Travails of Democracy in Nigeria (Part Three): Implications of Ciroma’s Consensus Gambit and Cracks in the Foundations of AREWA House

 

• There is no question that Ciroma has stirred the hornet’s nest and created bad blood in the north in the way and manner he handled his assignment on behalf of the candidates. The several allegations of the committee working to a predetermined answer that dogged the committee’s work while it lasted couldn’t but engender ill feelings in the camps of the losers and their candidates’ supporters in the north. And that must have informed why Atiku was muted in victory because he didn’t want to inflame pent-up passions in the camps of his northern opponents. From whatever angle one may look at it Ciroma has simply delivered the PDP ticket to Jonathan on a platter of gold! What a twist! This is classic anti-climax.—Franklin Otorofani
• A man who gleefully told the BBC in an interview in 2003 on the eve of the PDP primaries when it suited his political calculation that he had three options, namely; going for his own ticket for the top post, or going with Alex Ekueme ticket as his running mate, or thirdly, going with OBJ ticket as running mate when OBJ had not completed eight years in office has now shamelessly turned around to claim that the presidency was zoned to his north for eight years therefore the north must complete its eight year term before a southerner is allowed to contest the presidency in the PDP. Such shameless volte face, gross inconsistency and crass opportunism often exhibited by Abubakar Atiku has thrown him up as a highly unprincipled character that cannot and must not be entrusted with the governance of the nation.—Franklin Otorofani

 

The former Governor of Kano State, late Alhaji Abubakar Rimi it was, who was reported to have advised the Ibos in a newspaper interview long before his death not to demand for an Igbo president but for a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction. Rimi was not against the latter but was vehemently opposed to the former and for good reasons too. In his view, it was wrong, parochial and sectional for the Ibos to demand for an Igbo president because that could be offensive to other ethnic nationalities in the union since the president is president of all not of any particular ethnic group or section of the country. Put differently, it was not politically correct.

Since that counsel was given a few years back I have yet to come across anyone demanding for an Igbo president but a president of Igbo extraction, which is more politically correct and acceptable to all Nigerians.  

Now, Rimi was a northerner and a prominent one at that with a large following in the north. But he was a detribalized Nigerian who did not believe in zoning the nation’s presidency for the above stated reasons. And that was reason why he offered himself against OBJ in 2003 in protest. If Rimi was alive today he might have thrown his hat into the ring in the presidential race, but he would, in all probability, not have danced to the drumbeats of Mallam Ciroma, Atiku, IBB, Gausau and Saraki’s ethnic orchestra in the north.  

However, when he gratuitously offered his advice to the Ibos, little did he know that his own north would need his advice in future in 2010 more than the Ibos in 2007. That is the irony of history. Rimi must be turning in his grave at what Ciroma, Atiku, IBB, Gasau and Saraki have made of the north in 2010 barely one year after his demise. But the harm has been done and seems irreversible unless something happens in the north and fast too, to correct the situation.    

The sick joke by the equally sick Mallam Adamu Ciroma and his northern ethnic bigots has passed onto the nation’s history books as blight on the history of this great but serially abused nation. From Ciroma’s decrepit political workshop has emerged a defective product marked “damaged” that has become a hard sell even to those who had commissioned the aging ethnic gladiator to forge it in his equally aging political workshop.

It’s been severally reported that the screws are already coming off the product even before it left the workshop for the political shops barely 48 hours after it was unveiled to the public as at the time of writing this piece. And more defects are bound to be revealed as the product is subjected to even greater scrutiny nationally. It’s fast shaping up to be the beginning of the end for Atiku.

When you hear northerners like the Katsina State Governor Ibrahim Shema, for instance, saying that “Atiku was just one of the presidential aspirants and that at the appropriate time, the North would speak on their choice,” as reported by ThisDay in its November 26^th edition, it becomes glaring even to the untrained ear that Ciroma has produced a defective political product for the north, which northerners themselves aren’t exactly buying just yet. And when you hear former President Olusegun Obasanjo laughing chokingly at the choice of Atiku to scorn as reported severally in the papers, you don’t need to be told that the Atiku aircraft will never get off the ground and airborne, at least not in the PDP or anywhere else for that matter. Again when you hear former Secretary of the NPN Senator Uba Ahmed dismissing the choice of Atiku with a wave of the hand, and the Jerry Gana-led Northern Political Summit group, who are prominent northern members of the PDP gearing up to do battle against Ciroma’s choice for the north, you don’t need to be told either that Atiku is indeed in trouble in the north and will not make it far in the PDP primaries if at all.

But the question that members of the intellectually lazy Nigerian press have woefully, scandalously and inexplicably failed to ask is: what criteria did the NPLF use to arrive at Atiku? Pointedly asked, did Ciroma and his zoning champions practice in the north what they have been breaching to the nation? Did they zone the presidency to the north/west where Atiku hails from? Is Atiku a product of zoning in the north as they have been preaching to us for eons? If so, why was the vote so close with Atiku beating IBB by just one single vote? What kind of zoning would produce such a close result? IBB could have easily emerged and he’s not from the north/east as Atiku. If yes, where does that leave Buhari who is from the north/west if the presidency has been zoned to the north/east by the north?  Has he been zoned out? If not, why not?

It is not enough for Ciroma to howl about zoning at the national level. He must practice what he preached at the regional level. Was that the case with Atiku? The Nigerian media owes itself and the nation a duty to seek out answers to the above posers, because it is a matter of principle except it has been co-opted into the still-born Atiku presidential project. You cannot shout about zoning at the national level and go do something else at the regional level. That is called hypocrisy of the highest order and somebody owes the nation an answer, and quickly too.

Is Atiku a product of zoning or mere product of selection based on the preferences of a majority of the committee members? These are questions that cannot be swept under the rug. Nigerians need answers because those who live in glass houses should not be seen to be throwing stones at others.

For Atiku, however, it’s looking like it’s going to be 2007 all over again, because the man has not learnt his lessons, and he’s misreading the political barometer that is indicating a clean break with the past of which he is part and parcel. If Nigerians are running away from their past, it is clear that they’re running away from the likes of Atiku who have been messing up their lives for a long while. That is the message they have been sending to the old political horses, including Ciroma, Atiku, Buhari and IBB. Only Gusau and Saraki might be excepted in the foursome that submitted themselves to the consensus arrangement, because they have no heavy political baggage hanging over their necks like albatrosses. Unfortunately, that cannot be said of the duo of Atiku and IBB who are particularly disliked by Nigerians of all ages. With Atiku Ciroma has thumbed his nose at his own people in particular and Nigerians in general even if Atiku was not his personal choice. It makes no difference. The process he set in motion has produced a defective product for his own people and the nation at large.    

Nevertheless, Ciroma has succeeded in strutting his stuff on the national stage and attracted a measure of political relevance to himself while it lasted. Whether for good or ill, he has managed to put his almost forgotten name in the history books. Arrogating to himself the power and wisdom of deciding for the north, Ciroma presented to the nation a candidate of, for and by the north for the 2011 presidential elections under the PDP party platform. And with that, Ciroma has decreed that the north should forget about Muhammadu Buhari and Nuhu Ribadu. With one well aimed punch, he has knocked off IBB, Gasau and Saraki and has even gotten his victims to clean up after his mess by reducing them to Atiku’s errand boys literarily, who would be carrying his oversized briefcases in the coming months.

It wasn’t meant to come out this way but this is how it has turned out anyway to the chagrin of the old horse himself, who must be quietly licking his wounds and wondering how and where he lost control of the clandestine coronation process he had unleashed on his beloved north. Ciroma may have gratuitously made the choice for the north, but he would very much have preferred IBB to wear the Northern Crown to Atiku who got it, because even Ciroma is capable of shooting himself in his own foot!

Someone in the Atiku camp or from somewhere else must have pulled a fast one on him. It would appear from the heated arguments that reportedly pitted Ciroma with other members of the committee particularly Audu Ogbe over the method of voting by the members, Ciroma had plotted to use the committee to ram through IBB’s candidacy down the throat of the north. Unfortunately for him, other members quickly wizened up to his plot and nipped it in the bud before it had a chance to flower. In that sense, therefore, Ciroma’s coup flopped, big time. My people have a saying that the errand you send the hand (in a fight) is not necessarily the one it may execute. And so it was with Ciroma. His candidate lost and crashed out of the race, thanks to Ciroma. 

However, the loss of Ciroma’s candidate does not translate to a gain for the nation although it happily helped to knock off the evil genius from the stage. The whole exercise itself represents blight on the nation’s democracy. It’s blight not because 17 foolish men purported to act for and on behalf of over 75 million northerners who never asked them to act on their behalf in the first place, but because of its grave potentials to divide this country into ethnic enclaves thus severely undermining our national efforts to forge a nation out of several nationalities. The NPLF has set the nation back by several decades and it’s not exactly clear how she is going to get out of it.

And it’s blight not because political contractors have denied the good people of the north a chance to choose their leader by themselves, but because democracy itself has got a bloody nose and a black eye in the hands of Ciroma and his group of ethnic jingoists in the north. And at the end of it all an ethnic, rather than a national champion has emerged as candidate of the north. Unfortunately for him though, he is not the “Northern Star” in whose place there is no other in the northern political firmament (apology to William Shakespeare). Rather, he’s a northern star in whose place no one who desires to be the Nigerian president would wish to occupy and whose very emergence has drawn widespread criticisms and angst from all over the nation for the divisive, whimsical and totally undemocratic manner of his emergence. These are the fallouts of the Ciroma gambit.

Nigeria’s democracy has been reduced to a game of selection by a handful of 17 old men in the name of democracy. And if this does not represent terrible setback for democracy in Nigeria I don’t know what does. If this does not represent a serious threat to national unity and cohesion I don’t know does.   

In the Name of the North

BUT WHAT should be the reactions of other ethnic groups to the new challenge posed by the north. Before we proceed to answer that question, however, it must be made absolutely clear that Ciroma and his gang DO NOT represent the north but themselves in the old boys club of the so-called Northern Political Leaders Forum (NPLF). Even so it is fair to conclude that the NPLF has appropriated the name of the north and no serious attempt was made to dissociate the north from Ciroma’s political games in the name of the north. There were a few voices of protests here and there but nothing robust and sustained ever came out of the north throughout the duration of the exercise.

