-By Austen Akhagbeme:

It shook the world that after all the good, the bad and the ugliest of machinations associated with the just concluded general elections in Nigeria, there was no post-election violence.

Not when the gubernatorial and state house of assembly elections degenerated into bigotry and ethnicisation of emotions, actions and intentions on a dangerous scale, especially in Lagos where opinionatedness was walking on all fours.

This was because those who were declared “losers” and their followers chose the way of peace, patience and legality to get redressment. It becomes a laughable paradox that those who were adjudged to have “won” the election are the ones threatening and overheating the system by insinuating the abstract and the idealised as real and the ugly as possible.

They are willfully creating a pitiable scenario where predators are erroneously mistaken for victims and vice-versa. It is akin to a situation where the farm owner can be accused of being the thief when he is too hesitant to call the actual thief a thief.

Why would the winner of any fairly contested slugfest be afraid of the plans and plots of the losers, especially when the winner is in maximum control of the apparachik that determines who gets what when and how?

Then it becomes a matter of a cleaner conscience that fears no accusation versus that of a pyrrhic victor troubled by his many shenanigans. Those who insist that the armed are less dangerous than the unarmed are deceptive and are, therefore, the true enemies of peace. They should be ignored in totality and not be seen to have been sided by the state.

• Austen Akhagbeme is a Columnist with Blank NEWS Online