SUNDAY MUSINGS: On the April 2007 Elections in Nigeria and its Aftermath By Mobolaji E. Aluko, PhD Burtonsville, MD, USA
May 6, 2007
1. The 2007 Elections have come, but have
not gone away. They were so much rigged that they are a national
embarrassment except to the conscience-less, riggers and their
beneficiaries alike. For primary presidential-election beneficiary Umar
Musa Yar'Adua to promise "electoral reform" afterwards; for INEC's
chairman Maurice Iwu to admit error "here and there" and to now state
that the voters' register used just two weeks ago is no longer ready
(Lord have mercy!); for "certificates of robbery" to be secretly given
to (s)elected governors; and for President Obasanjo, in desperation, to
bring in a paid racist Barroness Lynda Chalker (who did not bother to be
present at the elections as an observer) to plead his case
for understanding are signs of their own embarrassment. Chalker regaled
us with news of dead men voting in the UK - but no examples of British
Bobbies and returnee-Iraqi soldiers carrying and thumb-printing ballot
boxes in her constituency and other places. [The story making the rounds
just today in Chalker's UK is that of an electoral fiasco in Scotland -
precisely because of the electronic voting that Iwu almost foisted on
our country. See:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/scotland/story/0,,2073685,00.html International
experts slam ballot fiasco in Scotland, May 6, 2007]
2. I do not support the call for the
whole-sale cancellation of the results. One "June 12" is enough for
Nigeria. In any case, it simply will not happen when the majority
party is the beneficiary, controlling the Presidency, the Military
Forces and even the Legislature. If a minority or opposition party had
won so widely, with or without rigging - AND if there was persistent
escalating violence on the streets in days after the election,
particularly with foreign incitement - then that would have been a
strong possibility. [This is what happened in Ukraine's "Orange
Revolutin" of November/December 2004 between Yanukovich (who won the
first election) and Yuschenko (who won a re-run five weekslater)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_presidential_election,_2004 ]
3. I support EVERY ONE of the aggrieved
with constitutional locus standi - that is the parties and/or
their candidates - who wishes to go to the Election Tribunal to contest
the elections. That includes EVERY ONE of them, even those
who came second, third, fourth or even tenth. All they need is
documentary evidence; courageous persistence and financial
muscle. Without ALL three, they should forget the tribunals, stay at
home and lick their chops: they knew that rigging was coming, did they
not, and what were their preparations before, during and now after
it? The Nigerian judiciary has become the last hope of Nigerians,
bearing in mind the independence it has shown for quite some time now,
particularly in connection with these elections. Atiku Abubakar's
persistence is to be commended on this score, enabling the establishment
of the facts that the Vice-President is not the President's "boy-boy" or
"girl-girl"; that the Executive cannot just use administrative panels
anyhow to indite and harrass its opponents; and that INEC has no
business disqualifying candidates.
4. The whole set of elections were so
egregiously rigged that it is INCONCEIVABLE that NONE of them will be
upturned by the tribunals - and who knows whether it will be yours or
not? There should be no dose of sentimental emotionalism before the
tribunals because even this ruling PDP is a study in electoral
wanton-ness and greed who are prepared to go the Election Tribunals
themselves to win or to "win" (in their usual corrupting/intimidating
ways) even more seats for themselves. [In Ekiti State for example, the
PDP, with support of its godfathers both resident and foreign, have
filed the first petitions. They are already boasting all over the place
that they have "fixed" the Election Tribunals in Ekiti State Assembly to
emerge PDP 17 and AC 9 in the State Assembly by May 29, instead of the
current 13-13 that they violently obtained on April 28 from the original
results of 16 AC, 6 PDP, 3 ANPP and 1 UNDP of April 14. For all the "wuru-wuru"
in Ekiti State, please see:
http://www.kayodefayemi.com/documents/Data_crunching_PDP_fraud.htm ]
5. For the Election Tribunals, the
primary evidence (if available) and demands by the aggrieved should be
at the very minimum three things: (i) legally-attested pictures of
thumb-printings; videos and audios of police-, military- and other
election violence; eye-witness accounts. (ii) original certificates of
winning originally issued by INEC at ward and constituency levels,
and/or testimonies about them, because these were sometimes retrieved
surreptitiously by INEC officials - and returned naively by candidates -
only to be re-issued with new results inserted; (as happened to 1 AC
candidate, 3 ANPP candidates and 1 UNDP candidate in Ekiti State); and
(iii) the discovery of the BALLOT BOXES complete with their contents -
every last one of them. No thumb-prints and multiple thumb-prints will
be so-discovered, and whoever wins or loses should be so determined.
Gani Fawehinmi and Yusuf Olaniyonu have given good backgrounds behind
the hurdles facing the aggrieved in Election Tribunals.
