From Abuja to Port Harcourt, Owerri to Umuahia, Enugu to Nsukka, Benin, Warri, Asaba, Degema, candidates in the forthcoming NBA election, are complaining. They are smiling and suffering but they put up a Tara coated face to hide their tears.
Some in their lucid moments, when the hailing crowd had drank down the last bottle and leaving heaps of leftovers, cry with anguish and cannot wait for this cup to pass over them.
As a participant observer, an agent provocateur, I poke at them and honestly, their confessions will leave you wondering if it is NBA election they are talking about or is it APC/PDP primaries.
The truth is, candidates after grumbling of how expensive NBA election has become, will still continue to do those frivolities that add to the cost of running for posts in NBA.
Most often those who want to deliver you, make ridiculous suggestions in the name of how to strategically engage the electorates. But the bulk of cost or activities that generate cost, comes from the aspirants themselves.
We have become like nominal politicians and not happy if we do not see crowd hailing us, while finger licking and quaffing at our expense, calling us “incoming.”
We go out of our ways to pay BPF for colleagues in an election year. Some start two conference to an election year, building and oiling “structures” all over the country.
This rat race is heartbreaking.
But they say, Felix, why are you complaining? How much have you spent? Stay there, don’t do what your mates are doing.
So I started moving around in search of whom to consult. Just two weeks, I have gassed out. No time for my clients-I now outsource my briefs and most often the colleagues these briefs are given to, over bill me or under perform. This makes me to wonder how those who declared interest a year ago are coping. Do they have sponsors? Is it this same one room “charge and bail” subsistence practice we all are doing?
I understand the need for deep pocket in an election, but must a professional association’s election be this expensive?
Lawyers or is it Human right/pro democracy activists condemn APC for selling nomination form for N100,000, 000 but are criminally mute on the monetized, stomach infrastructure driven contest among lawyers.
The Electoral Committee of NBA (ECNBA) and the entire membership of NBA, must and should find scientific ways of making cost of running for election cheaper. I have some ideas oh but after July 16, I will go into over-bend but if the platform of NBA is made available to me, these reforms will come as fast as the abolition of Delegate Conference/election.
In this era of technology and all manner of lawyer “friendly” bloggers, we can run impactful campaign without risking our lives on the road. At least terrorists and bandits have made moving round the North less attractive but our Northern colleagues, still read us and are politically abreast with political sounds and waves of impending earthquake called NBA 2022 Election.
NBA zones offices regionally.
Why should other regions have a say on who a region an office is zoned to chooses to present? Why should a candidate for Assistant position be put through the horror of traveling around 50% of the 125 branches of NBA?
Please, if you have a spare sponsor that you are not using, I need his services.