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Maurice Iwu’s INEC, Maurice Iwu’s Politics By Benedict Okereke
Maurice Iwu, Nigeria’s Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman, continues to be pummelled by those disenchanted with the various elections conducted by INEC since 2007. Not left out are many who wittingly or unwittingly created Nigeria’s electoral impasse, they have now thrown themselves into the ring. Is Iwu being made the scapegoat or did he transform himself to that?
There is the general belief that from 2007 till date, election rigging, election violence, mass killings before, during, and after elections, election courts, and other election-related problems have reached dimensions not seen since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999. The ghost of ‘elections 2007’ simply refused to go away. The honest ones among many that benefited from the farcical elections of 2007 had condemned the exercise. The greatest beneficiary, President Umar Yar'Adua had not only punched holes on that election but had since set up an electoral reforms committee. The 2007 elections brought many detractions from the gains made since Nigeria’s return to democracy – a vanishing opposition group or groups and a deteriorating security situation in the country.
A democracy without an active, strong and consistent opposition is as good as military dictatorship. In many cases the former has been proved to be worse than the latter. Again, the stability, safety of lives and property and development in any democracy are all hinged on the credibility of its electoral process, and by extension, on those placed by the process onto leadership positions. Until the 1990’s the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Pri) held sway in Mexico for more than seven decades and brooked little or no opposition. And for most of the period, election fraud, corrupt practices, wanton robberies, kidnappings for ransom, daring escapes of its citizens across the border to the United States and other forms of criminality also became institutionalised in Mexico. Election rigging can with a jet speed breed a class of politicians and public servants who work in tandem to sustain within any democracy the twin cultures of vice and impunity. We pray hard Iwu’s INEC may not take Nigeria this far?
After the 2007 election fiasco, honest Nigerians expected that Maurice Iwu would resign from office and spiritedly defend himself by highlighting all those factors known by many of us as institutionalised obstacles that if not addressed must always weigh against free and fair elections in Nigeria. The Justice Uwais electoral reforms committee is recommending the A4 Option voting system similar to that of the Ibrahim Babangida era. It appears like a palliative for now. But to whatever extent we hope Nigeria’s democratic climate must have improved since 1993, we all know that not much has changed in our federal structure under which the election results the option nurtured in 1993 failed to be actualised. It is not just enough to proscribe one electoral system and prescribe another, what is imperative is the restructuring of our political system and political offices in tune with modern day workable democracies where political office holders are unable to use their positions to amass wealth at the expense of the governed. If an administrative structure and revenue sharing formula befitting a complex federation like Nigeria is devised in the ongoing constitution review exercise and the Option A4 electoral system applied in the 2011 elections, much of the electoral chaos of today may be drastically reduced.
Nigerians expect an attitudinal change from Maurice Iwu. His failure so far to assure Nigerians that 2011 is going to be far better than 2007 is giving people goose pimples. It is also providing the pedestal on which others who are expected to be blamed as well for Nigeria’s electoral woes stand to cast stones toward his direction. For now, Nigerians expect Iwu’s INEC to dig deep and expose, for the benefit of the existing constitution review committee, those factors in our political arrangement that negate the conduct of free and fair elections in the country, for if Nigeria goes to the next general elections without first carrying out an overhaul of its political system the country may be shaken to its foundations. Today’s INEC must ensure that the year 2011 marks a watershed in Nigeria’s history of elections.
MAURICE IWU’S POLITICS After the electoral fiasco of 2007 Maurice Iwu refused to quit INEC, but going by his actions and inaction as well as his utterances since then, he had left many to believe that Nigeria’s progressive descent to electoral chaos may have a lot to do with his beliefs and attitude rather than the “Nigerian factor” alone.
By ever comparing Nigeria’s electoral system, more so, as symbolised by the 2007 elections supervised by him to the near-perfect US electoral system as manifested in the November 2008 elections, Iwu can be likened to that kind of leader who believes that the led must either be blindfolded or brainwashed and told that snow is black not white, that coal is white not black and expected to be towed along.
A few days after the courts upturned another of INEC’s election results, this time in Edo state, Iwu went to the head of the Catholic church in his native Okigwe diocese, Imo state, perhaps seeking for an ex-cathedra pronouncement on his infallibility as the nation’s chief electoral umpire. For some of his guest speakers on that occasion, equating Iwu’s success to the smooth transfer of political power through the elections conducted by the INEC he heads was a very sweet song. For them the unfairness of the elections that brought that transition was not important. Many of those speakers ended up getting characterised by observers as exponents of mediocrity. Some questioned whether the INEC chairman ever gave a second thought or not as to what Nigeria’s political atmosphere may turn to if every political office holder in the country opts to hold such a thanksgiving jamboree? Anyhow, a few days after the church fiesta, more than 400 people died of election-related ethnic conf1ict in Jos, Plateau state.