Evil thrives when good people keep quiet and fold their arms waiting for the bad air to just go away on its own. Evil does not go away on its own. It’s fought and chased away by good people. Wasn’t that how IBB was chased out of power at the height of his megalomania in 1993? Did the people just sit idly by waiting for him to go away on his own? No, they chased him out. As Allied Powers did to Hitler and Musolini in WWII, evil must be confronted frontally and totally until it is defeated and totally vanquished. But that was not the case in the north that simply waited on evil to go away on its own.

Many in the north have used the word “shocking” to describe the outcome of the NPLF selection process and are now seeking to dissociate the north from the whole exercise. But the question is: where were they when Ciroma and his gang were roaming the north pumping hands and doing photo-ups with selected emirs? Right from the beginning after his saber rattling, threats and intimidation failed to move President Goodluck Jonathan one inch to opt out of the 2011 presidential elections in the name of PDP zoning, this travesty was conceived and executed by Adamu Ciroma who immediately proceeded to recruit like minded ethnic bigots, who, like white supremacists, believe in the political supremacy of the north, on behalf of Atiku, IBB, Gusau, and Saraki in name of the north.

To achieve his personal desires he got all four contenders to give up their rights to the northern candidacy to the winner and he made sure they were on record as such, which could become handy to blackmail and beat into line potential backsliders amongst the participating contenders in the Ciroma Presidential Lotto. Thereafter, he unleashed a propaganda blitzkrieg in the north to sell the idea of northern gang up to wary and uncommitted northerners, which was followed up with a junket throughout major cities in the north with stops at the courts of selected traditional rulers.  

Putting its fate in the aged hands of Ciroma, the north simply went to sleep waiting for the terrible nuisance to run its course or go away on its own even as other parts of the nation were expressing their discomfiture for the novel idea of explicit northern gang up against a southerner.  And there are even many in the north particularly in traditional institutions that were, in fact, complicit in the Ciroma gambit and egged him on.

Had he and his committee encountered sufficient dissuasion, resistance and/or condemnation in parts of the north from those that matter, he would have dropped the idea long time ago and settled for other alternatives to handle the Jonathan challenge. That being the case, therefore, the entire north must accept collective responsibility for the outcome of the Ciroma coup. Coming out now as many in the north are doing to condemn Ciroma and his gang after the harm has been done is medicine after death.

And let me make it abundantly clear that this represents a huge public relations disaster for both Atiku and the north, and the north will come out of this seriously wounded and compromised politically. It has lost is political authority as a voice of reason and for democracy in its pursuit of purely sectional agenda that is threatening the unity and stability of the nation and undermining our fragile democracy.

And worse still for both Atiku and Ciroma, the biggest beneficiary of the outcome of their gambit is not Atiku but Jonathan himself, the very man whose political fortunes they’re desperately seeking to undermine! What they fail to understand is that each time Atiku opens his mouth to preach his gospel of ethnicity and sectionalism he loses a million votes to Jonathan. And each time Ciroma talks about the north ganging up to humiliate Jonathan at the polls he draws sympathies for Jonathan and adds a million votes to his box both in the PDP primaries and the general elections, because no Nigerian south of the Niger believes the north is entitled to regain power after the death of president Musa Yar’Adua and the north’s hold on power for 38 out the nation’s 50 years in existence. Nobody, but individual opportunists seeking after their individual political fortunes.

To justify his shameless gospel of sectionalism, Atiku is running around talking about the PDP zoning formula being designed to ensure that minority ethnic groups in the nation are given a chance to produce the nation’s leaders through zoning. And one has got to ask, since when did Atiku become the champion of minorities in the country? Is the man he is ganging up to fight from Ile-Ife, Zungeru, or Nsukka? The last time I checked President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is not from Sokoto, Nnewi or Abeokuta. He’s from Bayelsa the heartland of the minorities in the south/south!

And why is he suddenly more concerned about the political interests of the minorities than the minorities themselves? Can someone please help tell Atiku to save his crocodile tears for the minorities or better still save them for his own political funeral in the hands of a man from the minorities down the road?  Someone should tell him he is not fighting OBJ, his former boss this time around, but a man from the minorities who currently enjoys huge public goodwill and maintains consistency and grace in character, and personal carriage and is not running away from the FBI in the United States, and whose name does not evoke corruption, desperation and political prostitution at the highest levels of governance. He’s not fighting an ethnic bigot but a patriot and statesman whose constituency is not south/south but the entire nation. He’s fighting a new leader of the new generation who is untainted with the vile ways of the past with a revolutionary agenda for the nation.

Simply put: He’s fighting God who removed the crown from the head of a northerner from the majority group and put it in the head of a man from the once forgotten minority group. God has done his zoning for the nation. Atiku can shout zoning all he wants as his campaign slogan but it will not change God’s own zoning for the nation at this very point in time.

As the Kaduna State Governor, Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa aptly puts it in an interview with the Sun Times, 112510 edition, “God, on His own, did His own zoning at the national level and in Kaduna. I want people to please respect the zoning of God.” (bold, mine). It’s clear to me, therefore, that Atiku and Ciroma are fighting a war that has already been won and lost. And that’s in line with Atiku’s own history of fighting and losing presidential tickets throughout his political career thus far and this might be the final nail on his political coffin.

More about Atiku in the concluding parts of this piece and I must now return to the larger question as to what the Ciroma gambit holds for the nation.

If the north has a candidate it follows that the south must have a candidate. And if the south has a candidate it follows that the east must have a candidate. And if the east has a candidate it follows that the west must have a candidate. That represents the four cardinal points on Nigeria’s political compass which translates respectively into north, south, east and west. And that was precisely the position in the country right up to 1967 before the dissolution of the regions and their replacements with a 12-state structure. We’re indeed back to square one; my apology to Professor Attahiru Jega, the INEC chair. All the labors directed at nation building in the past 50 years have been put to waste by Ciroma and his gang in the north.

Now, we know that the north and the south now have their candidates, respectively in ex-VP, Abubakar Atiku and President Goodluck Jonathan. But where are the candidates of the east and west respectively in the ruling party, PDP? For now, they’re missing in action. Does that mean those regions are not members of or represented in the PDP? Or shall we take it then that both the east and the west have no candidates? If yes, as it appears to be the case, what does that tell us about the future the country in prognostic terms? What does the introduction of the idea of “northern candidate” tell us about the direction Nigeria is headed as a nation from the standpoint of where she is coming from? If the north as a whole has put forward a “northern candidate” to face a “southern candidate” at the PDP primaries, nothing stops the same north from putting forward another “northern candidate” taken from another political party, this time from confronting a “southern candidate” of the PDP in the election proper should its candidate fail to make it in the PDP primaries. What does that tell us about our direction as a nation? It tells us that regionalism has now been given a new label called zoning and it’s back in full force. The full import of this is that the nation has in a stroke of history regressed into regionalism that it had outgrown and left behind as historical relic, no thanks to Atiku, IBB, Gusau, Saraki, Ogbe et al and, of course, the grand daddy of them all, Adamu Ciroma.

Those who thought that north/south dichotomy died with the Amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914 did not reckon with the revisionists in the north and have been handed a rude awakening. One could, therefore, understand the alarm being raised by the likes of ex-governor of Lagos state, Bola Tinubu about the danger posed by the north’s reintroduction of regionalism into the nation’s body politic.

The travails of democracy in Nigeria just took a turn for the worse. The fight for elective office is now to be conducted on the basis of regional issues rather than on national issues. It is instructive in this regard that the very first salvo fired by Atiku at Jonathan was entirely based on sectional issues rather than on substantive national issues. National issues have been pushed to the back seat.

But there is a reason why Atiku is using regionalism as his campaign strategy. He has figured out that by raking up sectional sentiments rather than substantive issues he hopes thereby to get the north behind his presidential ambition. That explains why Atiku would preface every statement he makes with attacks on President Jonathan about zoning and seeking to portray him as one who is out to deny the “north’ not him Atiku, the chance to get to the nation’s presidency after President Yar’Adua’s death.

Ciroma and his co-travelers in revisionism have just executed a civilian coup against the Nigerian nation and they stand accused of treasonable felony for plotting against the fatherland egged on by the master coup plotter himself, IBB, who has, however, only succeeded in shooting himself in the foot by disqualifying himself from the race. It’s a failed coup. Not that he would have gone the distance anyway. That he was effortlessly floored by a civilian is an indication of what fate awaited him at the PDP primaries. Despite the efforts he put into it and his military coup making skills he had deployed, he still came out short exactly as predicted by this writer in a previous article. But IBB’s failure is not necessarily a victory for Atiku the northern candidate either. If anything all the candidates that submitted themselves to the Ciroma gang and indeed the entire north are failures already. And I’ll go so far as to predict for the third time that the north will lose hands down due to its revisionist brand of politics it has allowed some degenerates to practice in its name.

Atiku has come out of the Ciroma misadventure thoroughly defined as a sectionalist rather than a nationalist and statesman that he should become to become the president of Nigeria and that is a huge minus for him. There is no way a man who defined himself a candidate of the north will be made president of Nigeria. That will not happen because Nigerians are watching and they’re no fools. Thus IBB and the other failed candidates have not only shot themselves in the foot but have actually shot the north in the foot. By portraying the north as being greedy with power, they have alienated all those who might otherwise vote for a candidate from the north as distinct and separate from an out and out “northern candidate.”     

Odds against Atiku

As indicated earlier, Atiku choice is a terrible blow to the north. And I want to put it out upfront that Atiku is not going anywhere with the consensus trash. And the reasons are legion. He has been destroyed by Ciroma as a sectional bigot just like Ciroma himself, which is unfortunate for Atiku who is otherwise more cosmopolitan and nationalistic in bearing. By reducing himself or allowing himself to be reduced to an ethnic champion Atiku has shot himself in the foot. Therefore, his so-called consensus victory, rather than being a plus is actually a big minus for him because it has become a huge baggage that he cannot do away with at this late hour.

Had he emerged in a real electoral contest involving the common people of the north, his victory would have been real and unassailable. But to emerge in a secret vote by a handpicked group who represents nobody in a region brimming with elected representatives and governors cannot endear Atiku’s selection to anybody in the north except his own political associates. And that is the reason why he was tagged a “damaged” or “defective” product at the beginning of this article.