6. No new elections should be held with
Maurice Iwu as INEC chairman: he should be fired with immediate
effect. He is acutely incompetent; transparently biased; and most
annoyingly, spectacularly clumsy even in showing his incompetence and
bias. In a decent country, Iwu would be long gone. He has done what he
was hired to do - and more - and his primary hirers will thankfully be
gone come May 29. But ours might indeed be a dubiously
indecent country in which ALL the members of its Council of State -
that is ALL living previous Heads of State (minus on this occasion IBB
and Abdusalami Abubakar) - were conned JUST A FEW DAYS to the elections
by a fast-talking, Ebola-virus-non-curing, snake-oil salesman named Iwu
into believing that every thing was in place to run credible
elections. In this respect, presidential Muhammandu Buhari displayed
complete political naiveté that did not justify him being considered a
viable president for now or for the future. A professor Iwu who grades
his own performance as 80% as "B-" hovering on C (but a solid "A" in
Nigerian scale, which starts from 70%), to the consternation of the
other party agents in the room, he disappears from the INEC collation
room (with the collation of only 11 states completed) only to emerge
before cameras to hurriedly announce pre-determined presidential results
to the world - but not until after going into a tirade. [Hear him on
http://www.nigerianmuse.com/video/?u=Presidential_results_announcement_audio_video_Nigeria_April_23_2007.htm
] Without explanation to date the results that he announced on
TV are different from what are shown on INEC's website [See the
differences on these tables:
http://www.inecnigeria.org/election/show_result.php?catagory=Presidential and
http://www.nigerianmuse.com/important_documents/?u=Presidential_results_2007.htm
] He is asked to give a certificate of robbery to the presidential
"winner", and yet he launches into another shameless tirade. [Hear his
second tirade in.
http://www.nigerianmuse.com/video/?u=Presidential_certificate_presentation_audio_Nigeria_May_2_2007.htm
] Finally, when state governments wish to hold their own local
government elections - for good or for bad reasons - he says that INEC
is "working on the voters' register", to fix certain unstated
problems. In short, he is already criminally tampering with the Voters
Register NOW not only in readiness for muddling the Election Tribunals,
but to ensure that the states obey ruling party PDP's directives NOT to
stage local government elections UNTIL after the instrumentalities of
rigging power are in the hands of the newly-selected governors and state
assemblies.
Moving on...
7. Without being able to use
one-man-one-vote elections to freely, fairly and credibly (i) retain
good elected leaders; (ii) toss out bad ones and (iii) elect new
promising leaders; then democracy is a sham, and we might as well be
ruled by the Military. Constitutional reforms are therefore PARAMOUNT
in Nigeria now than never before, with electoral reform being front and
center in the first six months of any new administration. If a new
administration does not embark on constitutional reform - or to be less
charitable, if the "electoral robbers" do not take immediate steps to
discuss the improvement of the nation's "security system" which was
shamelessly breached in April 2007 - then opposition and relentless
watch-dog groups must pour out onto the street to demand it, otherwise
four years from now, we will be "rushing" all over the place again.
This assurance MUST be part of the current ongoing negotiations for
peace and reconciliation in the country, not the annoying mantra of "Let
us move on for the sake of peace; please accept this appointment or that
appointment......" being parlayed among both metaphorical "monkeys" and
"baboons." [See:
http://www.tribune.com.ng/05052007/news/news15.html "We don't want
baboons in our midst" say PDP National Coordinators to Umar Musa
Yar'Adua]
8. The constitutional reforms needed are
so deep - and the current requirements for changing parts of our 1999
Constitution are so politically cumbersome - that we are back to an
original demand that will never go away: a Sovereign National
Conference (SNC) [whose outcome BINDS the National Assembly into making
the necessary changes] is absolutely necessary under the circumstances,
not the type of NPRC of yore whose sole hidden agenda as in fact the
Third Term Agenda (TTA). [See
http://www.nigerianmuse.com/projects/SNCProject/ ]
9. For Nigerians in the Diaspora, one
bright spot in these disastrous elections was the victory of the
natural-born Nigerian Isa Odidi/Akeem Bello presidential/Veep
candidate-pair of New Democrats party to obtain a favorable court ruling
concerning their right to run as dual citizens of Nigeria and Canada/USA
respectively.
http://www.nigerianmuse.com/important_documents/?u=Odidi_Bello_Dual_Citizenship_Judgement.htm
. Next battles are (i) the rights to register and vote in-situ
abroad, a class-action suit of which is currently being filed,
http://www.nigerianmuse.com/nigeriawatch/Diaspora_Nigeria/?u=Diaspora_Nigerians_to_File_Class_Action_Suit_to_Vote_in_Nigerian_Elections.htm
as well as (ii) more meaningful participation in the
constitutional political process in and economic development of Nigeria,
a new impetus for which will be kick-started by the Nigerian Democratic
Movement (NDM), in an international forum tentatively fixed for
Washington DC, USA on Saturday, September 29, 2007.
These above are some thoughts, not a
sermon, as I rest my case for now as we watch - and in some cases
participate - in the unfolding developments concerning these seriously
flawed April 2007 elections.
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