Today I saw first hand that Politics in Nigeria can be dirty business…
So there I was at my Polling Unit in Amuwo Odofin, with my cousins and my old friends from the area. We had done accreditation at 10am and were told to come back at 1:30pm to vote. Then a little fracas broke out. Apparently some guy had been taking pictures of us as we gathered talking and discussing, and he tweeted that picture with the comment “APC Thugs roaming aimlessly in Amuwo Odofin” then he tagged Vanguard News, INEC, Gidi Traffic and MrAyeDee.
Someone had seen this guy take this picture and when he now Tweeted it, he raised the alarm and the guy was descended on. I quickly jumped in with the help of our Community Chairman here, saving him from a rabid crowd that had gathered (some I’m sure not knowing why or what he did).
Anyway, long story short, what he did on Twitter was announced and in the initial scuffle someone had taken his phone from him amid slaps and punches. I asked the guy if it’s true what he did and he said he was just taking pictures. Why? What for? One soldier had arrived so the guy just hid behind us. Then the crowd got more irate and got round us to to start slapping him again, even turning on me for shielding him.
Then another person said they had opened his phone and seen his tweet, they called out his name and I asked him again. By now, as his only “friend”, he told me what he had done, told me his twitter handle but told me he can “undo” what he did. I checked his twitter on my phone and there I was in the crowd of the picture he had taken and labelled as “APC Thugs”. This actually got me so mad, but luckily more Soldiers had arrived and they put him in the back of their truck. I showed them what he had done and I asked the guy again and he said he was “sorry”. I was just perplexed.
He also told me he was in a network of people who tweet anti-APC messages on Twitter. I checked his other tweets and found him retweeting other anti-APC tweets (including the Desmond Elliot sharing money tweet pic), and those other people retweeting his “APC Thug” tweet pic.
They took the guy away, and the other guys from my area in the picture followed the Soldiers and Police to go make sure proper steps were taken to deal with him. Last I heard, they have made him delete the Tweetpic but of course the damage has been done as some blogs have screen munched it and passed it off as real news.
Politics in Nigeria and the dirty games can never shock me anymore.