The whole world is watching and the stakes in the coming elections are pretty high if by any chance Professor Jega in collusion with the PDP and President Jonathan allows himself to be used to decimate the aspirations of Nigeria to freely choose their leaders in the next 4 years. The prognosis for a happy outcome to these elections is not looking good at all, given what we knew yesterday and what we may yet come to know today, tomorrow and day after.
The whole world is watching and the stakes in the coming elections are pretty high if by any chance Professor Jega in collusion with the PDP and President Jonathan allows himself to be used to decimate the aspirations of Nigeria to freely choose their leaders in the next 4 years. The prognosis for a happy outcome to these elections is not looking good at all, given what we knew yesterday and what we may yet come to know today, tomorrow and day after.
I wrote a piece last November titled “A vote of no confidence in Professor Jega as Chairman of INEC”. Six months later, I have been proved exactly right by the stark incompetence and lack of adequate preparations by the Jega-led INEC and despite the billions of Naira and hard currency already wasted on achieving a near perfect outcome.
I based my assessment and prediction in that article on the naive and silly statement credited to the learned Professor and former Vice Chancellor that Nigerians would be expecting too much to expect a totally free and fair election because, in his own convoluted mind, a completely free and fair election is not possible anywhere in the world. I thought that was a very dumb statement or declaration to be made by any Chairman of INEC anywhere in the world. I came to that conclusion more so because Professor Jega had only made mere cosmetic changes to the general and professional staff he had inherited from Professor Iwu who colluded with General Obasanjo and the PDP and the Nigerian Law Enforcement and some military to foist on Nigeria in 2007 what has gone down in history as the worst election ever conducted in West Africa.
Ayoka Adebayo was one of the election riggers in Ekiti that Professor Jega inherited. The learned Professor who was going to clean the Augean stable did not only retain the old woman for deployment in 2011, he kept most of the other riggers in place. Guess where he wanted to send Ayoka Adebayo? It was to Ondo State of all places where Omoboriowo was declared winner against late Pa Adekunle Ajasin even though he did not receive a third of Ajasin’s votes in any of the 17 Local Governments of Ondo State including his own backyard at Ijero Local Government in Ekiti. Omoboriowo the Deputy Governor had to be smuggled out of Akure in Police pick-up for transporting cows. He was dressed in a woman’s skirt in much the same way like disgraced Governor “Alamisegha” of Bayelsa was smuggled out of Heathrow at one point in his epic political career. Professor Jega was not fazed by the mayhem that followed the Omoboriowo’s daylight robbery in Akure on August 16, 1983 where hundreds of innocent Nigerians were killed. He was not deterred by any lessons he should have learnt from that experience or awareness. He still wanted to keep Ayoka Adebayo as one of his electoral commissioners to handle Ondo State to please Obasanjo and his hand-picked candidate for President of Nigeria in a country of 140 million people.
I concluded there and then that the learned professor was a paper tiger at best A good General who is determined to win by all means does not go to war with that kind of mind set in a country where election rigging has become an endemic part of our history. We have become a world leader in how to perfect election rigging and how to use violence and hooliganism and mayhem to achieve that goal. I said to myself “To your tents O Israel” if that was the best northerner Goodluck Jonathan could find to lead the conduct of the 2011 elections, Nigeria has a long way to go. I still hold that belief to be self-evident. I don’t know about you.
Morning shows the day as boyhood shows manhood. Don’t be surprised if you hear reports next Saturday and the week after that election materials have still not arrived in more than 2/3rds of the 36 states of Nigeria minus the Federal territory of Abuja. I can tell you there are going to be more egregious logistical problems that INEC has so far managed to sweep under the carpet as we speak. Mark my words! The current Inspector General, Mr. Ringim, I thought, had done a masterful job last Friday by reassigning the 36 Commissioners of Police a day before the election should have started in every state in Nigeria. That was a smart move in deed. If he had cleared that move, however, with Aso Rock, I am sure the very sound initiative should have been shot down or nipped in the bud.
Ringim had pulled a fast one on Goodluck Jonathan and he had the power to do it as IG. That is the kind of IG Nigeria needed. Ringim had done to Jonathan what a smart and brave Awolowo had once done to General Yakubu Gowon in 1974 when Awolowo went and delivered a powerful convocation address at the University of Ife where he singularly put into the shredding machine the obnoxious 1973/74 Census where Kano State population was miraculously shown as double the population of Lagos State because the enumerators had not only counted human beings but the cattle as well. Where Lagos had only 22 Local Governments, Kano got away with 44 by abracadabra. The less you looked, the more you saw. A few years later when Jigawa was carved out of the old Kano, Kano state population was still far bigger than that Lagos State put together.
Awolowo saw the illogicality of the Census figures and he decided to speak up. He refused to clear his draft speech with Doddan Barracks at the time because he knew General Gowon would not have allowed it as Head of Government. Awolowo knew that General Gowon was coming to the convocation as a visitor to the University but Awo’s loyalty was more to the whole country and his conscience, and he damned the consequence because he knew it was the right thing to do.
Obasanjo, the luckiest Yoruba man and the longest serving Head of State in Nigeria, saw everything that Awolowo had seen, but he looked the other way because he was more loyal to his own personal agenda than the collective interest of Nigeria. I.G. Ringim, on the contrary, had paid closer attention to Governor Donald Duke’s recommended antidote to election rigging in Nigeria by suddenly reassigning the chief collaborators of election rigging in Nigeria. That kind of anticipation is what Professor Jega needed if he was to succeed in a job where so many of his predecessors had failed. Reacting after the horse has bolted is what Professor Jega is very good at, and that is why I will be hard-pressed to repose any confidence in him as the Messiah to clean up Nigeria’s electoral malfeasance. He simply cannot do it. I will be more than pleasantly surprised if he does.
Like I said in that article, the PDP knows of no other ways to win than knowingly cutting corners and manipulations which have always worked for them and would work for them again with a very weak and embattled chairman of INEC like Professor Jega who is currently playing in the Super bowl, and does not know where to begin or what to do as we speak. He has twice postponed the elections now and could do it again before we know where we are headed.
The best I can do in this piece is to remind Professor Jega and President Goodluck Jonathan and the top echelon of the PDP that what is currently happening in Ivory Coast tonight where their alter ego, Professor of History, “Serikin Tulasi” illegal President Laurent Gbagbo, faced with total annihilation and destruction of himself and his so-called country, is now hiding in a protective bunker in his personal chateau in Abidjan. He is now busy making a last ditch effort to negotiate a way out for himself and his Generals with the UN and Allsanne Quattara, the real winner of the election he has blatantly rigged. Forget what is happening in far-away Libya or Yemen or what has already happened in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain.
The PDP and its leaders should look in the mirror and appreciate that what is happening in Ivory Coast could predictably happen in Nigeria under their watch, if they make peaceful change impossible. They may well be laying the foundation for that violent change that JFK had talked so much about in his Profile in Courage.
I hate to sound like an alarmist here. What Nigeria needs more than anything else now is change. The PDP has had their chance for 12 years and many more years before then and they blew it. It is time for them to go. Those who argue that those who are going to replace them could be worse have easily forgotten that election ritual every 4 years is all about making informed choices about who should rule us. If the new leaders coming in fail again, the voters have a chance to throw them out in 4 years. That is the beauty of Democracy. That is what we are talking about here.. Need I say more?
I rest my case.
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