard about this particular
airport theft was because of the nature of the stolen items: election
materials, no less! Of course, we all know that these Direct Data
Capturing [DDC] machines cost us N87b which demand Professor JEGA, the
Chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission [INEC], had sprung on
us suddenly Furthermore, we were told that without that money, the
Commission could not guarantee anything.

Naturally, one’s first thought that some N87b had gone down the drain.

Thankfully, it’s nothing like that. At least, that’s what I think- and I’ll tell you why.

Even as you read
this, things are still being pilfered at the airport, and they will
still be going missing till the end of time, because we never did
anything to stop the thefts when they started. We were only momentarily
embarrassed about this because the world is watching to see what we
make of ourselves in 2011. If we were bothered, don’t you think someone
would have been sacked for incompetence, negligence or whatever ‘-ence’
one can dream up or, (heaven forbid!) actually resigned?

Yes, laugh! Even I
chuckle at the thought of someone resigning for anything, even if the
incident fuels continuing cynicism about who we really are. Why? Am I
not a Nigerian? Don’t I, of all people, know the constraints we all
labour under? The ‘special advisers’ will soon advise us that it is a
‘systemic failure of all of us’; after all, if the minister,
subordinate or even the cleaner is sacked, will that stop the pilfering
at the airports?

NEXT newspaper
carried reports about how amused members of staff who worked at the
airports were, over the furore the missing DDC machines caused.

And they were not being cynical: it was just a statement of fact that things ‘walk’ at the ports.

Secondly, one
refuses to accept that the people who want to rig elections are so
scared that they’ll resort to stealing DDC machines at the airport.
Please! You credit them with too much sophistication. Why anyone will
not pay good money [which they have!] to get professionals to do
something well beats me. Or how do you explain an election result where
someone won by 15,000 votes, when only 12,000 voters were registered in
the place, and yet the winning party was not the only party that got
votes?

We don’t rig by
stealing machines; imagine the stress of finding who will operate the
thing? We do not pay attention to detail in that forensic mathematical
way you see in FBI documentaries. We rig openly because nothing ever
happens to riggers anyway.

Did you not know that some people had INEC registration machines in
their homes before the 2007 elections? Did anyone get prosecuted? So,
it is not a big deal to get a DDC machine if you are determined to have
it and the authorities don’t mind you having it. The electoral
commission has never come out to denounce the voters’ registration
lists that emerged from such a compromised environment, has it? Have
they refused to use the lists? The theft of the DDC machines is only
another small evidence of the larger picture we now see: FAILURE!