The Lonely Man of Faith, Professor Iwu Has Cause to Be Ashamed of Himself
By
Dr. Wunmi Akintide
 

The verdict is now in on the 2007 elections in Nigeria. All the international observers and home-grown observers in our country including our Nigerian Bar Association and Human Rights Watch around the world, have all agreed on one thing. They have all said that the 2007 election was a charade. Not all of them are rooting for a total cancellation, however, but they have all said enough to leave Nigerians to draw their own conclusions.

The few surviving voices of reason in our country which include our own Nobel Peace Laureate himself, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Reuben Abati, even a notable Islamic cleric from Abuja not to talk of our own Desmond Tutu of Nigeria, the one and only Bolanle Gbonigi, the retired pioneer Anglican Bishop of Akure Diocese are all united in their condemnation of the last election as a fraud and an outrage. I cannot agree more. 

The consensus of Nigerians in Diaspora and Internet bloggers and columnists with the exception of a few is that the elections do not speak well of Nigeria as a representative model of Democracy in the world. They have all condemned the role, the incompetence and the overall performance of INEC and the oversight responsibility of the Government that appointed it. It was  a show of shame that Nigerians must be concerned about, if we love our country, and I have to believe the majority of us do, with passion, arguably better than our Emperor DoGood who want to be seen and crowned as the father of modern Nigeria or our lonely man of faith, the powerful chairman of INEC .

If I am hearing anything positive at all about the election it is all coming from the outgoing President himself, his anointed successor and Professor Iwu their hatchet man and a few of the diehard supporters and beneficiaries of the Obasanjo Regime in Nigeria who have a vested interest in opposing change in our country in large part because of their personal stake in it. i have just read one of the most informed and telling appraisal of the election by our own Chika Onyeani and the rejoinders coming from other bloggers and commentators like the one recently posted by one the best minds in this Forum. I am talking about my brother, Professor Ajayi and several others  like my highly respected friend in Osita who writes from California. They all powerful commentators with conviction who deeply love our country and certainly wish her the best.

One of the beauties of the idea Democracy, because we now have to recognize that there are two types of Democracy around the world today. There is the ideal or the closest to perfection type like much of what we see in some of the advanced countries of the world like Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany to mention a few. Elections and the conduct of them in those countries are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they are nothing to compare at all with our own which, for charity sake, I would categorize as falling among the less ideal.

Our own Democracy is in fact a mixture of democracy and blatant dictatorship as Obasanjo's eight years in office have clearly shown us. I continue to thank God for our country that Obasanjo did not realize his second ultimate ambition to be the Secretary-general of the UN. Judging from his track record in Nigeria he would have been a disaster. 

I am saying that because of his attempt to start defending the indefensible and the unacceptable by urging Nigerians and the world at large to accept the results of the last election in our country as good enough. If he, Obasanjo has carried that kind of mind set to the United Nations as Secretary General, forget it. The United Nations, in its oversight role, is often required to send election observers to other nations of the world that are struggling to embrace Democracy. If Obasanjo were Secretary-general and he receives the kind of condemnation the whole world is making today about our election, you know what his reaction would have been.

I agonize about that all the time, knowing what I know and what most Nigerians know about Obasanjo's modus operandi as a third world leader. He is only one or two notches better than Robert  Mugabe, if you ask me. Like I said before in one of my articles, Obasanjo may well be the best Nigerian President, because Nigeria is a nation walking on her head. In more civilized polities around the world Obasanjo would be considered a train wreck never to be seen again in the corridor of power.

It is a different ball game, however, in Nigeria. Yes, he would be retiring to his Ota Farm, come May 29th, 2007, but he would still be pulling the strings of power from there as the pleni potentiary Chairman of the one Party oligarchy in our country. His first daughter is running to become Senate President at a point in our history that the position is already zoned to the South West by the PDP formula. Adedibu's sons and two in-laws would be joining the big league in Abuja, and Professor Iwu succeeds Christopher Kolade as Nigeria's High Commissioner to Britain or the Nigerian ambassador to the United Nations while Nuhu Ribadu becomes Inspector-general. That would be the day. Even though the one time lecturer-turned Governor of Katsina State would be President de Jure, Obasanjo would still remain President  de facto.

The prognosis of the Nigerian situation right now, as they say in medical parlance, is very frightening to tell you the truth, and to think that these changes are predicated on the elections that have just taken place in Nigeria is an outrage, and if there is any single person to be blamed for this outcome besides our President and his steamroller PDP, it is Professor Maurice Iwu who has joined the pantheon of terrible INEC chairmen in Nigeria like the famous Justice Ovie Whisky of Delta, and other chairmen with funny names who have always done the biddings of the man that has appointed them, while putting aside the interest of the nation.

