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MIDWEEK ESSAY BY MOBOLAJI E. ALUKO, PH.D.
Why INEC's Professor Maurice Iwu Must Be Sacked Now, Period. Burtonsville, MD, USA
May 16, 2007
INTRODUCTION
In an interview in TELL magazine recently,
when asked to comment on the fiasco that was the April 2007 elections,
President Obasanjo had this to say:
QUOTE
A lot of criticisms have attended
the election. You have said that no system is perfect. Are you
optimistic that people will come to realise that some of the problems
that occurred are just human or a reflection of our level of
development?
I have said before that I have
participated in elections actively since 1959. As a young officer, I
participated in the 1959 elections handled by the colonial masters. That
was the one that transitioned us from a dependent colonial territory to
an independent state. Even in those days, there were controversies —
call it what you like — things that people felt did not go right. But
even in those days, if you considered the distance you had to cover, you
could not move to all parts of Nigeria. The best that Chief (Obafemi)
Awolowo could do was go round with helicopter and throw leaflets down in
most parts of the North. We have now gone beyond that. In (today's)
election, anyone could go anywhere in Nigeria. This is substantial
advance. Secondly, election rigging used to start from voters'
registration. People would collect voters' cards and, on election day,
they would give them to their supporters. But the system we use has
substantially done away with that. We now have the problem of ballot
papers and ballot boxes. In these days of e–voting, e–commerce,
e–medicine and all that, I think that the next stage for us should be
e–voting. Then the issue of ballot papers and ballot boxes will go away.
I do not say that there will be no other issue that may rear its ugly
head. But what I am saying is that we are making progress. Democracy is
not a destination, it is a journey. There is no country in the world
that would say that it has reached the end of the journey of democracy.
Some people have perfected their own system. Take the British for
instance who pride themselves as one of the most democratic countries in
the world. But I was in Britain many years back when the party that had
the majority of votes was not the party that formed the government
because the party with the majority votes did not have the majority of
elected representatives. That is their own democracy. They accept it.
So, what is important to me is that we accept that we have no
alternative to democracy, therefore, we have to deepen it. Now, we have
to look at how to handle the issue of ballot papers and ballot boxes.
And the framers of the Constitution have anticipated that there would be
election disputes and controversies and they have provided the way to
deal with that, through election tribunals. And everybody has acclaimed
our judiciary to be independent and I join them to make that
acclamation. Why don't we allow the judiciary to do its job? Many
members of my party have come to me to complain that they were rigged
out and they have shown me evidence. And I tell them to collate the
evidence and go to the tribunal. To me, that is what should be done.
Some people blame INEC. I am not saying INEC is perfect, but is it INEC
that thumb-printed ballot papers or snatched ballot boxes or put the
tanker carrying 30,000 litres of fuel and gas cylinders to blow up their
headquarters? Is it INEC that instigated the so–called militants in
Bayelsa State? Is it INEC that killed policemen in Port Harcourt? If not
for the grace of God … on Friday, the eve of the election, some people
went early in the morning to where a cleric with substantial following
was leading prayers in Kano and shot him dead. Is it INEC that did that?
If some people did that to set things on fire, is that INEC? And I have
also said that all the political parties, including my own party, should
share in the blame for all these problems. But I will not say that my
party is more guilty than others. If parties and political leaders had
all behaved the way they should, then we would have had a different
story. When the political observers commented on the election, did they
understand the complexities of our country? When I told one of them that
this is a country with no fewer than 350 languages, he said it could not
be true. There is no other country like Nigeria in the world. I am not
talking of dialects but distinct languages that have their own
complexities and challenges. In 1999, we had three political parties.
Today, we have 50, most of them not in tune with the constitutional
provision which says that political parties must be national.
UNQUOTE
This one paragraph is filled with a few
accuracies and several inaccuracies, and pointing those out could be the
subject of another entirely separate treatise. What President
Obasanjo failed to point out were;
(1) his own role in delaying preparations
first by overtly and covertly promoting the Third Term Agenda - which
would have largely made new elections unnecessary - until it was shot
down in May 2006. Quite frankly, that is when preparations began in
full earnest and Maurice Iwu had to play "catch-up."
(2) secondly, his own role in
vindictively going after his own Vice-President Abubakar Atiku to
prevent him by all means necessary from contesting for the presidency
either within their common party (the PDP), or any other party for
that matter. After Atiku defected to the Action Congress, attempts to
indite him (and hence prevent him being listed as a candidate by
INEC) and to expel him from the Vice-Presidency all failed in the courts
of the land. In the process, Obasanjo deployed Attorney-General Bayo
Ojo in misinterpreting court rulings as if he was a one-man Supreme
Court; EFCC's passionate Nuhu Ribadu in harassing and intimidating
political opponents in the guise of fighting corruption; and
Inspector-General of Police Sunday Ehindero in withdrawing/supplying
protective police forces at will at various government houses and
polling stations for various nefarious activities. President Obasanjo
also strategically used the announcement of public holidays - ostensibly
in preparation for the voting - to delay two critical Supreme Court
rulings.
