PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

Jonathan, Iwu and 2011 Elections

ndajika@yahoo.com

A couple of weeks ago the newspapers reported that the voluble and controversial chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Maurice Iwu, has decided to heed loud and persistent calls for him to leave or be sacked at the end of his first five-year tenure in June.  The INEC chairman has been virtually everybody’s favourite whipping boy for the disastrous conduct of the 2007 general elections, generally regarded as the worst in Nigeria’s history.

Shortly after reports that the man has decided to throw in his towel there were widespread speculations about his replacement. Among those tipped, the newspapers said, were the incorruptible Major-General Ishola Williams (retired) - the story is told of how he once retorted to a gibe by a fellow officer who pointedly said that any general who had no house of his own by the time he achieved the rank was useless by remarking that any general who had a house while still in service was a rogue - and the equally incorruptible but perhaps more flexible Professor Attahiru Jega, a former national president of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and currently the vice-chancellor of Bayero University, Kano.

Others included former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, retired Colonel Dangiwa Umar, famous for challenging his superiors over their decision to annul the even more famous June 12, 1993 presidential elections, a challenge which cost him his career, and Dr. Jibo Ibrahim, a brilliant leftish academic and a leading human rights activist.

With a formidable array of possible replacements like this, never mind the credible argument of leading lawyers like Mr. Femi Falana, the president of the West African Bar Association, that the INEC chairman should have left office since August last year, you would think Iwu would stick to his decision to quit office in June.

If you did, it seems  you couldn’t have been more mistaken; never one to turn the other cheek judging from his bullish response to criticisms of his conduct of the 2007 elections, the man seems to have lately renewed his counter-attack against those who have been calling for his head.

For example, on March 11 and 19 respectively, he initiated visits to the Senate President, David Mark, and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, to brief them on his plans for the 2011 elections. Those visits looked suspiciously like subtle pleas for legislative support for his second term.

As if to confirm such suspicions there has been a spate of newspaper advertisements by dubious looking organizations attempting to exonerate him from his responsibility for the 2007 election debacle. Not only that, the adverts have gone on to argue that a change of leadership at INEC at this time can only make matters worse than in 2007.

INEC under Iwu, said one such an advert in the Daily Trust of March 19,   signed by one, Haruna Abubakar, as the national chairman of an organization calling itself True Democracy Advocacy Network (TRUDAN), “has shown a steel resolve and determination to achieve a free, fair and transparent elections(sic) in 2011 by the deliberate and progressive reforms in the commission initiated by Iwu ...”

To replace the man at this stage, Abubakar said, “will bring more problems than solution in both INEC and the electoral system.”

Nine days later an even more disingenuous advert appeared in the Sunday Independent signed by one, Ezeemeo Ndu as President, Njiko-Igbo Cultural Organization. Iwu, he said, “did not and could not have conducted the worst election in Nigeria’s history.” The credit for that, he said, belonged to the 1983 general elections. It was, in any case, unfair, he said, to blame Iwu for the 2007 debacle when the incumbent president, Olusegun Obasanjo has told the world the election was a “do or die” affair for PDP.

In between the two adverts, on March 24, an apparent rent-a-crowd in support of Iwu led by one, Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, as chairman of Alliance for the Defence of Democracy, stormed the National Assembly with placards to protest the possible removal of Iwu. Some of the placards read “Political parties support Iwu”, “Iwu deserves commendation” and “We need electoral reforms not Iwu’s sack.” 

Of course not all supporters of Iwu look suspiciously mercenary. Some leading and respectable public figures like the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, John Onaiyekan, Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu, the governor of Imo State, Ikhedi Ohakim and a deputy chairman of the PDP, Dr. Bello Halliru, have spoken in support of the beleaguered INEC chairman. And, not surprisingly for those who were beneficiaries of the flawed 2007 elections, most members of the National Assembly have consistently praised Iwu.

All this means that his departure in June is hardly a foregone conclusion.

Yet there is an almost universal agreement that unless Iwu goes there would be no free and fair elections in 2011. Probably so. However, this position ignores the fact that Iwu was as much a victim of his circumstance as he was a willing tool of those who turned the 2007 elections in to a “do or die” affair, in the sense that he did not do his own bit for a free and fair election.

For example, it was well within INEC’s power under his leadership to have provided the country with a credible voters’ register ahead of the elections. Nearly four months to the elections he had told the world at the Fourth Annual Trust Dialogue in Abuja, that INEC under him had created a “modern, gold-standard voters register that has the image and bio-data of voters” which will ensure that “only the living and the qualified can vote.”

In spite of Iwu’s much touting of his Direct Data Capturing Machine, the 2007 elections was the first ever held in the country without a voters’ register as the most basic requirement for a free and fair election. Today nearly three years on we still do not have a voters’ register of any description. Meantime INEC has spent billions of Naira ostensibly in readiness for 2011.

Again almost on the eve of the 2007 elections INEC did not have the slate of the candidates partly because it busied itself running from one court to another defending President Obasanjo’s  crude attempt to ban credible opposition candidates, notably his estranged deputy, Atiku Abuabakar, from contesting.

One could go on and on about the things INEC could have done on its own but failed to do. But even these two examples are proof enough that Iwu was more than a willing tool for Obasanjo’s “do and die” politics.

Even then the ultimate responsibility for the debacle that was the 2007 elections, as I argued on these pages on March 21, 2007, lied squarely with the former president. As the Igbos would say, the man, as the all-powerful president created by our caricature of American-style presidential democracy, had the knife and he had the yam; what others got depended on how disposed he was to being fair-minded.        

In societies with strong institutions individual behaviour is less important than the rules of conduct because the institutions can be relied upon, at least in the long run, to check misconduct. Not so in an infant democracy like Nigeria’s where the institutions are weak. In such a democracy attitudes, particularly those of its leaders, are more important than the rules.

This was why I argued on these pages on April 22 last year that if President Yar’adua was to convince a sceptical public that he sincerely wished to conduct a free and fair election in 2011 he should disavow his interest in re-election, more so as he seemed unable to cope with the rigours of his office due largely to his ill-health.

The same argument, I believe, applies to Acting President Goodluck Jonathan even though, indeed precisely because, he is as fit as fiddle. I believe even if we have someone as incorruptible and as self-willed as General Williams replace Iwu, we would still not have a free and fair election in 2007 if particularly the incumbent president is determined to cling on to office, come what may.

This does not necessarily mean that the only solution to our seemingly intractable electoral crises is a one-term limit for all elective offices, especially executive office. After all, the temptation to acquire power by hook or crook is not any weaker than the temptation to hold on to it by all means.

But while we should not impose one-term limit for our elective offices, it will help a great deal if our politicians show they are prepared to sacrifice their personal political ambitions in the greater interest of society. This is asking too much of politicians even in societies where politics is not a do or die affair.

But until Nigeria can produce a Mandella willing to put his country before self, we will never be able to conduct an election that is free and fair.