The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets Mar 26, 2023 My phone pinged: “Tell Mark Essien they are coming for him.” I had no idea what that even meant. It was a forwarded WhatsApp message that someone had sent to a friend of mine. All I was doing was trying to convert PDFs from the 2023 Nigeria Presidential elections into spreadsheets. But let’s rewind a bit and give some context. In 2020 a small group of about 5 young people went to a crossroads in Lagos, Nigeria to protest against police brutality. Their protest was called #EndSARS, and they were protesting police brutality. SARS (The Special Anti-Robbery Squad) was a notorious segment of the Nigeria police force, known for extortion and extra-judicial killings of anybody they termed armed robbers. For 4 days that tiny group protested, with barely anybody noticing. On the last day, as they were about to leave, someone tweeted about their protest. Then someone else retweeted, and someone else. And soon, there thou