As reported in the papers northern governors in the PDP platform are not at all comfortable with his choice by the Ciroma committee, neither is the ordinary man or woman in the street in the north who would rather prefer a cleaner candidate like Buhari or Gusau to represent them in the north. Similar reactions are reported to be coming from elected representatives in the north. Northern PDP governors much as everyone else in the PDP see him as an opportunist who wants to reap from a party he had deserted and vilified for years on end and had only returned to a few months ago under controversial circumstances just to enable him fulfill his presidential ambition. Atiku is muscling through and forcing himself on the north and the nation and there is bound to be stiff resistance to his brand of politics as we are seeing already.

Like IBB, Atiku has so much political baggage on his back and shoulders heavy enough to sink any political contender for the presidency. Atiku is hated in his own state as testified to by the ugly scenes that attended his recent visit to the PDP headquarters in Adamawa state which almost snowballed into a free for all fight between his and the state governor’s supporters. It is an open secret that he’s at loggerheads with the governor of his home state of Adamawa who did everything to prevent his readmission into the party.

Added to these is his loss of goodwill across the length and breadth of the nation as a result of his unprincipled political prostitution driven by his inordinate presidential ambition which has seen to his abandonment by his erstwhile political associates now congregated in the Action Congress of Nigeria, (ACN), the revamped Action Congress (AC) to which he had founded and to which he belonged only a few months ago. The bitterness of his erstwhile political associates could be deduced from the attacks emanating from chieftains of the CAN, in particular its leader, Bola Tinubu who has taken the Ciroma exercise to the cleaners. His abandonment by his former political associates was evident during the launch of his presidential bid where a reporter was reported to have asked him why only a handful of his former associates were in attendance to which he reacted angrily with a retort.

He is the captain of an abandoned ship. And what’s more: the PDP national structure which was ceded to Atiku by his former boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo, which he used to fight the former president almost to a standstill is no longer available to him. His former gubernatorial acolytes like Igbinedion, Ibori, Kalu and the rest of the bunch have all been replaced by a different set of governors and party structures at the states that have no relationship with Atiku who had abandoned the party before they came in. Like his friend Orji Kalu from Abia State he’s headed for the political wilderness and might wind up getting expelled from the PDP as this writer long predicted.

And to top it all OBJ, his eternal nemesis, is still calling the shots in the PDP as BoT Chairman. In fact, the entire party machinery both at the nation and state levels are now heavily weighted against Atiku. The PDP ground has simply shifted from under his feet since he abandoned the party for the AC years ago. He has returned to a party where he is more or less an orphan even in his home state where he was once lord and where his word was law.

And across the nation, Atiku’s candidacy has been met with attitudes ranging from benign resignation to open hostility because people know his antecedents as a wheeler dealer and one who is after his own pocket rather than the welfare of the people. They’re only too familiar with his unflattering records of service both as a Customs Officer and as deputy to President Olusegun Obasanjo whom he betrayed and stabbed in the back. They very much understand that Atiku was fighting Obasanjo for his own political survival which he nicely dressed up as fight for democracy. When it suits him he preaches democracy but it does not he dumps democracy and goes for selection, ethnic zoning and consensus candidacy. His unstable and chameleonic character has never been lost on Nigerians. And that’s why they have at best reacted coldly to this selection in the north.  

A man who gleefully told the BBC in an interview in 2003 on the eve of the PDP primaries when it suited his political calculation that he had three options, namely; going for his own ticket for the top post, or going with Alex Ekueme ticket as his running mate, or thirdly, going with OBJ ticket as running mate when OBJ had not completed eight years in office has now shamelessly turned around to claim that the presidency was zoned to his north for eight years therefore the north must complete its eight year term before a southerner is allowed to contest the presidency in the PDP.

Such shameless volte face, gross inconsistency and crass opportunism often exhibited by Abubakar Atiku has thrown him up as a highly unprincipled character that cannot and must not be entrusted with the governance of the nation. And it has not unexpected become his undoing. All of these and many more odds, including the ever present stench of

corruption swirling around him have effectively rendered the Atiku candidacy a complete non-starter, at least in the PDP.

Jonathan’s Elastic Goodluck

 THE JONATHAN camp must have been studying and weighing different possible outcomes from the Ciroma committee and prepared for anyone that might come to pass, including possible choice of Atiku. In other words, it must have been playing war games. And from all indications it must have been rooting for Atiku in particular because he is easier for the Jonathan camp to handle than Gen. Aliyu Gusau, for instance, that could have posed greater challenge for him being fresh with an illustrious career in the military and security services and untainted with corruption. Atiku is the very opposite of what Gasau represents and stood him out from the crowd.

That must have informed the jubilation in the Jonathan camp at the announcement of Atiku as the northern candidate. And why shouldn’t it? Ciroma has done a demolition job for Jonathan. Jonathan couldn’t have wished for a better outcome. Ciroma has literarily cleared the field for him. Instead of having to face a plethora of candidates one or two of whom might have proved quite formidable at the primaries, he only has to deal with one and a weaker one at that. If all had worked hard to secure their own delegates and gone to the PDP primaries with their delegates massed up against Jonathan’s, they could decide to come together at that point in time and direct their delegates to vote for the strongest of them on the ground. And that could have been a huge challenge for Jonathan akin to what OBJ was made to face in the 2003 PDP primaries when Atiku and the governors gave him a hard time and almost succeeded in knocking him off.

But now that Jonathan’s opponents have been knocked out, many thanks to Ciroma, the drive for delegates for Atiku is no longer there and even the delegates they have secured are now free to go somewhere else since their principals are no longer in the race. The agreement of their principals to collapse their campaign structures into a super structure for the benefit of the consensus candidate is not binding on their delegates at all even if it is carried out and there is so far nothing on the ground to suggest it will be carried out. The principals themselves are no longer fired up to do battle with Jonathan as they once were because, contrary to their rhetoric of fighting for the north, they were only fighting for themselves and with their ouster from the race, their guns have been silenced or at least muted.

And what is more: though publicly putting a brave face on their defeat in the hands of the Ciroma committee, there are plenty of indications that many of them are livid with rage at the choice of Atiku and this sentiment was even publicly voiced by the deputy director general of the IBB campain, Senator Kanti Bello in a BBC interview who described Atiku’s choice as “incomprehensible.”

He couldn’t have been speaking for himself but for his principal. And Gusau is refusing to dismantle his own campaign structure, at least for now. He didn’t have to say that publicly. He was sending a coded message that he might be down but not out.

All is clearly not well in the camp of Jonathan’s opponents. Public show of solidarity with Atiku notwithstanding, it is clear that none of the defeated aspirants will work with Atiku to actualize his pipe dream of clinching the PDP ticket, not even those like IBB who have publicly declared their support for the Ciroma committee’s choice.

What did IBB mean by his “who knows, we may bounce back” remarks to his men at his campaign headquarters in Abuja?  Like Gusau’s statement he is sending out a coded message that he might be down but not out. All that public show of support is merely for public consumption and only skin deep and their parting of ways with Atiku has just begun. Atiku is fair game for all and dead meat for Jonathan. He will be taken down by his fellow northerners before Jonathan moves in for the kill.

There is no question that Ciroma has stirred the hornet’s nest and created bad blood in the north in the way and manner he handled his assignment on behalf of the candidates. The several allegations of the committee working to a predetermined answer that dogged the committee while it lasted couldn’t but engender ill feelings in the camps of the losers and their candidates’ supports in the north. And that must have informed why Atiku was muted in victory because he didn’t want to inflame pent-up passions in the camps of his northern opponents. From whatever angle one may look at it Ciroma has simply delivered the PDP ticket to Jonathan on a platter of gold! What a twist! This is classic anti-climax.

Well, it is all about God zoning the presidency to the south/south. It may well be that God has used even Ciroma and his NPLF to actualize God’s own zoning! And that sounds good to me. What more could I have asked for?

When people, including yours truly, talk about the Hand of God being upon Jonathan some atheists may scoff at and dismiss it with a wave of hand. Well, dismiss or scoff they may, but it changes nothing and does not stop the sun from shinning. And here again is one more proof of it and many more are on the way. How many more proofs do they want to believe? How many more doubting Thomases want to see where the nails drove through the hands of Jesus to the Cross before they believe in his resurrection?

 There will ever be doubting Thomases in our midst. We cannot stop people from disbelieving as it is part of their civil rights to disbelieve for, even atheists have a place in a democracy. But the wheel of the Divine Machine grinds on inexorably even in the face of unbelief and the unbelievers will wake up one day in May, 2011 to watch Jonathan’s inauguration…and they will still not believe in the divine and fight against God. Poor mortals, even unbelief has a price in a democracy and Ciroma, Atiku, IBB, Gusau, Saraki, heck, even the north itself, are the casualties of unbelief! As the Bible puts it: A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Today AREWA is a house divided against itself and in total disarray. Northerners are speaking not in one tongue but in different tongues. And if you asked me why, I would say it is natural. That’s what the loss of political power does to a people, and that’s what the south/south and south/east zones have been living with for 50 years in the Nigerian nation. And that’s what the north must live with also because as the greak Zik once said, no condition is permanent.

 Ciroma’s gambit has shaken it violently to its very foundations. Things are falling apart in the north and the center is far from holding. And when the dust is finally settled, things will never be same again in the north because God is still at work in the country unfolding His plans to liberate the conquered territory from the hands of feudalists and political contractors in the north and give every part of the country its political entitlements. Watch out for many more casualties as Hurricane God sweeps across the north to impose His own zoning formula!

 Anyone who is even minimally familiar with Nigeria’s presidential history would readily appreciate the fact that those who wanted the presidency so bad never had it and those who did not even think of it always wound up being Nigeria’s leaders. In the First Republic Alhaji Tafawa Balewa did not seek the position of Prime Minister but was sponsored by Ahmadu Bello to represent him at the center and became PM. In the Second Republic Alhaji Shehu Shagari never went out to seek the position but emerged as a dark horse in the NPN Convention to later become the first Executive president of Nigeria in 1979. And in the Third Republic Alhaji Musa Yar’Adua never indicated interest in the position and was in fact planning to retire to his teaching job in the university but nevertheless emerged as President of the nation. And here comes Dr. Goodluck Jonathan who never in his wildest dreams thought of becoming president but was propelled by fate to occupy the office.

