Africa should abolish polls and return to fiefdoms and monarchies

Cameroon's Incumbent President Paul Biya, of the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement party, wait to casts his vote during the Presidential elections in Yaounde, Cameroon.[FILE]

Charles Dunbar Burgess King, a presidential candidate for the True Whig Party during the 1927 Presidential elections in Liberia, was sweating it out against Thomas Jefferson Richelieu Faulkner of the People's Party. Interestingly, the registered voters were 19,000 and Faulkner garnered 9,000 votes (47.4 per cent). However, in the Kenyan style 'Tharaka Nithi Moment' style, King pulled a surprise win with a humongous figure of 230,000 votes out of 19,000 (1,211 per cent). In the previous elections in 1923, he had garnered (115 per cent) so this was a very 'impressive fraudulent performance'. Hilarious but real, laughable but sad.

Over the years, Africa has witnessed great electoral scandals emanating from compromised and incompetent Election Management Bodies, tyranny and despotism, low voter literacy, corruption, vested international machinations and a culture of impunity.