Hi friends,

It’s been yet another week with yet another story andwe didn’t fail to bring you news of what’s buzzing in Nigeria at the moment. Ina week of many eventful events, pun intended, we’ve cooked up interesting newsas usual on this week’s edition of the TLF round-up.

Enjoy!

It’s all about the just-concluded 2023 Nigeriangeneral elections right now and we’ve brought you news of what went down duringthe week. This short movie rundown you’re getting had BATmen, OBIdients & ATIKUlators as its main actors and did notfail to deliver at the box office!

On Monday, we got what would probably remain as themost shocking plot twist of the general elections. The All-Progressive Party(APC) which happens to be the ruling party at the federal level and in Lagosstate lost the presidential polls through its candidate, Asiwaju Bola AhmedTinubu, in Lagos to Labor Party through its candidate, Peter Obi. This wasquite the surprise as Asiwaju had always claimed Lagos to be his ‘backyard’. Losing the polls in yourbackyard was definitely not the way to reiterate control. Anyways, one thingwas clear from this. That is, Lagos belongs to the people of Lagos.

This plot twist set the mood for a really interestingpost-election movie and we were definitely not ready for what was to come thenext few days.

We had the ‘eviltwins’ thereafter. Ekiti and Ondo state indigenes knew what their eyes sawespecially on the streets of Twitter. From being attacked online to beinginsulted like they were the problems of Nigeria; one could rightly assume thatboth states had violated some section of the electoral law or had donesomething as equally grievous. Both states were criticised heavily especiallyby the Obidients and Atikulators for having favoured the BAT who didn’t really seem to care aboutwhat the people were saying. In his words, “Idon’t check the social media. If I check it, I get high blood pressure…” We’resorry Asiwaju, we don’t mean to give you high blood pressure.

Then came the ‘Kardashian’states. For context, this consists of Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Kwara, and Kogi.Just like the Kardashian sisters, they have a huge following and a largefanbase as well. These states are infamous for the big numbers they roll outevery election cycle. Someone had previously said, “to win the election, you need to win in two to three of these states…”Whether or not that stands to be true, we cannot say. What we can say forsure, however, is that numbers don’t lie and their numbers did justice to thehype around them. Again, the BAT rackedup wins in a couple of the Kardashian states and this pushed a certain deepthinker to say, “what if the BATsacrificed his backyard for these states?” We don’t know about the truth tothis comment but that move definitely sounds like something straight out of a movie.You thought right! Thanos esque!! Here’s your cue to go watch Avengers: The End Game if you haven’t.

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Back to our rundown, we had the ‘cry me a Rivers’ state literally drown the whole nation in tears with its logic-destroying results. The numbers recorded at the polls were at clear contrast to the votes counted and announced earlier at the polling centers on the day of the election. It was as clear as day that the results had been tampered with. Explaining the results further won’t do justice to what went down at the general elections (the presidential polls, to be specific) in River's state. You really have to see it for yourself. In the end, the phrase “as e dey pain them, e dey sweet us” hit hard and really sent the message home.

There were other notable scenes as well. From a pastpresident calling for the elections to be called off to the incumbent partydropping a press release that a certain notable Pastor in the country bearrested for hate speech, the post-election scenes didn’t fail to deliver. Toput the icing on the cake, there came a lot of uproars when the election resultwas decided by the independent electoral body to be announced at 4 am in themorning. 4 AM! Jesus definitely knew what he meant when he said “while men slept, his enemy came…” Notto forget the current man of the people, Dino, who stood up to challenge theresults being announced by the electoral body at the returning center all whilewearing a N1.5m Givenchy jacket, got to love him?

Thursday and Friday had less excitement as we began tosee court sanctions and case filings too. The aggrieved parties who didn’temerge victorious took their claims to court seeking to review the election andits results.

Like the post-election movie wasn’t enoughentertainment, the Supreme Court decided to put a smile on our faces byordering that the old 200, 500, and 1000 Naira notes remain in force as legaltender until the 31^stof December, 2023. Oh, what a life!

We hope you had a nice read. Drop your thoughts in the members’ corner as well. We would love to hear from you.

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