 In all these instances, external forces propelled these leaders to occupy the coveted office. In contrast, all those who badly wanted the office never made it. Examples are Chief Obafemi Awolowo and late MKO Abiola. The same is happening today with Abubakar Atiku. That should serve as food for thought for those who care to look closely and deliberatively at Nigeria’s history and draw appropriate lessons there-from. This Atiku kite will not fly!

Franklin Otorofani, Esq. is an Attorney and Public Affairs’ Analyst

Contact: mudiagone@yahoo.com

Travails of Democracy in Nigeria (Part Two): The Looming Election Fiasco—Digital Disenfranchisement of Nigerians at the Polls

It’s unfortunate that President Jonathan allowed himself to be goaded by professional blackmailers and agitators in the Lagos Axis of Evil. What is happening today was long predicted by yours truly in a series of articles warning the government about the likely consequences of throwing away the baby with the bathwater. But the government stubbornly refused to listen to wise counsel and fell for the gongs of rabble rousers. But you know what: Sometimes you give people what they want then sit back and watch where their wisdom or foolishness takes them. So is the case with the Jonathan/Jega tango.—Franklin Otorofani

 Democracy has only succeeded in broadening and deepening the distributive channels of corruption in Nigeria, not even the crumbs are reaching down to the people.—Franklin Otorofani   

 

In his famous Gettysburg Address delivered on November 19, 1863, in honor of dead American soldiers during the bitterly fought American Civil War for the emancipation of black slaves, President Abraham Lincoln, otherwise known as the Great Emancipator and, by the way, President Barack Obama’s hometown hero, offered what has become the most famous down-to-earth definition of democracy to have issued forth from the mouth of any human being on earth; with the hardnosed, earthy Lincoln besting the mumblings and musings of egg heads in the Ivory Towers at their own game.

In that address, the late American icon put a human face on democracy. For the first time since the Greeks invented it, democracy finally had a face, and it was the human face of the masses. He not only literarily handed democracy to the American people as their bequest to be used howsoever they wanted it, but underlined the sacrifices that had been made and must be made still to secure freedoms and liberty for the oppressed and dispossessed in the American society—the blacks. The war was a war fought for human values against inhuman forces let loose then in the southern parts of the country. Below in concluding parts is Lincoln in his oratorical flourish issued forth for the history books in a beautifully long-handed calligraphy:

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.  The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

A casual observation of the above passage shows this Lincolnian model as a people-centered as opposed to an elite-centered democratic paradigm such as currently exists in Nigeria and other third world democracies— government of the people, by the people, for the people…It can be seen clearly that the people are at the heart of democracy rather than the elites. Government is about them, by them, and for them. And this holds true in Lincoln’s country. As we witnessed on November 2, 2010 in the US midterm elections, when the people want a change in government they had put in power, they get it. True, there may be lobbyists who short-change them by serving special interests to the detriment of the people, but when the people are pushed to the wall and have had enough, they move like a hurricane to sweep away the source of their angst. And no one dare touch their votes, for there is no messing with their votes by some evil politician. Their votes are their only bargaining chips and therefore must count at the polls. And therein lies their power and sovereignty in a democratic system. The people’s power in a democracy is in their votes and if their votes would not count that power is gone with the winds. No one plays games with the people’s votes in Lincoln’s country and gets away with it. All hell would be let loose.

Could we say that about Nigeria where people are herded into polling stations like cattle only for their votes to be thrown out like trash by INEC and judges sitting in their high, ornate offices, far removed from the polling booths to upturn electoral results? Or could we in all honesty claim that Nigerian democracy is for, by, and about the Nigerian people? Could any member of the political class look at Nigerians in the eyes with a straight face and say to them: “This democracy is for you and not for us”?

If a system of government is anything but of, by, and for the people themselves, it is not democracy. Such a system is anything but…which is quite ironical indeed. It is an irony of history. It’s not the elites who are now the major beneficiaries of democracy today that fought for and died for democracy. They had no investments whatsoever in democracy. When Nigerians in their millions were demonstrating against military dictatorships and bearing down on military tanks and hoses in the streets, these elites were hiding in their rat holes like the cowardly late Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Isn’t it shameful that these same cowards are now reaping where they did not sow? In point fact many of them were the very obstacles to democracy that the people fought against. The enemies of democracy who were in the military and those civilians who sold out to them are the ones now presiding over our democratic affairs today, shamelessly basking in the glory of democracy. Even IBB, the self proclaimed “Evil Genius” who murdered democracy with his military bazookas wants to have a piece of the action.

Their antecedents should perhaps help to explain why they have no regard for democratic tenets whatsoever. And that should further explain why they’re so detached from the people because there is no organic connection with the people having not been part of the people’s struggle for democracy. And that could be reason number one why they’re so insensitive to the yearnings and aspirations of the people on whose backs they rode to power, whether actually or deemed, since many of them got there on false mandates. Nevertheless, they have appropriated the fruits of the people’s struggles for themselves and themselves alone to the chagrin of the people.

Therefore, rather than being at the driver’s seat the people have been forced to occupy the back seats on the bus timidly peering through the windows to behold the glittering world that is outside their reach as ordinary passengers. But for how long shall the people remain mere passengers rather than the drivers of their very own democracy train? For how long shall the people remain on the backseats of the bus peering listlessly through its windows to behold a better world permanently outside their reach?  

In their name everyone is getting richer by the hour but them. In their name INEC officials are getting rich by manipulating election results. In their name judicial officers are getting fabulously wealthy from election petitions by upturning electoral verdicts like drunken sailors and failed candidates are being imposed on them to rule over them. Just like the same judiciary was used to upend the will of the people in 1993 by IBB’s ABN, history is now repeating itself in the way and manner the judiciary has been used to upturn electoral verdicts and substitute its own results for the people’s with no questions asked, because, hey, it is the judiciary! And the same judiciary has constituted itself into a cog in the wheel of the anti-graft war by erecting a thick wall around so-called “Politically Exposed Individuals (PEI) charged with corrupt enrichment. Their successful prosecution has become an impossible task, again thanks to the Nigerian judiciary. People are literarily getting away with murder in Nigeria in the name of the people.   

In their name political contractors in the north headed by a degenerate octogenarian named Adamu Ciroma is handpicking the man who will represent them in the north in the PDP primaries and eventually the entire country. And the disoriented Nigerian press is in their name conferring legitimacy on this obvious travesty currently unfolding in the north. It sees absolutely nothing wrong in political contractors imposing their handpicked presidential candidates on an entire region and the nation and goes about reporting the Ciroma proceedings with apparent glee. Yet the same press howls hypocritically about lack of internal democracy in the parties! What about internal democracy in the north? What about that? Northerners are not entitled to internal democracy in their very own backyards? I don’t get it.

In their name election results and judgments are declared for the highest bidders and politicians are made kings behind their backs to rule over them. In their name civil society groups are getting rich screaming their voices hoarse while prosecuting their own agenda nicely dressed up in the people’s garb. And in their name INEC is squandering a fortune in the so-called DDC machines just to put their names on a piece of machine memory that could very well disappear no sooner they turn their backs on the oversold and overrated mechanical clunkers.

It seems democracy is for a select few who are able to game the system and profit from it big time and not for them. The Lincoln model doesn’t appear applicable in Nigeria where the people have been reduced to nothing but wretched onlookers marooned to the sidelines of the field of play. They lack the sophistication and wherewithal to key into the democratic process and profit from it like the elites. Lacking such sophistication, therefore, they’re left with no choice but to entrust their destiny in the hands of the elites who, however, have different ideas about what to do with the trusteeships. Like horses, the political elites ride on their backs to their destinations and tether them to poles on street corners, hungry and thirsty while their riders feast on the inside of the citadels of democracy.

Still everything is done in their name. In their name lawmakers make themselves millionaires by pauperizing the people. Report just came out that the lawmakers are leaving town with some 318 bills pending at the House of Reps alone, which they refused and/or neglected to attend to. Yet they have bilked the nation in billions of naira for jobs not done. There is not a single lawmaker who is not leaving the National Assembly a multi-millionaire in just four years of doing nothing but self-enrichment and mindless treasury looting. And in their names judges are fast joining the billionaire class especially those who have the fortunes of sitting in election petitions that have become gravy trains in Nigeria. Democracy has only succeeded in broadening and deepening the distributive channels of corruption in Nigeria, not even the crumbs are reaching down to the people.     

Yet someone fought and died for the democracy that others are now enjoying. If the nation has any iota of respect for the dead who laid down their lives for a noble cause the celebrated words of Lincoln should be learned by rote and etched in the consciousness of every politician and every public officer in Nigeria, because many Nigerians sacrificed their lives for freedom both in the Nigerian Civil War and in the titanic struggle for democracy in Nigeria.

Those who have reduced our democracy to a public auction and organized, systemic robbery, whether they belong to political parties, electoral agencies or the judiciary, have dishonored the dead who fought and died for our freedoms and desecrated the grounds on which they were laid to rest. For them are the immortal words of President Lincoln. The nation’s commitment to democratic ethos must be full and total if only to honor those whose blood watered the grounds on which it was planted on the Nigerian soil more than fifty years ago. It’s the least we owe them so that, in Lincoln’s words, they “shall not have died in vain.”   

Why is democracy such a hassle in Nigeria? Why is a nation that had been exposed to democracy from birth having a hard time mastering the ropes? The answer lies in the disenfranchisement of the people. When the people who are the real owners of democracy are confined to the back seats of the bus democracy is bound to run into rough waters. Democracy is designed for the people to occupy the driver’s seat and if they’re not allowed to occupy that seat the democracy train is bound to derail and crash. Why is this so difficult to inculcate this elementary truth in the minds of the Nigerian political elites? Why are they so determined to keep the people on the sidelines rather than in the field of play as democracy demands? And why is the Nigerian press complicit in this diabolical venture as we see even today unfolding in the north?

It can be said without fear of contradiction that Nigeria has all it takes to become the leading light of democratic governance in the world to which other nations should be looking up to as a role model. But the reverse is the case. Every election cycle brings with it morbid fears and trepidation, all because the political elites do not want the people’s will to prevail in a supposed democracy and device all means to circumvent the will of the people. But here is the bottom line: It’s either we want democracy or we don’t. And we don’t have to make a caricature of democracy if we don’t want it.

