By openingIkechukwu Amaechi
\nAttahiru Jega, a professor of political
\nscience and immediate past chairman of the Independent National Electoral
\nCommission (INEC), is a very lucky Nigerian.<\/p>\n
He is one of those fluky human beings the
\nScripture tells us are blessed because their sins are covered. He remains the
\nonly INEC chairman to \u201csuccessfully\u201d organise two national elections \u2013 in
\n2011
\nand 2015.
\nFor a job that has become the nemesis of most
\notherwise solid reputations, Jega left office with his intact. Today, he is
\nhailed in some quarters as the best thing that has happened to Nigeria\u2019s
\ndemocracy since 1999.
\nHe left office on June 30, 2015 to return to
\nhis lecturing job at Bayero University, Kano, where he was vice chancellor
\nbefore his appointment in June 2010 by former President Goodluck Jonathan.
\nThat was after he had disclosed in March that
\nhe would not accept tenure renewal. Had he wanted, perhaps, he would still be
\nINEC chairman today.<\/p>\n
Shortly after leaving office, Jega, former
\nnational president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), won
\nthe
\n2015 edition of the Charles T. Mannat Democracy Award.
\nIt was presented to him by the United
\nStates-based International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES),
\nadministrators of the award, at an elaborate ceremony in Washington D.C. on
\nSeptember 29, 2015.
\nEvery year, IFES, a pro-democracy
\norganisation that advocates improved electoral systems around the world,
\nrecognises the accomplishments of individuals in advancing freedom and
\ndemocracy by bestowing awards on them in honour of past chairs of its
\nboard of
\ndirectors: Charles T. Manatt and Patricia Hutar, and Senior Adviser, Joe C.
\nBaxter.<\/p>\n
While Jega was honoured under the Charles T.
\nManatt Democracy Award category, it is instructive that his co-awardees were
\nU.S. Democratic Leader, Nancy Pelosi, and Republican Congressman, Ed Royce.
\nJega was chosen as the international figure
\nfor the award, according to the promoters, for leading the INEC to conduct
\nwhat
\nthey perceived as one of the most credible elections in Nigeria\u2019s history,
\neven
\nin the face of alleged intimidation and sabotage by some of his own staff and
\nofficials of the Jonathan administration.
\n\u201cChairman Jega\u2019s leadership was instrumental
\nto Nigeria\u2019s successful general elections in 2015,\u201d said IFES President and
\nCEO, Bill Sweeney.<\/p>\n
But was Jega indeed the messiah he is
\nacclaimed to be in Nigeria\u2019s ever wooly and corruption-infested electoral
\nprocess? Were the 2015 elections really successful or were they deemed free,
\nfair and transparent simply because the opposition won?<\/p>\n
What made the two elections conducted under
\nJega\u2019s watch more transparent and credible than previous ones? Can available
\nfacts validate claims that he delivered on his mandate?
\nIf his mandate in the 2015 polls was to
\nensure a Muhammadu Buhari presidency, willy-nilly, he did excellently
\nwell. If
\nthat is what the praise-singing is all about, then, he deserves even more
\naccolades.
\nAnything short of that is sheer hypocrisy,
\nNigeria\u2019s biggest undoing.<\/p>\n
Why?<\/p>\n
After Jega\u2019s first outing as INEC Chairman in
\n2011, election-related violence in Northern Nigeria left more than 1,000
\npeople
\ndead.
\nThe victims, according to Human Rights Watch,
\nwere killed in three days of rioting in 12 Northern states of Adamawa,
\nBauchi,
\nBorno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe, and
\nZamfara.
\nThe violence, which began with widespread
\nprotests by supporters of the then main opposition candidate, Buhari, of the
\nCongress for Progressive Change (CPC), following the re-election of Jonathan,
\nof the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), also left more than 65,000 people
\ninternally displaced.<\/p>\n
The polls were largely riddled with
\nmalpractices, logistical deficiencies and procedural inconsistencies with
\nvoter
\nturnout of about 78 per cent in the South South and the South East,
\nparticularly in the presidential election, which analysts insist exceeded the
\nnational average by at least 50 per cent.
\nYet, Corinne Dufka, then senior West Africa
\nresearcher at Human Rights Watch, claimed that \u201cthe April elections were
\nheralded as among the fairest in Nigeria\u2019s history\u201d while grudgingly
\nadmitting
\nthat \u201cthey also were among the bloodiest\u201d, even as she urged \u201cthe newly
\nelected
\nauthorities to quickly build on the democratic gains from the elections by
\nbringing to justice those who orchestrated these horrific crimes and
\naddressing
\nthe root causes of the violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, nobody was punished for the
\nheinous crime even as the presidential election divided the country along
\nethnic and religious lines.
