Date Published: 03/02/10

“You are a Big Disgrace”- Lagos AC Blasts Iwu

1st March 2010.

Press Release.

The Lagos State chapter of the Action Congress has described the discredited chairman of INEC, Maurice Iwu as an unrepentant racketeer that has no shame and therefore is irreformable. It says that Iwu is playing a trick on himself to ever think that he would be allowed to trade with another national election after his shameful outing in April 2007 and in re-run elections that were ordered by the various tribunals.

In a release in Lagos, signed by the Lagos State Publicity Secretary of the Action Congress, Joe Igbokwe, the party says it is reacting to the statement carried by a certain newspaper where Iwu allegedly blamed what he called ‘a cabal in Lagos’ for election rigging in Nigeria. It wondered if Iwu was blaming the so-called unnamed cabal for the shameful and putrid way he manipulated the 2007 all over the country and the subsequent re-run elections that were ordered by the courts since then.

“It is obvious to all that this character called Iwu has no shame and will continue playing any tricks to remain a cash-and-carry chairman of INEC even when the entire world has risen in revolt to the scandalous manner he had handled elections in Nigeria since he came in as INEC chairman. Just a few days after the American Assistant Secretary of State came out in a congressional hearing to lampoon this character and the very corrupt clique with which he ruins Nigeria’s hope for electoral decency and just some few days after the former American Ambassador to Nigeria, Walter Carrington, dismissed Iwu’s farcical comedy of April, 2007as the fraud it is, Maurice Iwu is not sufficiently shamed as to hide his head and to stop inventing silly scapegoats for his deliberate perfidy in the most comical manner.

“Even as Iwu had no courage to name his so-called cabal, it is germane to ask him if that same cabal was responsible for the horrible manner he manipulated the 2007 election in virtually all parts of Nigeria? is it your nameless cabal in Lagos that were responsible for the bizarre tardiness and awkward manner Iwu and co went about to impose victors in various states, most of which the judiciary has reversed? Is it Iwu’s Lagos cabal that were forging figures and announcing same as results all over the country?

“So Iwu is now saying that elections in Lagos were rigged? Even as we know he is indulging in a desperate game of blackmail, we ask him why  he was touting the Lagos gubernatorial  election recently as free and fair and demonstration of his INEC’s fairness in conducting elections in Nigeria? Is it that Iwu in his desperation to invent reasons for his many failures, has become so incoherent that he can’t think straight? For a man that has been receiving worldwide opprobrium for corrupt electoral conduct to think he can bluff his way out of a huge scandal he brought upon himself is ridiculous and Iwu must know that Nigeria is going far beyond his warped and racketing mind.

“Iwu is venting his frustration at being frustrated by Lagos in perpetrating his con art and this explains why Lagos elections are won on the strength of the people’s votes and not the frivolous millions Iwu concocts in other states outside Lagos. Iwu is scared that Lagos is championing a one-man-one-vote crusade, which frustrates the fake millions of votes he forges in other states. In choosing Lagos as a scape goat for his fraudulent vote-forgery just because Lagos constitutes the greatest bulwark to his fraudulent forgeries show that the man has ran to his teeter’s end in inventing desperate measures to exculpate himself from his conducts.

“While we challenge Iwu to name his Lagos cabal that have accounted for the forgeries he had made a state art in INEC, we want him to know that under no circumstances would he be allowed to trifle Nigeria’s future again by manipulating elections. We want him to realize that his dream of tricking his way back to INEC leadership will not work. We want him to prepare to face prosecution after his tenure for the huge scandal which he has turned INEC into. Iwu and the INEC he heads are morally wrecked, ethically destroyed and ultra corrupt to conduct even a local council election and it is pity he is playing an ostrich on this.

“At present, Iwu faces a worldwide opprobrium since his shameful conduct in 2007. Such fate would have made a sane and morally upright man to be sober but certainly not Iwu that has crossed the bounds of shame. With one silly reason he makes for his abhorrent conduct, he cuts the pitiable picture of a blackmailer, which has become an art in INEC since he unfortunately happened on the INEC leadership. It is understandable why Iwu who has the record of conducting a so-called election, which was unmistakably captured by all international monitor groups and countries as falling far below the local standard in the sub-region has gone on a wild invention of reasons for his predicted failure and crass incompetence. He sees the blame in everyone apart from himself which has made him a lone believer in the farcical fraud he concocted in April 2007.

“We advise Iwu to cease insulting Nigerians with his silly reasoning and bear the full weight of his dastardly and unscrupulous conduct. He must go home in shame and stop distorting the lives of Nigerians. He has become a pseudonym for electoral fraud and with each passing day, sinks into the abyss as he rakes up laughable reasons to hang unto a job he has so badly messed up”.

Joe Igbokwe.

Publicity Secretary,

Lagos AC.