Why is democracy always getting a bloody nose in Nigeria? A nation that had had the tree of democracy implanted on its soil more than a century ago does not seem to know its right from its left and seems to be suffering from a chronic disease of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) even in simple electoral matters like voter registers. Before each and every election the Nigerian nation is made to enroll in a democracy class with uppity instructors flown from abroad to lecture her on the rudiments of elections. And she can’t seem to make the grades. Nigeria has become the dullard nation that continues to repeat her democracy classes again and again with no end in sight and no hope of moving into a higher grade.

Time and again she has demonstrated her utter inability to produce a minimally acceptable voter register, the least of all things democratic, because she does not know her population to begin with and everything done is on guesswork. And because she does not know her population she finds herself including goats, rams, dogs, and cows in her voter register to elect her leaders in each and every poll conducted since independence. When goats, rams, dogs, and cows form a nation’s electorate what would the candidates be? Certainly not human beings, I guarantee it! Goats, rams, dogs, and cows do not vote for human beings; they vote for their kinds to lead them into their very own Promised Land. And the leadership provided by elected officials is a reflection of the source of their political authority.

Anyone who would put himself up for election and couldn’t wait to be sworn in to launch, not his development programs for his people, state, and country, but his plans to raid the public treasury with sadistic gusto, cannot be but a human-animal or sub-human species voted into power by human-animals or sub-humans of the species indicated above. Human beings should and must be seen to exhibit nobler and more refined human traits informed by rational deliberations on the common good rather than individualistic, impulsive, and animalistic tendencies that ordinarily belong to the wild.

The complete overrun and takeover of Nigeria’s electoral territory by human animals has meant the sidelining of real humans majority of which have been reduced to mere spectaculars in the game of democracy. Their names never grace the voter registers and if perchance found therein are quickly blotted out and replaced with goats, rams, dogs, and cows. And when their names are not blotted out of the register, their votes are incinerated like some putrid trash heaps pilled up at famous Mile 12 Market in Lagos state.

And that’s why the nation has no credible voter register till date since her independence 50 years ago. And that’s why the nation must cough out N78bn to get one when school children are taking classes under Iroko and Mango trees and the nation’s hospitals turned into graveyards, just to get real humans into a new voter register and take out the goats, rams, dogs and cows that populate the one we have. And that’s why the nation’s sacred constitution must be amended every month to accommodate the whims and caprices of a seemingly eccentric electoral helmsman. And that’s why the nation does not know whether there will be a general election come 2011 or if there will, the date of the elections, thus putting the nation in a state of suspended animation and frightful auguries.

And you might want to ask: where is the guarantee that the new voter register to be delivered with the so-called Direct Data Capture (DDC) machines will deliver as promised? Where is the guarantee that a people who could not operate manually will be able to operate mechanically and technologically. I happen to watch a documentary on PBS Channel 13 where a Princeton University computer professor demonstrated how voting machines could easily be programmed to manipulate results in an election by simply inserting a rogue chip that could grab votes from one candidate and dump them in another candidate’s column and many other forms of electronic rigging, which in the absence of paper trail, could cause permanent and irreparable damage to electoral integrity. In one of such demonstrations the machine produced more votes than the entire population of the constituency concerned. And when the vendor of the machines whose name I will not mention here was confronted it merely shrugged off the results as unlikely in real world situation. Unlikely? Give me a break!  What else could the vendor have said, anyway? It got its money and the people would have to clean up after its trash machines.

Anyone who is remotely acquainted with information technology knows that it is far easier to rig elections through machines than through humans, and even more so in a deeply ingrained election rigging culture as Nigeria’s. There is absolutely no reason to hope that electronic devices will reduce vote rigging in Nigerian elections because it has not done so even in developed nations such as the United States, for example, that is the home and birthplace of information technologies much less in a third world nation like Nigeria that is still green on information technologies where vote rigging is second nature.  

Want some hard evidence? You got it! Bruce Schneier in his article titled: Schneier on Security: The Problem with Electronic Voting Machines cited many instances where voting machines did the rigging for politicians behind their backs rather than humans, this time around. And here he goes:

“In Fairfax County, VA, in 2003, a programming error in the electronic voting machines caused them to mysteriously subtract 100 votes from one particular candidates’ (sic) totals.

In San Bernardino County, CA in 2001, a programming error caused the computer to look for votes in the wrong portion of the ballot in 33 local elections, which meant that no votes registered on those ballots for that election. A recount was done by hand.

In Volusia County, FL in 2000, an electronic voting machine gave Al Gore a final vote count of negative 16,022 votes.

The 2003 election in Boone County, IA, had the electronic vote-counting equipment showing that more than 140,000 votes had been cast in the Nov. 4 municipal elections. The county has only 50,000 residents and less than half of them were eligible to vote in this election.”

Just in case you want to have an idea about individual voter experience with voting machines in the US, here is one taken from a report in the “Sun Journal” Voter reports problem with ballot machine | machine, screen, voter featuring a frustrated voter named Sam Laughinghouse of New Bern, who said he pushed the button to vote Republican in all races, but the voting machine screen displayed a ballot with all Democrats checked. He cleared the screen and tried again with the same result, he said. Then he asked for and received help from election staff.

“They pushed it twice and the same thing happened,” Laughinghouse said. “That was four times in a row. The fifth time they pushed it and the Republicans came up and I voted.”

“If you’re in a hurry, you may just push the button and not notice it,” he said.

Laughinghouse experience was replicated all over the county and indeed all over the country. As reported in Voting machine problems already | WAVY.com | Virginia Beach, Va. “An elderly woman said she tried to cast an absentee ballot for a Democratic candidate, but the Republican candidate’s name kept popping up.” And here is another report from Wired.Com: Report: Voting Machine Errors Highlight Urgent Need for U.S …

“In 2002, election officials in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, discovered they’d also been kept in the dark about a known issue with their machines, after their voting system appeared to drop some 12,000 ballots.

“Although 48,000 people had cast ballots, tabulation software for touchscreen machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems recorded no more than 36,000 votes in any race, including the governor’s race. Sequoia admitted it was a software problem and disclosed that officials in a Nevada county had experienced the same issue weeks before the election, and received a patch to fix it — a patch the company neglected to install on the system in New Mexico. In fact, Sequoia had even failed to inform its employees in New Mexico that a problem occurred with the system in another state.”

The above incidents represent a sampling of the problems associated with voting machines in the US. What is true of voting machines is equally true of electronic voter registers, because they’re both based on computer programs. I could be wrong, but something tells me those machines will provide solid business opportunities for both Nigerian and global hackers whose services will be much sought after by crooked Nigerian politicians.

While, to the best of my knowledge and information, no one has been accused of deliberate attempts to rig elections through the manipulation of these machines in the US, the same cannot be said in the case of Nigeria, where rigging is the order of the day. In an environment where judgments in election petitions are known by so-called victorious parties before they’re delivered in the open to fulfill the law, it would be naïve to expect better outcomes with technological deployments in the conduct of elections. In all probability, therefore vote rigging at source is a foregone conclusion. Rigging will simply go digital in Nigeria from manual and there is nothing Professor Attahiru Jega can do about it! INEC has neither the technological wherewithal nor the physical control and management of these machines to ensure both their functionality and integrity of their inputs and outputs. 

And what’s more: whatever security measures put in place by INEC are not foolproof and can never be 100% foolproof when it comes to technology. If the mere award of contracts for these machines have presented such a huge challenge for INEC how much more so will be their actual operation and management!  INEC should have known better that electronic voter registers offer no guarantees against rigging and that realization should have advised an alternative approach. And the government and political parties sold on this idea should have done due diligence to verify its workability and integrity by visiting and learning from other nations that have used them rather than taking it all hook, line, and sinker. It’s foolish to dive right into a river just because others have done so without first learning of the dangers that might be lurking right below the surface.

How much due diligence did the National Assembly and the Federal Government undertake before approving the whopping N78bn voted for the DDC machines? How many technology experts versed in the inner workings of these machines were called to testify at the public hearings at the National Assembly? My guess is none! In fact both the Federal Government and the National Assembly were browbeaten, intimidated, and indeed blackmailed into rushing the approval for the DDC machines within days without asking critical and probing questions to satisfy themselves on the workings of the machines.

And it is extremely doubtful if the technology challenged politicians in the political parties that held meetings with Jega and INEC officials were in any position to do any better than the National Assembly itself. They simply went there to chorus, “Ayes!” to Jega’s infinite demands for funds and time. In this tense climate of hysteria deliberately generated by Jega, therefore, no meaningful due diligence could be expected to have been carried out by both organs of government and the political parties whose electoral fortunes are at stake here.

When everything is left in the hands of Jega to do as he pleases with no questions asked and answered to the satisfaction of all relevant stakeholders including Nigerians themselves, that is a formula for avoidable shipwreck down the path in the rough and turbulent electoral sea that is Nigeria We Hail Thee. The Nigerian government may have abdicated its oversight responsibility when it comes to INEC affairs. It seems everyone in a position to ask questions is maintaining hands off position with respect to INEC. Don’t get me wrong. Jega might mean well for the elections by going for the DDC machines but as they say, the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions.

If the former INEC chair Professor Maurice Iwu had requested one tenth of what Jega requested and received with alacrity for producing a Voter Register by DDC machines that would soon break down and abandoned as indeed happened during Iwu’s tenure in 2007, the Lagos “Axis of Evil” press would have screamed blue murder and asked for his head to be delivered to it on golden plate. And Nigerians themselves would have been feasting on the anti-Iwu diatribes mounted by the totally biased Lagos press. Yet it is crystal clear even to the most anti-Iwu neurotic that had the former INEC been spruced up and rejuvenated, the preparations for the 2011 election would have advanced full throttle to their final stages by now, and we would not be running into the dead end the nation has been forced into today.  

It’s unfortunate that President Jonathan allowed himself to be goaded by professional blackmailers and agitators in the Lagos Axis of Evil. What is happening today was long predicted by yours truly in a series of articles warning the government about the likely consequences of throwing away the baby with the bathwater. But the government stubbornly refused to listen to wise counsel and fell for the gongs of rabble rousers. But you know what: Sometimes you give people what they want then sit back and watch where their wisdom or foolishness takes them. So is the case with the Jonathan/Jega tango.    