\nThen fast forward to 2015. The elections that
\ngarnered world acclaim for Jega are coming out unstuck at the tribunals.
\nAs I write, 82 elections have been annulled
\nand still counting. Even by Nigerian standards, this is quite staggering. And
\nso alarmed was Jega\u2019s successor, Mahmoud Yakubu, that he has decided to
\nlaunch
\nan investigation.
\nOn Thursday, January 21, Yakubu said the INEC
\nwill study the circumstances that led to the nullifications and evolve
\nmeasures
\nto tackle the issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, we have 82 elections nullified by the
\nCourt of Appeal, two of which will still proceed to the Supreme Court. But in
\naddition to the nullified elections, we have 15 other elections where
\npetitioners were declared winners by the courts.
\n\u201cThe courts did not decide that we should
\nconduct re-runs there. They said that we should issue Certificates of
\nReturn to
\nthose declared winners by the courts,\u201d he explained.
\nThe number of annulled elections in 2015 is
\n48 or 141.2 per cent more than the 34 elections nullified in 2011, while only
\n20 were cancelled in 2007.<\/p>\n
These are statistics coming out of the INEC
\nitself. A report in one of its news bulletins recently said the INEC will
\nconduct at least 78 re-run elections in 2016 based on verdicts issued by the
\nCourt of Appeal.
\n\u201cA breakdown of the elections indicates that
\nthe commission will conduct 10 senatorial elections, 12 state constituency
\nelections and 37 state assembly elections.
\n\u201cOthers are 17 federal constituency elections
\nand two governorship re-run elections, subject to the verdict of the Supreme
\nCourt,\u201d the bulletin said.
\nThere would have been more annulments and
\nrerun polls if Jonathan did what Buhari did in 2011; that is, reject the
\nresult
\nof the election. Of course, 2015 would have also been bloodier if Jonathan
\nhad
\njoined his detractors on the scrap heap of impunity and bloodletting.<\/p>\n
Ironically, to conduct elections that
\nresulted in the worst number of fatalities and highest number of
\nannulments and
\nrerun polls at very huge cost to Nigeria, the INEC got more money under
\nJega\u2019s
\nwatch than any of his predecessors.<\/p>\n
Unlike former President Olusegun Obasanjo who
\nstarved the INEC of funds in order to blackmail it into doing his devious
\nbidding, Jega\u2019s INEC didn\u2019t suffer such indignities under Jonathan.
\nGranted, the electoral tide seemed to have
\nsharply turned against Jonathan before the 2015 ballot and there seemed to
\nhave
\nbeen a preponderance of opinion that the opposition may, indeed, carry the
\nday
\nbecause not only had the Jonathan Presidency become a huge joke, but also,
\nmany
\nNigerians had good reason to be concerned about being put in the cross-hairs
\nover a potential Jonathan victory.
\nBut the fact that the man most Nigerians
\nseemed to have preferred was declared winner of the poll does not ipso facto
\nmake the election free and fair.<\/p>\n
Put differently, the possibility that in a
\nfree and fair poll, Buhari would have defeated Jonathan is no proof that,
\nwarts
\nand all, the 2015 elections passed the integrity test.
\nYakubu is understandably perturbed. Short of
\naccusing his predecessor of giving a tailwind to fraudulent polls, he asserts
\ndiplomatically that he wants to find out why many elections were annulled.<\/p>\n
Good!<\/p>\n
But the answer, to my mind, is simple. The
\nelections Jega conducted in 2015 were fundamentally flawed. Insisting,
\ntherefore, that he erected fool-proof electoral architecture which his
\nsuccessors only need to consolidate on is disingenuous and a disservice to
\nthis
\ncountry.
\nThe consequence is that the first two
\npost-Jega elections were inconclusive though they were stand-alone polls
\nbecause they were predicated on fraudulent foundation.<\/p>\n
Truth be told, Jega left behind no solid
\nfoundation that anyone can build on. To claim otherwise simply because
\nBuhari,
\nthis time around, benefited from Jega\u2019s electoral sleight of the hand, is
\nsheer
\nhypocrisy.
\nAnd the price a nation pays for getting
\naddicted to a diet of hypocrisy is that at the end of the day, nothing
\nchanges,
\nat least not for the better, as the recent Kogi and Bayelsa governorship
\npolls
\nproved.<\/p>\n
*Ikechukwu Amaechi is the Editor-in-Chief and Managing
\nDirector of TheNiche
\nnewspaper. He could be reached with ikechukwuamaechi@yahoo.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By openingIkechukwu Amaechi Attahiru Jega, a professor of political science and immediate past chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), is a very lucky Nigerian. He is one of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-opinions"],"yoast_head":"\n