Bakosoro removes Political Virus in WES’s Nagero County

March 5, 2010 (NAGERO) – Western Equatoria’s Nagero County borders Western Bahr El Ghazal State. It is also a home to political virus and confusion in the whole state. Ibba County is bigger in size than Nagero. It is here Bakosoro was to meet his first challenge since he started his campaign, unfortunately he had political antivirus with him when he arrived Nagero on Tuesday.

Nagero seems a stronghold of Jemma Nunu and Natale Ukele where their campaigners have managed to confuse the population there that Mr. Bakosoro has already dropped from the race and is no longer running. When Col Bakosoro and his team arrived in Nagero late Tuesday afternoon, there was no sign of any reception. Isolated without any telephone network, it was difficult to reach out to people and most of them are depending on rumors or propaganda.

Bakosoro’s campaign manager started wondering about what was going on in this small county. Two hours later some elders started coming to visit Mr. Bakosoro with a very surprising information that they have been told he is no longer contesting that is why nobody shows up to welcome him and his team.

Some youth who turned up to be Bakosoro supporters came and was afraid to come closer to where the elders were meeting him. One of the bodyguards of Mr. Bakosoro came in and informed one of the team members that there are some youth outside who would like to meet Bakosoro and they seem to be afraid.

Then the youth were asked to come in and when they entered and greeted Bakosoro he asked them why they did not come directly in to see him? They said that they were afraid of two things; 1) when the governor comes here, nobody is allowed to come closer to the place where she is with her people 2) if her supporters see them around they may be subjected to so many things which they do not want to mention.. They also stated that they just got the news by surprise that Col. Bakosoro was in town.

When the news started spreading across the young town that Col. Bakosoro was present, people started turning up in numbers. Soon after that the team sent a car with loudspeakers to announce about his presence in town and about the rally the next morning. Bakosoro’s campaign team was not convinced that people were going to turn up to listen to him.

Surprisingly, a good number of people turned up and it was the turning point for Mr. Bakosoro to change the public opinion by telling the truth.

Col Bakosoro explained to the crowd that there are a lot going on these days about independent candidates that they are NCP, paid money by northern parties, rebels and traitors and so on. He said these are all baseless allegations without any ground. After the rally, Col. Bakosoro then met separately with the elders including the Paramount Chief of Nagero.

A young man by name Arkangelo who bravely stood up and spoke on behalf of the youth said people should not continue to be afraid on their own rights. He stated that it is clear people want to vote for Bakosoro in Nagero but they are just confused and intimidated by other politicians. He continue by saying that there are wrong elements who are working tirelessly to confuse people not to vote for Bakosoro and he continued by saying that he is sure if there is going to be free and fair elections, Nagero will vote for Bakosoro.

Bakosoro and his team left Nagero on Wednesday afternoon for Tambura. On his way, he made a stop over two times to talk to people on the way.

(ST)