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These Evil Campaigns Will Fall Flat By Jide Ayobolu
There are some evil campaigns that is going on now in the country, amongst politicians, journalists, lawyers and what have you. These are coming for the engine room of the PDP, the idea is that since the election has been massively rigged by the ruling party at the center, then it wants to do everything within its power to make sure that aggrieved politicians do not go to the tribunal to seek redress rather they should allow the electoral fraud to stay and it will soon go away, so that, people can carry on with their businesses. They argued in their very warped mind that since Nigerians could over look the imperfections of the census, for instance, they should also do the same thing about the just concluded elections, which has been adjudged as not credible, free and fair by local and international observers. The elections represent the darkest spot in the history of the country. It is the worst election conducted so far in the history of the country. So, what will be wrong if those who feel cheated in the elections go the whole hog by going to the tribunal to ventilate their pent up anger. Would it have been better if the aggrieved party had taken the law into their hands and gone wild? Some newspaper writers and television presenters have started saying let bygone be bygone, that the opposition party should forget about going to the tribunal, that give and take, Yar;Adua would have won all the same. So, the opposition should no go the tribunal, so as not to over heat the polity un-necessarily. They even ask the question that, why is the opposition crying over split milk, because they ought to have formed a formidable alliance and contest for the election on the same platform, but they failed to do this.
The Economist commenting on the Nigerian election said, “The opposition parties have called for a re-run of all the elections. The only person who seem happy with the charade are officials of the inept and craven INEC and those who appointed them in the ruling PDP. The PDP’S presidential candidate, Umaru Yar’Adua won an astonishing 70 per cent of the vote, but few will accept the result as anything other than a fraud”. The Economist in its features titled Nigeria’s Elections: Big men, Big fraud and Big trouble further contended that, “so even the straight-talking Mr Ribadu’s outfit has now been politicized. It has used high-handed and unconstitutional means to smear Mr Obasanjo’s opponents and keep their names off ballot papers. The EFCC has done some good work in the past. But, like the elections themselves, its credibility has been mortgaged to political expediency. The charitable interpretation of Mr Obasanjo’s behaviour is that he has to act this way to preserve the reform programme. If that is so, he has badly miscalculated; the reform programme has itself become a casualty of the rotten politics. Can Nigeria expect anything better from Mr. Yar’Adua, if he is sworn in as president on May 29th? Probably not. Despite a reputation for personal honesty, the obscure Northern governor comes to power as a creature of Mr Obasanjo’s PDP clique. With few obvious credentials for the job, apart from being the younger brother of Mr Obasanjo’s former vice-president, he was hand-picked by the president against the will of many in the party. Mr Obasanjo has misused every means at his disposal to ensure that his own PDP men win the state houses and the presidency, knocking his opponents out of the race by bringing charges of corruption against them by EFCC”. Similarly, Professor Wole Soyinka has called for the outright cancellation of the just –concluded general elections because of the monumental fraud and mass irregularities that characterized the entire exercise. According to him, “the PDP is not in a hurry to go. I have called them a nest of killers and other names. Now I am short of words and names for the party. Nigerians realize we are in this fight for the long haul. This party is not going to go away without a fight”. Again, the U.S Department of State said categorically concerning the elections that, “ Nigeria has missed an opportunity to strengthen an element of its democracy through a sound electoral process. Analysis of the process by most international observers does not conform to what Nigeria’s national electoral commission has reported. There are credible reports of malfeasance and vote rigging in some constituencies. The scope of violence that occurred also was regrettable. Overall, the process was seriously flawed”. The EU observers said, “ the elections have failed to meet the hopes and expectations of the Nigerian people and fall short of basic international standards”. The point is that this government has conducted a very woefully election that is thoroughly flaw, because of monumental rigging and unbridled manipulation, since the exigent need for those who strongly feel short-changed to seek redress in election tribunal for the electoral frauds to be up turned.
Jide Ayobolu Abuja-Nigeria
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