WHO are contesting for seats as your legislators: State House of Assembly, House of Representatives, and Senate? Do you know them? Have they spoken to you? What would be the bases of your decision about these men and women, who in their numbers and memberships really rule Nigeria? Do you realise the importance of their decisions? Do you appreciate the implications of the stand you take when you tick one, and not the others?

For the past 16 years we have under-rated their importance. Our fixation with the executive, the presidency, and the governorship is such that we forget legislators. We tend to forget that legislators should regulate conduct of the executive and innumerable organs of government that left on their own distort the course of Nigeria. How have the legislators acted in the past 16 years?

Their attitude is as self-serving as the executives, but particularly worse because the legislature in most cases indulges the executive and is willing to do all it wants. The legislature as watchdog as is critical in its contributions to the effectiveness of monitoring governments.

The intensity of the jostling for executive offices has shut out legislators who are glad to assume a back seat in the current scrutiny that contestants are undergoing. It should not be so. The electorate should invest the same attention in choosing their legislators; they can make a lot of differences in what happens to Nigerians.

Reasons abound for worries beyond the worthiness of those who would be chosen in Saturday’s elections. With the governorship and state legislative elections, how the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, manages Saturday would have vast implications for the next elections on April 11. Is INEC ready?

Professor Attahiru Jega, its Chairman, was in-charge when the previous general elections were postponed. The 2011 postponement was so late that some voters had voted when Jega announced the postponement. The issue then was non-availability of voting materials.

Jega in the past four years promoted INEC’s readiness. He excused all INEC lapses with claims that the 2015 elections would be the acid test for INEC. . The poor distribution of the permanent voter’s cards, PVCs, and the non-readiness of some materials required for the elections, days to the event, are question marks on preparations INEC made.

Nigerians should troop out in their millions to vote. It is important that we do not spend the next four years blaming others for the state of Nigeria. We have a chance to decide that future and it is crucial that we utilise our votes in re-shaping Nigeria. We can.