HOW MAURICE IWU (INEC) SAVED NIGERIA FROM BEING
ANOTHER KENYA
Election is a necessity for every democratic country
because it is the only fair way for making a clear
choice between two or more competing opponents for
public office. But in Africa, we seem to be falling
for an international conspiracy (in collaboration with
a few selfish African leaders) to perpetuate the
long-term aims of slavery and colonialism to divide
and conquer Africans by tribe, creed, ethnicity,
religion and a ‘we-versus-them’ mentality. In every
African election, there is hardly a loser willing to
concede victory to the opponent. Every loser begins to
believe that he won once the so-called international
election observers and monitors begin their usual
mantra of casting aspersions on the conduct of the
election and the electoral umpire. These are the same
observers and monitors who prefer to stay in five-star
hotels in African capitals and give opinion and recite
numbers on election preparations and results in rural
areas of Africa, and purvey wild statements that
incite a nation against herself.
It is time to curb these activities, especially when
these monitors/observers do not know much about the
local political or electoral dynamics of the African
locale. International organizations and other
countries are welcomed to partner in elections
conducted in Africa if they come with the purpose of
sincere collaboration in advancing our democracy
without threatening our stability. But in any case,
such as in Kenya where the foreign observers usurped
the powers and roles of national electoral umpires,
Africans are supposed to summon the courage to tell
them off like Professor Maurice Iwu did before they go
too far. Kenya capitulated to excessive foreign
interference and is now paying the ultimate price for
it.
In both Nigeria and Kenya, the EU offered some money,
demanded pride of place at meetings of national
electoral umpires and wanted unchecked access to the
biometric data on all registered voters. In Nigeria, a
patriotic Maurice Iwu and a confident INEC refused the
EU money and the demands based on sound national
security considerations. And this was the point when
the EU at once began a sustained international and
local campaign of discrediting the Nigerian election
and INEC leadership. This sowed discord among the
citizens of Nigeria, the political parties and the
contestants for office. Added to this were the other
problems Nigeria already had to deal with such as the
militancy in the Niger Delta as well as some in Kano
and Yobe states. But Nigeria was to overcome because
Maurice Iwu refused to play wimp like his Kenyan
counterpart, who has become notorious for allowing
foreigners too much leeway and now seems unwilling to
defend the result he declared.
INEC and Nigerian authorities did a very good job in
saving Nigeria another sad story in our history. Today
INEC and Dr. Maurice Iwu have been vindicated when you
look at what is happening to Kenya primarily because
the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) accepted the
controversial demands Maurice Iwu had rejected and
thus paved the way for a situation that has made the
foreign observers the ultimate electoral umpires for a
sovereign and stable nation like Kenyan. For some
peanuts and poor handling of her national security,
Kenyan now has to deal being turned against itself and
for the first time in its post-colonial history. Now
with more than 700 people killed by mob and more than
three hundred thousand people displaced and turned to
refugees, the same two-faced EU is still on hand to
help settle the problem they fueled. This has become
the lot of Africans every election time, except for
Nigeria which, through Maurice Iwu’s eyes, saw Kenya
and rejected it before it happened.
According to a recent report by Reuters of January 17,
2008 on aid to Kenya: “European Union should freeze
all aid to the Kenyan government until the crisis over
President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election is
solved, members of the European Parliament have said.
The lawmakers, who criticized the EU executive for
disbursing 40.6 million euros ($NZ78.24 million) of
aid a day after the election, said the result was not
credible and called for a fresh vote if a fair recount
was not possible. The European Parliament asks for the
freezing of all further budgetary support to the
government of Kenya until a political resolution to
the present crisis has been found. The disputed
election has dented Kenya's democratic credentials and
rattled donors. Post-election turmoil, in which
hundreds have been killed, has hit Kenya's economy as
well as supplies to east and central African
neighbors. Although its aid is limited compared with
what it gives poorer African countries, the EU is one
of Kenya's top donors, providing 290 million euros
between 2002 and 2007…...” unquote
As an African, I am sick and tired of the problems and
havoc election has caused Africans simply because we
take some aids and economic assistance that don’t mean
much to our overall national development. Nigeria has
matured to a point where we must reject any attempt to
dictate impossible electoral values to us just because
of some small foreign grants we can afford from a
day’s oil royalties. As a people, we have had our fair
share of foreign-instigated conflicts during our
infancy as a nation and we can ill-afford such
conflicts in our present state of national maturity.
