Don’t Set Nigeria Ablaze

By

Farouk Martins, Omo Aresa

faroukomartins@aim.com

Before General Buhari and Vice President Atiku threaten the end of the world, they must tell us how many states they think they may have won individually. In victory, Governor Yar’dua must be humble and sensitive to the call of minority of Nigerians, no matter their grief or grouse about the election. A good start was made by Baba Iyabo who claimed it was not a perfect election.

Atiku will be pushing his luck too far if he thinks that the Supreme Court will uphold all his whims and wishes. He could not even catch up with Buhari who ran a distant second. The Supreme Court would have to decide that if he had all the chances, would he have won? As for Buhari, please hang it up. Yar’Adua won in 2003 as Governor against your Party in Katshina and also got more presidential vote then. He has repeated the same thing again in 2007. It is time to throw in your hat Sir.

While I respect the report of the Transition Monitoring Group, Chief Chukwuma was way off his mark to call for a new presidential election. Of course there were skirmishes all over the Country in some local areas but generally it was not as bad as that of the State election the week before. The turnout was even lower because some people were more enthusiastic about local representation than national and others refused to risk their life venturing out.

Other international observers were not very happy about INEC lapses either but they stopped short of calling for a new election, realizing the logistic difficulties. If INEC wants to enjoy any credibility, they must vigorously pursue elections in different states scheduled for coming weekend. How many people actually believe that Akala won in Oyo State or that Oshimole lost in Edo State? In Anambra, INEC must go back and retrace its steps. Ngige must be given the opportunity to contest according to the ruling of the court. These and other few case of total contempt for people’s vote may obscure the landside victory of Yar’Dua.

From all the rulings of the courts, it seems that while INEC has the power to referee the game, the process of disqualification by indictment or others factors can be challenged in the court of law. Once the process is faulted, INEC must comply. INEC must reassess its process to make sure it anticipates and meets the standard of the courts, otherwise justice delayed through the court process itself is justice denied. It took Obi too long to regain his mandate in Anambra.

Unfortunately, the oppositions have done more to discredit themselves than many people are willing to stomach. If the tanker bomb had succeeded, many Nigerians would either be in the hospitals or groaning in disbelief. If that was not an act of desperation, we wonder what that was. Our politicians as said many times, are ready to set the whole Country ablaze if they do not get their ways.

Many people are not happy with the attempted kidnap of Jonathan, the Vice Presidential candidate either based on the mischievous information that ballot stuffing was going on in the Government House when ballots were barely in the Country. The dare devil would stop at nothing to turn Nigeria upside down for the rest of us.

The ballot boxes printed outside Nigeria was a no win situation either. If it was printed in Nigeria, some people would look for ways to compromise them. Indeed, before the boxes arrived in the Country, there were rumors of them being distributed by PDP. Not that they couldn’t do it, the fact was that it was not even in the Country. As long as those ballots were not printed overseas, I have no problem with that. It could have been printed in Ghana or Benin Republic.

The election did not go the way I wanted in Lagos because I was hoping Agbaje would become the Governor but Fashola has to keep his distance from Tinubu, if Ribadu does not snatched him away. The same goes for Yar’dua, he has to be extremely careful with Baba Iyabo. It seems that Obasanjo went into his reflective mood when he said the Kingmaker is usually the first to be sacrificed. He promised to stay away in his farm. I do not think that will be enough as he still cherishes the idea of Chairman of the Board of Trustee for the PDP.