By

Dr. Wunmi Akintide

WUMIONE@aol.com

 

Election riggings all over the world are done in stages long before the elections are held. The observation is  more so in Nigeria where preparations for elections are usually and deliberately delayed till the last one year or few months to the elections for obvious reasons.

  

Few are impressed with the belated assurances by the President and his handpicked Chairman of the so-called Independent National Electoral Commission, that the elections would be free and fair. The problems are compounded when the President and Professor Iwu now use the name of God in vain to support their honest intention to conduct a fair and free election. You become more disillusioned when some of our leading clerics be it Christian or Muslim now lend their voices to an attempt to cajole our people and give them a false sense of security that all would still be well, despite all the clear evidences to the contrary.

 

Pastor Adeboye a cleric who is highly respected in our country has recently made a prediction that the next elections would be one of the most peaceful in our country. I don't understand how anybody can be making such predictions with all the killings and political assassinations taking place in our country as we move closer and closer to the D day. Are we now to assume that all those hooliganism, rioting and killings  we daily read about on the Internet and on the pages of the newspapers are to be dismissed as being totally unconnected or unrelated to the same elections? The elections are already bedeviled with violence and mayhem as we speak and the predictions are totally false and misleading, I might add, if the truth must be told.

  

I don't know about you. I think this observation should be very troubling to all Nigerians and all the clerics making those predictions. What more evidence do we need than what we are already witnessing in our country?

    

The voters' Registration on which a successful election must depend, has been anything but accurate or perfect. Less than one month to the elections, voters are yet to know the candidates they would be voting for. Candidates are still being disqualified left, right and center. Professor Iwu, the man presiding over the whole pack of cards, is playing god and behaving as if the rule of Law means nothing to him, as long as he has the ears of the President who remains the brain behind the whole facade.

  

Professor Iwu and his INEC are behaving like agents of the Government in Power and doing so blatantly that all parties in opposition in Nigeria must be feeling so persecuted, humiliated and helpless at this point. The President issues one statement and Professor Iwu in his ivory tower issues a diametrically opposed  statements just to give a semblance of independence from the Executive that every Nigerian knows does not exist. This INEC is anything but independent of the Obasanjo Government at Abuja.

   

What is more damaging is that whatever is happening in the Federal capital in Abuja is being repeated or duplicated in each of the 36 States of Nigeria. Obasanjo controls the Military, the Police and all the security outfits in the whole country as well as the treasury of our nation. Unless you are a Governor of the ruling Party in Abuja, you cannot expect equal protection or treatment from any of the Police or Security Commissioners assigned to your State. You are completely at the mercy of the Federal Government and the Emperor at Abuja.

  

It, sure, sounds familiar. The same situation that led to massive rigging of elections in 2003 under Tafa Balogun, as Inspector General is being re-enacted all over again under the new IG, Sunday Ehindero and his Police Commissioners across the country. For any Governor to be protected by the Police they all have to look for money from their Security Votes to bribe the IG and his Commissioners all over the place, and yet we are being told to believe that the next elections are still going to be free and fair. Tafa Balogun had fed fat on that terrible system to make his millions in Naira and hard currency that quickly made him the richest Inspector General in all of our history with assets worth billions of Naira in Nigeria and abroad.

  

All he got for all that kleptomania was nothing but a slap in the wrist, six months in jail with five of them spent as a patient at a local Hospital close to the location of his prison. He did forefeit some money to the Federal Government, but at the end of the day he still had more than he and his family can ever need, even if he lives to 200 years of age.

  

It is a terrible country! But all hope is not lost as long as we still have leaders like the new Sultan of Sokoto who presided over a caucus of traditional rulers in the North and delivered one of the most honest and powerful appraisal of the Nigerian elections and situation, and why our traditional rulers must no longer be taken for granted by our politicians or called upon to bail out the country when the whole nation goes up in flame when Nigerians begin to react to the injustice now being perpetrated on them by a dishonest Government.

  

I think traditional rulers in the South ought to borrow a leaf from their colleagues in the on the other side of the river Niger. They too must lend their voices to the clarion call from their thinking colleagues who refuse to wait till the whole country is engulfed by an ill wind that is bound to totally jeopardize the global interest of our country.

 

The Emirs, the Shehus and the Etsus and the rest of them are asking the INEC and this Government to obey the rule of Law and to stop playing games with our collective destiny. The determination of this President and his INEC to single out the Vice President for disqualification because they don't like him is scary, to say the least. They should have left that decision to the voters, instead of playing games and relying on technicalities to knock the Vice President out by all means. It is clear now that even if the Court rules against INEC, their Chairman is determined to drag his feet and make it impossible for the VP's name to appear on the ballot when the elections begin.

  

Like I predicted before they have already damaged the VP and the chances of his Party beyond redemption in this election. But they are still not satisfied with that. The President and his INEC are fixated on humiliating him and making him a laughing stock which is really wicked and unfortunate.

   

Atiku Abubakar is a Nigerian like Mr. President. It is absolutely unfair of the President to treat him that way. The whole treatment could boomerang on the President leading to a lot of sympathy vote for the VP's Party, if the elections are free and fair which is most unlikely, given what we know today.

  

Professor Iwu does not want international observers to come supervise the elections while the President is only paying a lip service to that proposition. If they are not bent on rigging the elections, why are they so much against bringing in President Carter and his team at the Carter Center to come oversee the elections.

   

To know how bad this Government is doing, I invite all of you to go watch a video of the interview done with Alhaji Adedibu by a Nigerian Tribune Reporter in London which is still carried by Nigeriaworld dot com, as we speak. Very few will take this Government and the PDP for a penny, after viewing that video. It was simply incredible to learn the rudiments of how our political leaders operate in our country.

   

I leave you to form your own opinion after listening to that video.. The 2007 elections can never be free and fair. Forget it.

 

I rest my case.

Dr. Wunmi Akintide.