PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

 

In Defence of Jega

ndajika@yahoo.com

Wherever they are today, both former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, and former Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chief, Professor Maurice Iwu, must be having a guffaw over last Saturday’s election debacle. The debacle notwithstanding, their loud laughter would be a hollow one.

The reader will recall that on April 29 last year, Obasanjo said in faraway America that not even Jesus Christ, the greatest miracle worker of all time, can conduct an election in Nigeria that Nigerians would not dispute.

Obasanjo’s exact words as reported by the media were, “With due respect, if Jesus Christ could come to the world and be the chairman of INEC, any election he conducts would be disputed.”

No sooner did news of this remark break in the country’s media than all hell broke loose. Reverend Joseph Hayab, Secretary General of the Northern States’ Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), for example, condemned the man as being “totally blasphemous.”

“Obasanjo,” the reverend said, “must know that Jesus Christ has the power to save and deliver people from sin and condemnation, and he is still saving Nigeria today. It is the prayers of those who have been saved by Jesus Christ that is keeping Nigeria moving from the clutches of bad leaders like him. How much more can he not conduct an election?”

Less charitable critics of the former president said he had become a psychiatric case and needed medical attention. Others called him even worse names.

Out of eight comments on the man’s remarks published by The Will on its website on May 3, 2010, for example, only one saw no wrong with his remark, perhaps a reflection of the near unanimity of the public disapproval of the man.

“Obasanjo’s statement,” the dissenting reader said, “is neither blasphemous nor offensive nor faulty.”

A less emotional consideration of the former president’s remark can only lead to agreement with this lone voice. Obasanjo’s remark was obviously not a denial of the power of Christ to perform miracles. It was simply an assertion of the fact that so long as human beings roam this earth, there will be those who will always deny the evidence before their very eyes.

That Obasanjo’s remark was an indictment of your typical Nigerian politician whose stock-in-trade is bad faith could have been seen easily if his remark had not been taken out of context. The context was the sack of Iwu as INEC chief.

“Since I got here three days ago,” the man said in reference to Iwu’s sack, “I understand that the chairman of INEC has been asked to go on leave. People have also talked about electoral reform. Quite honestly, I have said I don’t understand in detail what this reform is. One thing that we need to reform in our society is the politician. We need to reform politicians.” (Emphasis mine).

(Obviously the irony was, as usual, lost on the man that his pontificating was self-indicting, considering his almost legendary record of bad faith).

The much reviled Iwu, as we all know, was replaced by Professor Attahiru Jega who came in widely and highly recommended as a man of high integrity. His arrival greatly raised public expectations that at last the country’s electoral body would end the its long history of failed elections.

Personally I never entertained any illusions that Jega’s famed personal integrity was enough to do so. And I’ve said so several times on these pages.

And in fairness to Jega himself he has always said that he alone can never make the difference between success and failure in this year’s elections. Even then few Nigerians could have been prepared for the debacle that the National Assembly’s election scheduled for last Saturday turned into.

I went home to Bida for the election even though I’d registered to vote in Kaduna, my resident town. I went home to help out with the last minute organisation of the campaign of my cousin, Major-General Mohammed Garba (rtd), who was contesting for the Niger South Senatorial seat on the ticket of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

The first sign that all was not well with the weekend elections was a phone call I received very early in the morning  from my younger brother (in the broad African sense), Umar Alkali, the campaign coordinator of the Niger State (CPC) governorship candidate, Bako Shettima, another younger brother.

A much agitated Alkali said their party would boycott the elections because the ballot papers for the senatorial election and the result sheets for both the senatorial and House of Representative elections were certain not to arrive Minna, the state capital, by the time accreditation of voters was supposed to start at 8.00 am.

Other signs of trouble rolled in thick and fast, culminating, as it did, in the emergency national broadcast by Jega himself that because of late arrival of sensitive materials from abroad, INEC would have to postpone the election, first to the following Monday, and subsequently to this Saturday, when the opposition parties insisted Monday was simply not feasible.

The debacle has led to all manner of unkind remarks about Jega and INEC. Perhaps the cruellest is a joke now making the rounds of mobile phone network that has since become the most ubiquitous tool of mass communication in the world. “Which,” goes the joke, “is more scary...Mrs Goodluck as ur wedding MC or Prof. Jega as ur wedding planner?”  As if you don’t already know, Patience, the country’s First Lady, has since become very famous for mangling the English Language at all her public appearances.

Jega’s debacle would, at first glance, seem to justify Obasanjo’s much misunderstood remark in question about the near impossibility of conducting a universally acceptable election in Nigeria. A closer look, however, would reveal that although the man has a point about the difficulty of conducting such an election in Nigeria, his attempt at defending Iwu – and by extension defending himself – was simply untenable.

Obasanjo was in a way right to say the Nigerian politician was the big problem with country’s historically flawed elections. But he was wrong to infer that Iwu could not have made any difference. Iwu did not make any difference simply because he was an active accomplice, probably worse, in the grand conspiracy that rigged the 2007 elections to nonsense.

This is the fundamental difference between Jega and Iwu which we must never forget as we all round up on the hapless Iwu’s successor for his failure to conduct last Saturday’s National Assembly elections.

Jega failed last Saturday less because of competence than because of the probable machinations of entrenched forces in the country that cut across tribe, religion and region; forces that are scared to death that a free, fair and credible election would put an end to their extravagant lifestyles.

I saw elements of these forces at work from a ring side seat at home in Bida. Nearly a fortnight ago, my cousin discovered that his name was missing from the list of contestants even though he and his party, the ACN, had satisfied every requirement for his nomination.

He duly petitioned INEC which subsequently rectified the omission. I personally phoned an official in INEC and confirmed the correction. Yet when the list of the senatorial gladiators finally arrived Minna and Bida headquarters of INEC, his name and his party’s were still missing.

Clearly someone high enough in INEC had failed to do his or her job, possibly at the behest of an outsider unsure that a free, fair and credible election would go his or her way.  

Meantime rumours had spread fast round the Niger South Senatorial district on the eve of the initial E-Day that my cousin had stepped down for the incumbent senator. The malicious intent of those behind the rumours was obvious and they would probably have achieved their objective if the elections had held last Saturday or even on the initially rescheduled Monday.

It has since emerged that much of the errors of missing names and party logos of mostly opposition parties from the INEC list, for example, was the result of not only the legal department but some others as well not properly carrying out decisions taken by INEC management, possibly with outside inducements.

Last Saturday’s election debacle, as with the serious hiccups that affected the voters’ registration exercise, may have raised worries about Jega’s competence, but certainly no one can accuse the man of conniving with anyone to rig this year’s election.

On the contrary he has done virtually everything possible to ensure a free, fair and credible election. He has, for example, conducted a credible voters’ registration exercise in spite of initial hiccups. He has also said voters can remain at the polling booths after the elections until results are announced, something which has apparently angered the authorities so much that the National Security Adviser to the President, General Andrew Azazi, who has no business or the authority to pronounce on government policy, would make press statements that tried to countermand INEC.

Not least of all INEC under Jega has decided that no election would hold in any constituency where the name of any legitimate contestant is missing.

In spite of all these checks - and more – Jega may yet bungle this year’s election. But if nothing else he has abundantly demonstrated that you do not need Christ’s power of miracles to create all the conditions necessary for a free, fair and credible election in this long suffering nation.