Jega is a rookie electoral umpire and new to INEC with steep learning curve to handle. He has reversed himself several times including the pledge not to ask for assistance from state governors. He’s new to the world of politics and might not know how to handle politicians. He’s indeed a tabula rasa when it comes to INEC affairs and while his freshness might be a breath of fresh air it equally brings with it inexperience and avoidable errors that a more experienced hand might be better able to handle. And such inexperience is compounded by his insistence on the introduction of sophisticated technology that the nation is not prepared for at this time and he’s not even prepared for either as we have seen with the severally bungled contract awards for the DDC machines. A project of this magnitude requires careful planning and execution including test runs and pilot projects in selected areas to validate its workability on the field. Jega has not carried the people along in this project before committing the people to it behind their backs.

The 2011 general elections are just too important to be left in the hands of Jega and Jega alone. Short of tele-guiding the electoral agency relevant organs of government must satisfy themselves through their oversight functions about the integrity of the machines being brought in by INEC and subject them to independent analysis with the best technology experts from anywhere in the world. In particular, the political parties and the Nigerian public in general must be informed in truth and the whole truth about the workability and integrity of these machines so that their votes would not be shortchanged through some dysfunctional mechanical contraption or some digital manipulation by unscrupulous elements planted in INEC to cause electoral mayhem. If INEC is going digital, the National Assembly’s INEC oversight committees must equally go digital by retaining the services of technology consultants and so must the political parties as well. It’s not enough to just dole out money to buy machines. It is equally their responsibility to make certain they’re the right machines that will deliver the goods as promised and expected without mechanical hitches. And this they can do by subjecting those machines to relevant scrutiny during their test runs including their security profiles, which is the crux of the matter.     

Has the Nigerian factor been factored into the designs of these machines? How rugged are they in the extremely demanding Nigerian environment? What are their security features and how robust and foolproof are they? We read of automobile companies advertising their car model as “built for Nigerian roads!” Are these machines “built for Nigerian politicians”? In other words, are they built with the infinitely crooked Nigerian politician in mind?

I would be surprised if desperate Nigerian politicians are not already one step ahead of INEC in their rigging schemes, because, for them losing elections is simply not an option! Elections are meant to be won in Nigeria, not lost. Those being trained on the use of the machines had better be quarantined right from when the machines arrive in Nigeria, otherwise, forget it!

Every public officer in Nigeria is looking for shortcuts to wealth by hook and crook, and INEC officials are no exceptions. This should be a wake-up call for the stakeholders who have simply gone to sleep after doling out huge sums to INEC for the machines. They’re seemingly concerned with electoral timetable only that INEC has forced on them seemingly to keep them perpetually distracted from carrying out their oversight functions on INEC.   

Here is my candid advice: If the nation wants to go digital it should first of all conduct a pilot project to test the functionality and integrity of the technology deployed before going full scale nationwide. That is the sensible and prudent thing to do and it is not too late to dial back to where Iwu left without having a sanctimonious, better-than-thou attitude. Huge egos must give way for the common good. It’s the nation’s very survival that’s at stake here, not personal egos or pathological anti-Iwu rants that’s the issue here. To start a general election with an unknown and untested technology within such a short a timeframe and in a nation called Nigeria is an open invitation to disaster that they nation may find hard to recover from in the short run. We are hurtling down a blind alleyway blindfolded. Like a lamb the nation is gradually being led down the hell hole by the haughty high priests at INEC.

As of today, the greatest threat to the citizen’s franchise is the electronic register, which might turn out to be veritable super rigging machines. Whatever goes wrong at the level of voter register is bound to doom the elections ab-initio. And if experience in the US and other nation is anything to go by it is not difficult to imagine that wholesale disenfranchisement of Nigerian voters is already afoot if those machines make their way into the country for the purposes of the 2011 elections.  We saw what happened during Iwu’s tenure when many of those machines tanked and INEC was forced to indulge in self-help to mitigate the damage at the most critical of times. With the belated award of DDC machines contracts which are yet to be delivered at this moment in time, it will be a miracle if all goes well with those machines and the elections proper. A disastrous electoral shipwreck might not be altogether far away from us as our election ship is currently being tossed about rudderless by the waves in high seas with its clueless captain.   

This is not an attempt at scaremongering, but a timely warning for the nation to be on guard before disaster is forced upon her by INEC. There is absolutely no reason why the Voter Register inherited from Iwu cannot be dusted up, sanitized, and updated to remove the names of animals it might contain and add to it new voters who have come of age since the last elections. After all, people would be offered the opportunity to check their names before the final copies are made out and given to the parties to assure their integrity. The idea of throwing away the baby with the bathwater is not only silly but a costly proposition for the nation and may well doom the forthcoming elections. The bitter truth is that the nation is not ripe for this digital adventure. But the nation could get there one step at a time.

It is one thing for unscrupulous politicians to collude with INEC officials to rig elections at the polls. It is one thing for the judges to sit in elevated platforms to rig results for favored election petitioners in the courtrooms, but it’s quite a different thing to add yet another layer of rigging to polls in Nigeria through electronic voter registers and voting machines with, at best, questionable functionality and integrity and, at worst, downright fraudulent outcomes. The constitutional logjam apart, the DDC machines is not the way to go, at least for now. Jega should step down from his high horse now and change course midstream before it is too late, because the damage to the nation could be monumental, and quite frankly, irreversible. “I told you so?” That’s not one of my favorite lines and I hate for it to be forced on me.           

Franklin Otorofani, Esq. is an Attorney and Public Affairs’ Analyst. He can be reached at mudiagaone@yahoo.com

Travails of Democracy in Nigeria (Part (1)): Annual Festival of Judicial Coronations of Failed Candidates at the Polls

These two examples of judicial corruption must not be allowed to happen or re-occur in the new Tribunals for the 2007 Elections.—late legal luminary, Chief Gani Fawehinmi

I have never been and will never be an apostle and advocate of using the judiciary to upturn the verdict of the people delivered in an election however flawed the election may have been for the simple fact that the judiciary itself is not always an unbiased umpire in electoral disputes and it is not in its place to determine winners or losers of an election. That role properly belongs to the people and the people only, not judges. All the judiciary can do in cases of substantial irregularity is to remit the matter back to the people themselves to determine. The people must have the final say at all times.—Franklin Otorofani, Esq.

The status quo amounts to a systemic disenfranchisement of the people and judicial ambush of our democracy that has led to judicial coronation of failed candidates. It is, therefore, time to shut down this judicial mill that is producing governors for the states.—Franklin Otorofani, Esq.

Quite often we are confronted with the misleading conception of Nigeria as a “young democracy” that ought to be handled with care, because it is still fragile like a thin glass that could be shattered into smithereens if mishandled by its present caretakers on behalf of the Nigerian people.

These fears are largely informed by Nigeria’s previous failures at instituting an enduring democratic order resulting in frequent military takeovers that had set the nation backward by several decades. Therefore, the political elites are ever so fearful of the nation going down that route again having being the biggest losers in military rule. As a result of such inherent fears propagated by the political class, even minor political disagreements which are the usual staples of democracy are seen through a negative prism as “destabilizing” to the nation and “overheating the polity.” Nigerians ought to have outgrown such fears by now had democracy been allowed to grow.

Nigeria is a young democracy? Nothing could be farther from the truth. Emphatically, Nigeria is NOT a young democracy. Fragile, yes, but young it’s not. While it is true that younger generations of Nigeria might not have tasted democracy before now having been born and nurtured in an environment of brutal military dictatorships, which in turn militarized the civil polity, Nigeria’s democratic experience predated her independence in 1960, the 50^th anniversary of which was celebrated on October 1, 2010.

It is, therefore, correct to state that Nigeria was born in, nurtured and weaned on a diet of democracy. Nigeria’s founding fathers such as Herbert Macaulay, H.O. Davis, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, Tafawa Balewa, Anthony Enahoro, Michael Okpara and the political titans of the pre and post independence era who graced and bestrode Nigeria’s political landscapes like colossuses, were all products of democracy. They were in no way exposed to the rapacious military dictatorships, which began their perilous sojourn in politics in 1966 and became the lots of the present generations of Nigerians. In other words, they were all democrats who mastered the art of leadership under the pupilage of colonial masters.

In reality, therefore, democracy in Nigeria is much older than Nigeria itself and goes way back to colonial rule although its practice was guided and minimalist at the beginnings and incremental with the various constitutional dispensations right from the Clifford Constitution in 1922 that ended with the Independence Constitution of 1960.

What this brief historical excursion does not tell us, however, is that Nigeria’s democracy has been a chronically sick paraplegic having suffered serious congenital defects at birth that have prevented the nation from growing up to maturity and take her place in the global democratic community. And what’s more, these defects have failed to respond to the periodic and episodic surgical remedies that have been administered on them by military surgeons who knew little about democracy to begin with. It’s no surprise, therefore, that all the remedies prescribed by the military have failed to cure these defects and have, in fact, made them worse.

While it is beyond the scope of this essay to examine the root causes of these defects, however, their outward symptoms have generally revealed themselves in the unbridled electoral malpractices that seem to belie the nation’s claim to a democratic state. Every Nigerian election has witnessed, with the singular exception of the 1993 election that would have brought the late Chief MKO Abiola to power but for its mindless annulment by the military, allegations of wholesale rigging and other forms of serious electoral malpractices to the extent that no chief electoral officer has survived any election in office, the latest being Professor Maurice Iwu.

This endemic state of affairs has spawned what may appropriately be described as a uniquely Nigerian electoral litigation industry with the judiciary rather than the electorate dictating the winners and losers of political contests and filling states’ executive mansions with their favorite candidates by judicial fiats that are not appealable and questioned by none. Yet no one seems to care about examining the issue as to whether the judiciary has been above board in its duties or has merely taken over the rigging process from where the electoral agencies left off. And this is the case even in the face of an avalanche of allegations of judicial corruption regarding election petitions pending at the courts and tribunals.  

