Until his self-destructive annulment of June 12th, 1983 Ibrahim Badamosi Babngida had otherwise put Nigeria on a trajectory to free elections and by extension, true democracy in Nigeria. It was this IBB's home-grown grass-root Option A4 for example which stopped Yakubu Gowon cold in his tracks at his local constituency in Jos with his presidential ambition. It was a proven successful primaries which empowered Nigerians for the very first time to actually participate in electing who governs them. Nigerians for the first time successfully exercised their right to a vote which produced Moshood Kolwole Oluwole ABiola as president elect, before IBB's tragic annulment deprived Nigeria's the singular opportunity to ever elect who governs them as a president. This satanic annulment of June 12th and the parcel bomb assassination of Dele Giwa will forveer remain the albatross of Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida till his last day on this earth. Both were despicable acts and atypical of a devil's May-care scheme designed to disintegrate Nigeria. These infradignous acts of IBB tarnished forever, an otherwise lasting legacy which Option A4 electioneering road-map would have bequeathed on him. IBB would have, by allowing MKO Abiola's election as president of Nigeria to hold, ingrained his name on the good side of history and by extension democracy would have been implanted in Nigeria for the long haul, courtesy of IBB. But like every tragic character of the Greek mythology or ancient Rome, IBB fell upon his own sword and disemboweled; and can never win any election to rule Nigeria again; not as long as any son or daughter of Oduduwa still breathes!
However, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida knows what he is talking about with this his recent call for staggered elections in Nigeria. This is a noble call and Icheoku fully and unequivocally supports the idea - an idea whose time has finally come, although belatedly. Nigeria does not have the necessary manpower to effectively police every election booth in Nigeria at the same time. Nigeria does not also have the logistics of conducting elections freely and throughout Nigeria at the same time, such as having to ferry election ballots and other materials to all the various remote and sometimes inaccessible areas in Nigeria timeously. The lack of needed infrastructure makes such as road network, haulage, airlifting etc makes a mockery of delivering election materials to needed areas simultaneously on a given election period. Because of the thuggery which mars elections in Nigeria, Nigeria cannot adequately man election booths to ward off these miscreants because of shortage of security officials who are over-task and over-stretched on a compacted election day. Also this will make it possible for a candidate of less means to be able to manage his campaigns as well as his elections without unnecessarily out-stretching himself to be in so many places at the same time on one election day. Additionally the pressure to win all and winner takes all will be reduced if not totally eliminated. Just like IBB suggested, it could be zoned geographical or like the present PDP six zonal arrangement or whatever other arrangement that is acceptable to the political parties. Whatever route they take, the relevant thing is the conclusion reached that staggered elections is it!