The only exception I could think of, is Professor Nwosu who has performed better the rest of them, first of all, because he wanted to be upright and fair in serving the nation, and second of all because he did not have to deal with too many political parties like we have today. He was lucky to be appointed by President Ibrahim Babngida who very wisely decided to reduce the number of parties to only 2 . That move had made it easier for Professor Nwosu to do his job and for the opposition to form a bloc that made it that much harder for each Party to rig the election.

That was the circumstance and one of the factors that made it possible for M.K.O. Abiola to win the election. The second factor, of course, was the decision of Professor Nwosu to have the results of the elections in the North released before those of the South were released. It was a masterstroke, and a drastic change from how election results used to be released in Nigeria. The third factor was M.K.O. himself who has done a marvelous job preparing himself for that office by positioning himself as a centrist who would not rock the boat of power sharing in Nigeria. The fourth was M.K.O's faith and the power of his wealth and generosity and the wonderful campaign he ran. The fifth was the role of the Press and News Media who did a fantastic job organizing presidential debates and the cooperation of Alhaji Tofa who willingly participated in those debates, making it easier for the voters to make an informed choice of who to support between two Muslim candidates. The 6th was the decision to have voters line up to vote and the decision to have the votes counted and validated and signed at the spot by all parties concerned before taking them to the collation centers.

Babangida, to his everlasting credit, did not use his soldiers to intimidate voters like Obasanjo has done, and he did not allow the Inspector-general to openly and blatantly side with any of the two parties to cart away ballot boxes or allow any of the military Governors and their Secom-in-command to display any favoritism to either of the two parties like we saw in Ondo State. It was a virtuoso performance ruined by the last minute decision of Babangida to annul the election altogether, when it became clear that M.K.O. had won. if you ask me who were the principal actors behind the annulment, I would tell you, that this same Obasanjo was one of them.

If Babangida has not done what he did to that election, you know it was Babangida who would have gone down as the greatest military President in all of our history. The man  was that good. It was true that he did commit a few blunders in Government, but his heart was in the right places, and his human relations was first class. Nigeria would have not have fallen apart like it nearly did under Abacha, and if it did, Babangida would have been seen as the ultimate savior and best military leader of Nigeria. Obasanjo would have become the first black Secretary-general of the UNO taking over from Butros Butros Ghali and Kofi Annan would never have made it to that job.

Our lonely man of faith Professor Iwu the man I hold responsible for the outrage of this election and president Obasanjo ought to be ashamed of themselves. I listened with total embarrassment when I heard the President and Professor Iwu argue that the elections were free and fair to the extent possible, because the results have confirmed the projections based on opinion polls before the elections. Come on, give me a break. Those who know the rudiments of opinion polls would be amused by such silly rationalization.

How could any opinion poll based on falsehood which is the hallmark of most Nigerian voters produce so accurate a prediction like the one we saw in this election. The polls say that the PDP would win 70% of the total votes despite their failings and shortcomings as a good-for-nothing Party whose only motivation for power is to loot the Nigerian treasury. The probability theory which is often used in Statistics to forecast an outcome of things like the election is usually based random samplings, but the whole exercise is predicated on facts and not fiction or figment of imagination.

Many of the Nigerian voters are pathological liars who would vote for candidate A at the polling booth and come out to say they voted for candidate B. They are not far different from Professor Iwu and President Obasanjo who are the only two people in the world who have given themselves high marks for conducting such a terribly flawed election. Thousands of votes were declared in Ondo South Senatorial District of Ilaje-EseOdo where Agagu comes from, and the PDP was declared the winner without a candidate, Can you believe that? And yet Professor Iwu and his boss wanted to validate their victory by comparing election mal practices in the United States with those of Nigeria.

That the two of them have been advising losers to go seek a redress at the tribunal is nothing but medicine after death. How many losers can afford to hire a Senior Advocate of Nigeria to go champion their cause before the tribunal with all the money already wasted? Professor Iwu and his boss are hoping that the tribunals headed by the handpicked nominees of the President will return the same verdict that Houdini Iwu has been attempting to foist on Nigeria with the backing of Obasanjo. The election was a charade and any president elected thru that day-light robbery, certainly lacks credibility and legitimacy. Yar 'Adua should be left in no doubt about that.

If Yar'Adua has integrity like he is being rumored to have, he should be concerned to have his name soiled and his reputation tainted forever. With a 70% lead in the tally, 24 million to 6 million, the last time I checked, he should have nothing to fear, if the whole exercise is canceled and repeated again. The margin of victory between him and Buhari  is so high that Yar'Adua ought not to entertain any fear at all he could lose in a free and fair election conducted by a neutral body like the UN or some other international agency.

Doing that is not going to truncate Democracy, it is going to sanitize it . In the meantime Professor Iwu must resign or be fired for doing such a terrible performance. The whole world and Nigeria have lost confidence in him and he should be ashamed of himself. I have known all along that the Professor was attempting to recover lightening in a bottle by telling the nation and the Nigerian Council of State, he was ready to conduct a fair and free election. I said so in no unmistakable terms before the elections, and I have been proved right.

   I rest my case.