Nigeria, Feb. 23 -- We have recently witnessed spirited protests and media contestations on the electoral bill then in the works and now signed into law by President Bola Tinubu. If you immerse yourself too deeply in the emotive tragicomedy, you may miss the tragedy of how politics has torn the fabric of brotherhood down the middle or the comedy of electoral mathematics in which two plus two equals whatever some electoral officer says it is.

The good book says that there is nothing new under the sun. Whatever is, had been before. It was Joseph Stalin who famously said, "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." Following up on that theme, the American writer, humorist and essayist Ma...