The popular media and the general public are complicit; opposition politicians who are the instigators and beneficiaries of this judicial anomie are rapturous; the judiciary regards it as veritable gold mine; labor unions and the nation’s intelligentsia have acquiesced in it, including professional bodies like the NBA whose senior members are feeding fat from it as their share of the so-called democracy dividends; and pretty much everyone has come to accept it as a permanent feature of our democracy, but it’s time someone stood up to raise his voice against this blatant rape on democracy through the instrumentality of the nation’s judiciary, for the cause of justice is not being served. Judicial coronation of failed electoral candidates by corrupt and/or partisan judicial officers is no more acceptable than the results of rigged elections by crooked politicians with or without the connivance of electoral officers. Electoral officers might be corrupt but who says judicial officers are incorruptible angels in Nigeria? If anything, they are worse than electoral officers.

I have never been and will never be an apostle and advocate of using the judiciary to upturn the verdict of the people delivered in an election however flawed the election may have been for the simple fact that the judiciary itself is not always an unbiased umpire in electoral disputes and it is not in its place to determine the winners and losers of an election. That role properly belongs to the people and the people only, not judges. All the judiciary can do in cases of substantial irregularity is to remit the matter back to the people themselves to determine. The people must have the final say at all times. Elections are not held in courtrooms but at polling stations with the people making their choices. At no time should the people be short circuited.

When in 2000 the largely Republican Party appointed and unabashedly ideologically partisan US Supreme Court was asked to step into the Bush/Gore electoral debacle, the court’s verdict was a foregone conclusion even before the case was heard. Gore and Democrats already knew that the battle had been lost at that point and Bush and his Republican party had started preparing for his coronation ceremony the moment the suit landed on the late Chief Justice Reinquist’s (a Republican appointee) desk at the US Supreme Court to constitute a panel to hear the petition.

For those who don’t know it the US Supreme Court is an ideologically conflicted judicial institution the composition of which is a political battle between the Republican and Democratic parties. And that’s why confirmation hearings of judicial appointments to the US Supreme Court are fierce, and contentious because it is about political control of the court and its decisions are in the main a reflection of this political control depending on who is sitting on which cases.

It would be recalled that Al-Gore won the popular votes in the 2000 US presidential election by a wide margin but it turned on the disputed Florida votes for both candidates to clinch the state of Florida for the purpose of the Electoral College that actually determines the winner rather than the popular votes. While Al-Gore and the Democrats had the popular votes Bush and Republicans had the US Supreme Court on their side and did everything to ensure that the matter wound up in the court. And as they say the rest is history. GW Bush was crowned King of the United States, thanks to the Supreme Court!

Fast forward: Back in Nigeria, similar judicial coronations have become annual festivals in such states like Rivers, Edo, Ondo, and most recently, Ekiti, with others like Sokoto and Osun waiting in the wings to take their turns. And in all of these cases the so-called winners always managed to know the verdicts of the courts well ahead of time just like the Republicans in the United States! And this has seriously mutilated the nation’s electoral calendar with each affected state now having different gubernatorial election date from the rest of the country thus further complicating the work of the already overburdened national electoral agency. This cannot be considered healthy by any stretch of the imagination. It’s totally unhealthy.

However, while the case of the US Supreme Court partisan disposition is purely ideological in character and no financial inducement can even be remotely suggested, the case of the Nigerian judiciary is not altogether free of such suggestions. In fact, allegations of financial inducements have become the staple in judicial pronouncements in Nigeria. And no tier of the federal judicial establishment is more engrossed in this mess than the Court of Appeal, which, not co-incidentally, has the final say in gubernatorial petition matters. To invest one court with such powers like the Nigerian customs and excise authority to determine who becomes governor of a state in a country like Nigeria is an open invitation to corruption. And this realization must have informed the amendment to the Electoral Act to provide for appeals to the Supreme Court from the Court of Appeal making it more difficult for the lower courts to indulge in inappropriate conduct bordering on corruption knowing that their judgments will be reviewed by superior courts down the road.    

For now, however, the Court of Appeal is the Alpha and Omega of election petitions particularly governorship elections and has been dogged with allegations of corruption in almost all cases going through its judicial portals. While the allegations are legion the cases of Charles Solubo Vs Andy Mba; Governor of Sokoto state Aliyu Magatarkada Wamakko of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Democratic Peoples Party’s (DPP) candidate, Alhaji Maigari Dingyadi; and  Fayemi Vs Oni have all raised the specter of corrupt inducements to pervert the course of justice. And in the case of Sokoto state, the National Judicial Commission (NJC) has, in fact, been activated to deal with the allegations of judicial impropriety on the part of the Court of Appeal.

While allegations are not prima facie proofs of their substances, the fact that the Nigerian judiciary is operating in an environment festering with unbridled corruption where desperate politicians go to great lengths to corrupt public functionaries in order to secure undue advantages for themselves, few Nigerians would vouch for the integrity of Nigerian judiciary even if many might nevertheless welcome the judicial outcomes to underline their hatred for the ruling party, PDP. And that may help to explain why the judiciary is viciously attacked when it delivers judgments that are favorable to the ruling party and lauded to high heavens when its verdicts go in the opposite direction. However, this judicial pendulum is in the main powered by corruption. Corruption is the fuel powering the judicial machine.

There is no question that many of the judgments awarding victories to failed candidates at the tribunals and courts in the land were procured through corrupt means. And if anyone is in doubt I would recommend such to go read this report by Bribery scandal rocks election tribunals | NigerianMuse. These bribery scandals have not been well documented but they’re legion. But here are two that were documented by the late legal luminary, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, in a Guardian article May 02, 2007.

Lamenting the corrupt disposition of judges in electoral adjudication the late legal icon penned the following words in the article from which I have taken liberty of the reader to quote extensively due to its characteristically lucid and detailed presentation:

“Unfortunately, the downright dishonesty of some of the Judges who were involved in 2003 Election Tribunals gave the Nigerian people much worry. I will refer to two instances: The first was the Anambra South Senatorial Election Tribunal, which looked into the grievances of a contestant Prince Nicholas Ukachukwu against the election of Dr. Ugochukwu Uba. The Tribunal found for Prince Nicholas Ukachukwu against Dr. Ugochukwu Uba. Dr. Uba appealed to the Court of Appeal. Meanwhile, he had been sworn in as a Senator. The matter came before the Court of Appeal and the Court of Appeal of three Justices, Hon. Justice Okwuchukwu Opene, Hon. Justice David Adedoyin Adeniji and Hon. Justice Kumai Bayang Akaahs disagreed among themselves.

Two of the Justices Hon. Justice Okwuchukwu Opene and Hon. Justice David Adedoyin Adeniji gave judgment to Dr. Ugochukwu Uba and the third Justice, Hon. Justice Kumai Bayang Akaahs, the youngest of them disagreed and dissented and gave judgment to Prince Nicholas Ukachukwu. After the appeal, the National Judicial Council (NJC) received petitions that two of the three Justices took bribe. The National Judicial Council established under Section 153 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 set up a committee headed by late Justice Kolawole a retired Justice of the Court of Appeal. After a thorough investigation by the Committee it was found that Justice Okwuchukwu Opene who presided at the Court of Appeal took a bribe of N15,000,000.00 (Fifteen million Naira) and Justice David Adedoyin Adeniji took a bribe of N12,000,000.00 (Twelve million Naira) and three unascertained Ghana-must-Go bags and that Justice Kumai Bayang Akaahs the youngest of them refused to take bribe. He rejected corruption and did the Judiciary proud.

Consequently, the National Judicial Council (NJC) recommended to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria that these two justices, Hon. Justice Okwuchukwu Opene and Hon. Justice David Adedoyin Adeniji were guilty of corruption and abuse of office and that they should be sacked as Justices of the Court of Appeal. On the 3rd of May, 2005, the President acting under Section 292 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, dismissed those two Justices from the Judicial Bench of Nigeria.

The Second instance was the Akwa Ibom State Governorship Election Tribunal set up after the 2003 Governorship Election. There were five members of the Tribunal. Whilst the proceedings were still pending in the Tribunal, on the 10th July, 2003 the petitioner petitioned the Chief Justice of Nigeria who is the Chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC) complaining that four of the five members of the Tribunal i.e. the Chairman, Hon. Justice M. M. Adamu (a Lady), Hon. Justice D. T. Ahura, Hon. Justice A. M. Elelegwa and Chief Magistrate O. J. Isede had been compromised with large sums of money as bribe by the Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Obong Victor Attah.

The National Judicial Council (NJC) investigated the complaints through a committee set up for that purpose and found that the allegations were true and that the Chairman of the Election Tribunal and three other members received bribes during the sitting. They were accordingly dismissed from the judicial Bench. One Judge who was not a member of the Tribunal, Hon. Justice C.P.N. Senlong of the Federal High Court was also dismissed for corruption and abuse of office because he was found to have associated with one of the contestants in a corrupt manner. These two examples of judicial corruption must not be allowed to happen or re-occur in the new Tribunals for the 2007 Elections”.

What more evidence does anyone need to convince him that all that glitters in the judiciary is not gold? On the contrary it could be said that much of what goes on at the election tribunals in Nigeria is more dross than gold. There is not a single Nigerian that remotely believes in the impartiality and incorruptibility of the Nigerian judiciary when it comes to election petitions. Yet most Nigerians do not seem to take this into account when reacting to judicial pronouncements arising from election petitions and are quick to applaud these questionable verdicts, particularly when they go against the PDP because the press has shut the dross out of public scrutiny and perforce out of public consciousness. There is an inherent contradiction in a people who otherwise have no faith in their public institutions, including the judiciary turning around to applaud the same judiciary when its verdicts go in a certain way and denounce it when its verdicts go in another way.

How does one account for this seeming disconnect. The answer lies in the general dislike for the ruling PDP as a party not necessarily its leaders, and the sympathetic disposition of the masses to the plight of opposition parties who do not seem to make any electoral headway, which has been blamed on the PDP. It’s like they’re compensating assumed victims of electoral robberies. But should that be an excuse for allowing the judiciary to rig elections in favor of failed candidates in the opposition just to give the PDP a bloody nose as it is alleged to have done to opposition parties at the polls? Even if the allegations against the PDP are true, must two wrongs make a right? This writer is predicting a time when the searchlight will be beamed on the judiciary as democracy takes firmer roots and all the rot will be exposed in due course no matter how long it might take to get there. Chief Gani Fawehimni might be gone, but another Gani will rise up to take the battle to the judiciary as he had done in the above article and at other forums. And Gani was no friend of the ruling PDP party. In fact, he carpeted the PDP before descending on the judiciary in opening parts of the article.

