All These Election Stuff (Part 1): Priorities

So I'm going to be talking about election specifically voting. Now, I know some of you are like " Why is she talking about elections now, the next election is like 3 years away."Well, we need to talk about this because 1, it is a very important season where we get to exercise one of our core civic duties, voting. Also, most of us teens are just going to be getting our voter's cards so it's part excitement. Anyways, that aside. I want to particularly speak about the decision-making process of who we vote for. Most people do not give this much thought but it is actually a very important individual decision that we have to make every four years and lives literally depend on it. And if you think I'm over exaggerating then just think about all the refugees and displaced people who are most times forgotten in camps after the four weeks or the people who actually die from the insurgency, those who are not paid salaries for months or those who resort to crime as a source of income. And I get that people will always die or suffer or be disadvantaged no matter the administration in power but we can not deny that the frequency of such events or the number of people who lose their lives do change in every government depending on how their priorities are placed. Take, for example, a hypothetical country in which they knew which sectors had the most lives depending on it. From their last year's report, the health sector saved more than 1 million lives, the agricultural sector saved 2 million from starvation, the security teams or sector saved 500,000 from all sorts of crimes ranging from petty theft to terrorism, the transport regulation sector saved 50,000 people from road accidents and so on. Now if during an electoral campaign a candidate were to put transport regulation as their first priority and health or agricultural at the bottom of the list, we would all be weary of such a candidate because we know that most funding or attention should go to such sectors because of the amount of impact that they have. And so, such candidate would automatically go to the bottom of our list ( of course, this is based on the reasoning that all manifestos would be fulfilled). Now if another candidate were to come and "get his priorities right" putting the agricultural sector first and health and so on, we would probably want to vote for such a person because they seem to have everyone's priorities considered, at least on average. We are not taking into consideration any personal factors that might occur between voters like those who work in the transport regulation sector would probably want to vote for the first person because then they would be put first. Now, this is not to say that other sectors that do not have massive impacts should be ignored, they should not because no matter how small, they still contribute. But the question is in a case where there might not be enough funding or there is a limit of resources, which is exactly how the world runs today (shoutout to economics students, demand and supply thinz), which sector would they want to be working optimally? which sector can they not do without? or rather which sector would most negatively impact everyone on average? Now I know that everyone has a personal bias when it comes to voting which is totally acceptable, in fact, one of the major reasons for elections is to choose who represents us the best and not just financially or economically but sometimes even socially or culturally. But the problem occurs when we allow social or cultural bias to overrule the general credibility of the candidate. We have to know where to draw the line. And that is sometimes if not most times a problem in Nigerian politics. People become blinded by the fact that the candidate is Yoruba or Muslim or practices polygamy or something that we forget to ask, "how important do they think healthcare is because the states of our hospitals are not up to standard, or how important do they think education is because of the standard of education or the level of uneducated or out-of-school children, what about unemployment, security, etc?" We have to realize that even though we want a person that we feel connected to in some way, the welfare of people should come first. So indirectly, what I'm trying to say is how do we prioritize when we think of candidates, do we put logic and credibility first or social ties. Many things need to be considered when choosing which candidate will have the honor of your vote but I believe that this is a crucial starting point.

Thank you all for reading. I hope you enjoyed or got something out of it. Remember to leave your comments and have a wonderful rest of your day.

Till next time.