In 1966, my father, my family, uncles, relatives and
thousands of my people and other tribes were butchered
in Northern Nigeria during and after an election which
led to two bloody coups in rapid succession. My
heritage and faith as a person born in Northern
Nigeria was totally destroyed. Evidence is legion that
another major part of the reason why these had to
happen was because we had easily accepted the
overbearing interference and influence of the British
in our domestic politics and their instigation of
bitter tribal politics in what was supposed to be a
healthy contest amongst African brothers that happen
to speak different languages. A repeat could have
occurred in 2007 if Maurice Iwu had not been around to
ensure that the transition took place despite all the
international and domestic conspiracies to scuttle it.
Thus, looking at Kenya, and how Maurice Iwu saved the
day in Nigeria, these questions arise in my mind: Does
election or democracy really matter for Africans,
given that both are creating more and more problems
for us? Is there any other alternative for selecting
our leaders in Africa in the face of this mindset from
the West that African elections are not credible? Are
we being herded to a corner where we can no longer be
confident of our hard-won sovereignty and then go
wholesale to invite our former colonial masters back
to conduct elections for us? Is there no way we can
have some sort of a tenured electoral umpire (one that
has delivered on a transition election) at times like
this when our nation is still in democratic
transition?
While considering these questions, we must first deal
with the problems which are already identified as
constituting some of the drag that has bedeviled our
difficult match to democracy. We must begin with the
role of foreign election monitors, especially the EU
genre, which all together must be told clearly where
their role begins and ends. Their combined influence
on local electoral logistics must be curbed, otherwise
we may fall into the situation that led to the problem
in Kenya where these foreign observers/monitors
arrogated the powers and reach of the national
electoral umpires to themselves and began to call the
shots as though they are the final arbiters of all
elections held in Africa, and thereby undermining the
local constitution and authorities. Election is one of
the most important and true tests of a nation’s
sovereignty and coming of age, and therefore any
nation perceived as wobbling on delivering on her
national elections courts the disrespect and
overlordship of other nations.
When these observers/monitors discredit the election
authorities working under the difficult conditions of
over-heated transitions, it becomes humanly impossible
for the natives or ordinary people to respect the law
and order in place, if not the election outcome as
well. How can you expect your citizens to respect poll
results declared by electoral umpires that have
already been discredited by all manners of foreigners
with doubtful intentions towards your country? No
election is perfect and also cannot be expected to
reflect values foreign to the locale where it is
conducted. The Europeans learned from their mistakes
and so, they should encourage Africans to learn from
their own mistakes as well. Disparagement or reckless
assessments intended to isolate the electoral
leadership will never cut it.
Part of the effort therefore is to encourage
aggressive information management on the part of
African governments of the day to counter any negative
misinformation that attempts to discredit our
electoral umpires and the institutions we have in
place at the given point in time. Lessons can be
learned from India, Taiwan, South Africa, and other
emerging democracies which have done well at
countering negative press and succeeded in projecting
an acceptable level of some electoral purity. And most
importantly, we must understand that electoral
tribunals (and judgments issuing from them) are part
of the overall process of all elections even in
advanced democracies. Therefore, we must refrain from
this infantile tendency to celebrate yet another
nullification of an election as further proof of how
rotten our elections are. In our system of phased
electoral process, INEC is merely the agency of
original jurisdiction (much like a trial court with
original jurisdiction), with finality of election
outcomes residing with the tribunals and other higher
courts. Thus, it will not be fair to call for
resignation of an INEC boss merely because a result he
declared had been overturned without also calling for
the mass resignation of all trial judges whose
judgments are overturned on appeal.
By:
Ugo Harris Ukandu
Nigeria Democracy and Justice Project,
Washington, DC.
abujarock@yahoo.com