One writer described the just concluded April elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as “Magical Selection”. Another writer writes that the INEC chairman Professor Maurice Iwu is intelligent but not wise. And political scientists said that the worst democracy is far better than the best military rule; just like the democracy we have seen in Nigeria?
The April 14 & 21 polls are generally characterized as fraud, full of irregularities and the most heinous in the annals of elections all over the world, locally and internationally.
Searchlighting this, one wonders were President Olusegun Obasanjo’s corruption fight started from and were its headed. Because a lot of states were reported to never had elections but PDP candidates passed. Many opposition were disqualified by Iwu just few days before the elections of reasons only Iwu and OBJ knew. A lot of them, the oppositions, were arrested with a view that their present in their states was a barricade for the PDP to rig the elections and they still rigged them.
However, this was the way Nigerians were crying foul and blue murder under the military of which OBJ even was among the military-civilians who had mouth purge due to their fight against the intimidation and misrule of the then military. International communities came to our help due to the military were in power. But today, in Nigeria, democracy has died in the hearts of the democrats before dying in the hands of the military. Democracy has gotten another definition, not as the government of the people and for the people and by the people, but as government by the PDP and for the PDP against the people. And politics is no longer defined as prudent but poignant.
In many state of the federation a lot of electoral commissioners had the beaten of their life. In Abia for example, the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Prince Solomon Soyebi escaped death through the eye of the needle. And imagine what the PDP National Secretary said: “He is a foolish man, we did everything for him. We offered him everything and you said you’re born again”!
From the above statement, the word “allege” should not be applied here, the real fact was that the PDP offered Soyebi bribe to rig the Abia election in favour of the PDP but the consciencous Soyebi announced the result of the guber election as it was – to the Progressive People’s Alliance (PPA), which brought T.A Orji as the governor-elect, even though he was arrested before the election by Obasanjo’s Rotwhiller, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, chairman EFCC.
In that festival of electoral sham by the PDP, the Nigerian image abroad has soared more than the corruption Obasanjo said he’s fighting. Imagine where three commissioners of police were re-deployed in Lagos State by the PDP-led government so that PDP will win in the State, but they lost the state to the Action Congress (AC).
Imagine also were, in Ondo State, the REC was collating the results in the state while Abuja was already announcing the State’s result! What of in Adamawa State, gubernatorial candidate of AC, Ibrahim Bapetel was disqualified by INEC just barely 12 hours to the polls! Or, in Anambra State where Andy Uba was declared PDP governor-elect whereas the speculation is there that the people who voted Uba were more than the registered votes! Or Dr. Chris Ngige, the AC guber candidate and his party that their names were missing from the ballot paper that at the duck of the election was brought to the INEC office from… your guess is as good as mine.
It was a shocker that while the Nigeria populaces were busy voting to claim their mandate, the PDP were busy showcasing their enterprise of massive rigging taught them by the “do-or-die” speaker. A lot of people died in the cause of these elections, houses were burnt and hopes were shattered. Would tribunal remain the last hope for the common man since a lot of people have taken to the street and were not given a listening ear?
In the street, the security forces who were supposed to guide the people unleashed mayhem and brimstone on them and send many into the gaol and christened them political thugs.
The bane here is, this is a country were Obasanjo said that he was getting rid of corruption but those who are going to rule us mounted the saddle through corrupt means too.
This amounts and shows that Obasanjo’s touted fight against corruption was only a hip service. These elections have proved that his extension of the emergency rule in Ekiti State to May 29 th by his announcement on April 8, 2007 was a single act to witch-hunt Fayose (Ekiti State impeached governor), just the way Joshua Dariye of Plateau State was humbled by him before his re-instatement few weeks back.
But thanks to the National Assembly that abrogated Obasanjo’s ‘touching the feeling but not touching the reason’ act in Ekiti State, precisely Nigeria.
Obasanjo said that his action in Ekiti State was based on post-election disturbances in the State. But have States like Osun, Edo Ondo, and Kano and amongst others not recorded what happened in Ekiti that the man-made terror was unbleached to the State?
Now, if the Ribadu-led EFCC was created to fight corruption in the country in sincerity, this is the mammoth time for him to tell Nigerians that the corrupt-fighting agency is working impartially. He should arrest all the governors-elect including the president-elect, that they were characterized as election fraudsters, probe them (in truth & in spirit) and keep them just the way he has done Alams and other un-anointed sons of Obasanjo.
If he does not do so, then the organization would be taken as a sham on its own. It behoves EFCC to intervene in this matter by arresting even Iwu till when they are proved innocent or guilty, because what had just happened in the concluded elections were capable of conflagrating the polity.
That was “little-by-little” Daffur burnt, Somalia burnt, Rwanda burnt, and Chad burnt, amongst other African countries that peace is a world farfetched from them.
The number of people that lost their lives in our democracy, all the military regimes in Nigeria, apart from democracy civil war, has never recorded such number in the annals of our history.
Our country Nigeria, if not handled carefully without cheating, without sidedness, without nepotism, is brewing into anarchy. But we can tame this by importing the statement that was credited to the erstwhile Director-General of Centre for Democratic Studies, Professor Omo Omoruyi in 2004.
Professor Omoruyi “postulated that a government in power should not participate in an election conducted by an electoral body put in place by it. Professor Omoruyi position was hinged on the fact that such an electoral body cannot be impartial in the conduct of the election and that it will be immoral for the incumbent government to be a judge and at the same time a participant”.
How many words will be enough for Nigerians?
Odimegwu Onwumere
08032552855
Rivers State, Nigeria.