PROFESSOR MAURICE IWU
Enter INEC current Chairman since 2005
- Professor Maurice Iwu, arguably the most controversial and biased
electoral umpire in Nigeria's history, and the fifth arm of the
Obasanjo-Ojo-Ehindero-Ribadu-Iwu quintuplet.
No Electoral Commision Chairman in the
history of Nigeria has escaped being accused of partisanship - not Chief
. Eyo E. Esua (1964-66), Chief Michael Ani (1976-79), Justice Victor Ovie-Whiskey
(1980-83); Prof. Eme Awa (1987-89), Prof. Humphrey Nwosu (1989-93), Amb.
Prof. Okon Edet Uya (1993); Chief Sumner Dagogo-Jack (1994-1998);
Justice Ephraim Akpata (1998-2000), Dr. Abel Guobadia (2000-2005).
What complicates Iwu's matter over all the others are his incompetence,
over-transparent partisanship and brazen brashness: accusations of
rigged figures are one thing, but this is the first time (to one's
knowledge) that it is being reported that:
(1) ballot papers arrived in an
overwhelmingly large number of polling stations as late as four to six
hours - or NEVER at all;
(2) many ballot papers were missing the
names and/or faces of candidates and/or party logos; and finally
(3) an INEC Chairman that constantly
tongue-lashed the skeptical public AND the Opposition at every
opportunity, and HAILED the presidential INEC-declared winner as the
only one who should have/could have won BECAUSE he "visited all the
states in the country." His verbal assaults during the announcement of
the presidential results and at the presentation of a certificate of
"win" to Umar Musa Yar'Adua were spectacularly outrageous:
Furthermore, ever since the 1963/64
elections of FEC Chairman E. E. Esua, this is also the first time that
there were
(4) wholesale disqualifications of
candidates, but this time of BOTH ruling party AND the opposition. (It
used to be disqualification of just the opposition, whereupon the
ruling party was returned UN-OPPOSED). INEC's power to disqualify was
ruled non-existent by lower courts, but INEC refused to obey until
confirmed following appeal to the Supreme Court. On the eve of the April
14 election, but before the Supreme Court ruling of April 16, INEC (for
example) unbelievably instructed the disqualification of the
gubernatorial candidate of Adamawa State (AC candidate Mr. Ibrahim Bapetel)
whose name was already on the ballot by asking INEC officials to strike
out his name on all the ballot papers BY HAND!
Of course, some of Iwu's earlier
histrionic promises fell flat on their faces, resulting in the Senate
now setting up a probe to ask where all our money has gone.
These included
- electronic registration, which turned
out to be disastrous: too few machines, and too many non-functioning.
Where is the Voters Register anyway?
- electronic voting, which was shot down
(thank God!) by the parliament as being un-tested, particularly in our
poor electric power situation, and hence too risky; and
- "nationally-enveloping" electronic
transmission. Which transmission? It turned out to be nothing more
than Globacom GSM texting!
Let us bear those facts in mind.
WHAT DO WE DO NOW?
In the 2007 elections, ALL the bad
things that could happen in ANY elections happened all at once.
Everything that could go wrong went wrong, either deliberately or
indeliberately.
Despite all their public chutzpah, one
cannot believe that Iwu's handlers expected things to be this bad. Iwu exceeded
their "expectations" in delivering "victory", but in the process, he
went above and beyond the call of duty - in local parlance, there was
just too much "(I)wuru-wuru" - thereby causing an embarrassment to the
nation.
Consequently he has to go, period. The
keys of the INEC office in Abuja should be taken away from him promptly
so that he does not tamper with the Voters' Register as he said he would
in trying to prevent local government elections from holding; or tamper
with the INEC materials which the Court of Appeal has commendably ruled
MUST be given to election petitioners to assist the cases that they are
making. Finally the thought of Iwu being allowed to supervise ANY new
elections in Nigeria is inconceivable.
In the future, no president (whether in
the mold of President Obasanjo or not) should be allowed to choose an
INEC chairman, or governor allowed to choose a State IEC, all by
himself. A judge, retired or sitting, should be made INEC Chairman, with
a Commission made up of members drawn from the major political parties
and civil society. INEC should be placed under the Judiciary, and
should be INDEPENDENTLY funded appropriately from the Consolidated
Revenue fund. Finally, our elections should be staggered so that INEC
is CONSTANTLY engaged in running a reduced number of elections each
year, not the quadriennal election jamboree that would be clearly a
logistic nightmare even for the most competent body. This staggering
will also lead to more stable composition of the legislative assemblies
nation-wide, not the 80% haemorrhaging that has been witnessed in 2003
and now in 2007.
I rest my case.
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APPENDIX: NIGERIA'S ELECTORAL
COMMISSION [FEC/NEC/INEC, etc.] CHAIRMEN FROM 1964 - 2007
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