On April 14, 2007, the gubernatorial and state house of assembly elections were both conducted at the same time in all the electoral wards in Imo state. Iwu’s local INEC citing violence in some polling areas cancelled the gubernatorial election result a candidate from Owerri could have won but went ahead to uphold the state assembly election results. INEC could have unleashed anarchy in the state but for the general understanding in Imo state that the next governor then must come from Okigwe zone.
Not long ago, Iwu was accused by people from his Southeast zone of hiding under INEC’s constituency delineation exercise to meddle in the politics of state creation in the zone. He was specifically accused of conscripting areas to front for a state carved out from the existing five states in the Southeast zone with Okigwe as the headquarters. If Iwu denied the accusations, what immediately followed the senatorial constituency delineation exercise in Imo state did underscore the lie in his denial. Three obviously syndicated, well-known propagandists immediately flooded print and on-line media outlets in chronological order with articles extolling Iwu and the merits of a sixth state carved out from all the Southeast states in the Okigwe area. A self-styled public affairs analyst, Yakubu Tsav, in an article published in countless publishing outfits and titled: “Games Igbos play with their sons”, www.vanguardngr.com/content/view/22040/87/ chastised the Igbos for not realising that Iwu is their highest political office holder; and that all the political office holders in today’s Nigeria owe their positions to Iwu’s transition elections; and therefore, Iwu’s privileged access to any body at any level in Nigeria and elsewhere indicates that he is the only one who has the political leverage to get them the additional state they crave so much.
Another well known propagandist, Aloysius Ejimakor, wrote that cultural/linguistic affinity must not be put into consideration when carving out a new state he called Igboezue from the five states in the Southeast, and that all the other groups asking for states in the Southeast were selfish, hence, according to him, “..to now allow some sectarian group to take the bacon (the sixth state) home ..will tantamount to some sort of political fraud on the larger Igbo ..”
For the hind sight, since the 2005 political reforms conference when one state agitation group in the Southeast presented its request, the flagrant use of such words as “selfish” and “fraud” had rarely characterised the relationship between the state agitation groups in the zone. True, none of the groups may succeed without the support of the rest of the Igbo, and in fact, the rest of Nigeria, however, it did not appear to Ejimakor that hiding under the mantra of “collective Igbo struggle” - however deceptive that is - to ask for a jumbling of mostly unwilling interest groups from the five states in contemporary Southeast zone to form a state for Okigwe’s sake is flawed. And when the move is largely seen as associated with the signature of a single politician looking for an undeserved reward from the people, the smell of fraud and selfishness fills the air.
The weakest link among the propagandists, Emma Ogbeche, canvassed that attention must not be paid to the claims of large population by the Aba and Njaba state groups, and that it is ideal for the interests of every Igbo man to locate the new state ‘on the near virgin territory’ extracted from the existing five states in the Southeast with Okigwe as its headquarters.
The outpouring of condemnations for the proposal and its proponents was instant and total. People were mostly irked that the same Okigwe zone which had benefited from practically all the past state creation exercises in the Southeast would pop up again. When the old Imo state was split in1991to get Abia and Imo states, the then Okigwe senatorial dstrict in the then Imo state had one part of it go to Abia state and the remainder to Imo state; a few years later, in 1996 to be precise, Ebonyi state was created and, again, the part of the old Okigwe zone in Abia state was split, one part went to Ebonyi state and the remainder retained in Abia state. Today, people in the pre-August 1991 Okigwe senatorial zone are spread in Imo, Abia and Ebonyi states based on their numerous distinguishable affinities to the other existing populations in those states. So why would any one opt to crave, or carve out another state, for the third time with the Okigwe area in focus, when in the Southeast zone there are those three well entrenched state agitation groups namely: Aba, Adada, and Njaba any of which can comfortably pass the constitutional requirements for a state, and whose people believe they are yet to benefit from any of the past state creation exercises in the zone? Besides, two of these three state agitation groups contend they fall within the oil producing areas with their well known ecological problems, so contemplating in place of their demands a state as Igboezue carved out from the five states in the Southeast and located in the most thinly populated area of the zone; and whose sole means of sustenance shall be federal doles is like contemplating robbing Peter to pay Paul. Above all, unless constrained or induced, the groups enumerated by those propagandists to form such a state from the five states of the Southeast can never come together in contemporary Igbo land to ask for a state of their own.
The fact is that if the INEC boss gets mired in local politics he loses sight of the reality that the future of Nigeria depends a lot on his office.
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