The late chief says these two incidences must not be allowed to re-occur in the new tribunals. Well with due respect the chief knew too well that that was a mere wishful thinking in a country like Nigeria ranked among the most corrupt nations in the world. He must be churning in his grave at the dimensions bribery has taken in the Nigerian judiciary. Should I need to add that these corrupt tendencies have assumed even more frightening dimensions since the chief passed on about a year ago with bribery allegations flying in air like nocturnal bats? Bribery is at the heart of the judicial verdicts and the so-called winners know it because they’re privy to it.

It is, therefore, fallacious and denial of reality for anyone to imagine that the judiciary is merely giving expression to the will of the people expressed at the polls by upturning results of elections that do not reflect the will of the people, but in fact, substituting its will for the will of the people through corrupt inducements that are not easily amenable to public scrutiny. And it is much easier for a judge to rig a case than for an INEC official to rig an election. By its very nature, corruption is shrouded in secrecy. However the perpetrators easily give themselves away by their very conduct. For instance when a party to a petition begins to make preparations for his coronation by printing posters and the like ahead of the delivery of judgment is a tell tale sign that money might have changed hands. When a judge takes more than passing interest in the conduct of a case before him by throwing himself into the arena and exhibiting hostile or patronizing attitude toward either of the parties it is a tell tale sign that money might have changed hands. There are lots of tell tale signs that give judges away for those trained in judicial proceedings to appropriately decipher and decode, even if by themselves, might not offer conclusive proof of corrupt inducements. This code of secrecy is what is shielding judicial officers from getting caught in the act unless special investigation is empanelled by the National Judicial Council or some other ad hoc body.   

Although modern legislations have achieved a high degree of linguistic precision, law remains basically an ass that can be easily manipulated by corrupt and unscrupulous judges to arrive at a pre-determined destination without the judges getting caught in the process like corrupt INEC officials. This is because judicial officers are invested with a lot of discretionary powers the exercise of which could tilt the scales of justice one way or another without the judges getting caught. And judges have been exploiting this power from time immemorial to attain pre-determined ends in favor of litigants. This is one of the reasons for instituting the appellate system. When judges know that their judgments are subject to judicial review by higher courts they think twice before manipulating cases before them to achieve particular ends. This is what has been missing in the gubernatorial petitions. The Court of Appeals has been invested with final powers rather than the Supreme Court.

With respect to election petitions in Nigeria, judicial verdicts are simply going to the highest bidders. With huge financial inducements to rig cases before them, Nigerian judicial officers handling election petitions now qualify to be inducted into the inner sanctum of the super rich overnight. Being a member of an election tribunal is now the surest and fastest means to unearned wealth and this should be as troubling as the antics of desperate politicians who rig elections to get to power. Judicial officers have become billionaires. It is rigging by other means. The nation has simply substituted one form of rigging with another. Rigging has simply shifted from the polling stations to the judicial stations. And that’s where it is happening long after elections have been lost and won at the polling stations and the electorate itself has forgotten about the elections.

It’s a shame that no one, including the press, has been able to unearth this evil and bring to shame and public odium the judicial officers involved. Allegations of corruption are rife in the air, but the press has never followed through to tackle the phenomenon. The same is true of civil society groups. Both look the other way when these allegations are made. They’re merely reported and forgotten. It would appear that all the press and the civil society groups are concerned with is a PDP governor or lawmaker being removed from office by a tribunal or Court of Appeal and, hurrah!, they go— no questions asked.

Such gross indifference on the one hand and double standards on the other is injurious to our democracy and unbecoming of a national press and those who claim to be the conscience of the nation. Looking the other way in the face of allegation of corruption when favored parties are involved is an abdication of social responsibility and an example of how not to be the conscience of the nation. This is not how to perfect the electoral process of which the judiciary is part and parcel so far as it relates to electoral dispute resolution.

That being the indisputable reality in the chronically corrupt Nigerian system as a whole, it is little surprise then that those who either genuinely lost elections or are otherwise rigged out of their victories head for the tribunals to do their own rigging their own way and get to power through the back door. Therefore, far from celebrating the election verdicts being delivered by the judiciary with reckless abandon, Nigerians should pause and reassess their implications on our democracy. And if they do, they may very well discover that the nation has simply removed the poisonous ring from its finger and placed it on its toe because the judiciary is just as corrupt as the politicians and INEC officials. As such, whatever judgment emanating from it, whether it’s in favor of the ruling party or the opposition is already tainted with the tar of bribery and corruption. And it couldn’t have been otherwise.   

It may well be that the ruling PDP had, in fact, employed ignoble and dishonorable means to get to power through electoral malpractices and as such deserves to lose some of the elected positions. But so also are the other political parties none of which should feign electoral piety. Nigeria’s entire political class is nurtured in the culture of election rigging and other forms of electoral malpractices. And let the politician without sin be the first to cast the stone! There is hardly any elected official in power today in Nigeria whether in the ruling party or in the opposition parties whose election did not benefit from rigging one way or another.

It’s not a PDP disease alone that rigs election because members of the opposition parties were once PDP members who were either expelled or were marginalized. Both the ruling party and the opposition parties who cry the most about rigging are composed of the same politicians who know no other means of getting to power except through vote rigging and electoral brigandage and are therefore equally guilty of the same vice. It, therefore, smacks of crass partisanship to single out one party for vilification while representing the others as somehow clean. No, they’re not and they know it. And this is not an attempt to sanitize the PDP but to present the realities on the ground in as fair and objective a manner as the issue deserves if we’re serious about cleansing the Augean stable and make our democracy more perfect and acceptable than the caricature it has become on all fronts. The entire ruling class has to clean up its acts, and while the PDP has a greater responsibility for doing so because it is the ruling party, the opposition parties are by no means exempted from doing the same.

Thus while partisan hack writers would be quick to jump on the ruling party, misrepresenting and disingenuously pass off the opposition parties as paragons of democracy, any objective observer and analyst understands too well that the cancer of electoral malpractices can be found in the body tissues of the ruling as well as the opposition parties in different measures relative to their sizes and areas of influence and none is even remotely free of the ailment. And this is a statement of fact not conjecture, opinion, or guesswork.

Therefore, I’m extremely reluctant to single out one party for vilification as all of them are in the rigging business according to their means and reach. This is why we must be extremely careful in singling out one party for attacks even if it is the ruling party because the opposition parties are no better as could be seen from the results of local government elections conducted by state controlled States Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs). Rigging is rigging whether it is done at the center or at local levels.

Now, this raises the question as to what happens if a candidate feels strongly about the results of an election. Should the candidate not seek justice through the judiciary as provided for under the laws and the constitution? Of course, the answer is yes, by all means. And the judiciary could address the complaint by either upholding or upturning the electoral results, but no more. As earlier indicated, it is not the business of the courts to declare winners of electoral contests but to remit the cases back to the people for their final say. And it has done just that admirably in quite a few cases, such as for example, in Ekiti, Sokoto, Anambra, and now Delta states where the people themselves were (are) given the chance to either revalidate the their choice or repudiate the results declared by INEC. This puts the people themselves in the position of true kingmakers, not judges.

I’m earnestly recommending that this should be the template for all judicial interventions in electoral disputes. But the opposite has been the case with similar disputes in the states of Edo, Ondo and now, Ekiti again. No one or institution should be vested with the power and authority to divine the will of the people, who are not dead in an election. The people themselves can and should be called upon to express their will in a fresh election to resolve any disputed votes in any particular electoral district or polling station as the case may be. It is not for the judiciary to cancel the votes of the electorate for reasons of purely technical deficiencies like the failure to cross a “T” or dot an “I” or the misspelling of a name or the use of a wrong form by INEC returning officers, and things like that in the ballot. The people’s votes must not be treated with such flippancy bordering on disdain. When we say we want our votes to count they must be seen to count and not thrown away on mere technicalities as was apparently done in the case of Ekiti where the votes of an entire local government area which happens to be the home base of the then governor were summarily voided by the court without calling for a rerun in those places. That to me is evidence of judicial rigging and amounts to complete disenfranchisement of the voters in that particular local government. It’s totally unjust and unfair. 

It’s unconscionable, in fact criminal, for the judiciary to void the ballots of those who left their jobs and stood for hours on end come rain or shine to exercise their franchise. Why is it better for the electoral cases to be dragged through the judicial landscape for years on end than to conduct fresh polls in an electoral district where votes are disputed to enable the people remake their decisions on the candidates? If Adams Oshiomhole truly won the gubernatorial election in the Edo state it is not for the judiciary to decree it, let the people tell us in a fresh poll in the disputed area. If Abel Mimiko won the election in Ondo state, it is not for the judiciary to tell us, let the people do so in a fresh ballot. If Fayemi won the election in Ekiti state, let the people tell us, not the Court of Appeal, in fresh election. And if Rotimi Amechi—in River state won the election—oh, wait a minute—he didn’t even contest the gubernatorial election in the first place! Anyway, let the people themselves vote him into power and not the Supreme Court to impose him on the people of River state by judicial fiat by upturning the votes of the people. This is a monumental travesty of the electoral process. 

Reducing our judiciary to “Cash n Carry” business that they have become is inimical to the growth of our democracy. While those who have turned the judiciary into an auction house for the highest bidders applaud it as the “last hope of the common man,” nobody is fooled that their so-called “victories” might well be contrived and procured with ignoble, underhanded means and therefore a continuation of the cycle of rigging by other means. Their self-serving effusive praise for the judiciary as the last hope of the common man is at best suspect and hypocritical.

The National Assembly can save the nation this judicial incubus by amending the electoral law to mandate automatic election reruns in the event of the nullification of electoral results by the judiciary in the disputed areas of the state or local government in question. The people themselves, not judges, should have the final word on election results because elections are the people’s business not judges business.

The status quo amounts to a systemic disenfranchisement of the people and judicial ambush of our democracy that has led to judicial coronation of failed candidates. It is, therefore, time to shut down this judicial mill that is producing governors for the states. The judiciary does not belong there. That’s the people’s business to handle. The reluctance of Nigeria’s political elites to come to terms with the demand that democracy belongs to the people who alone must chose their leaders is at the root of the travails of democracy in Nigeria. It is at the root of the current Alhaji Adamu Ciroma’s shenanigan in the north and also at the root of the present judicial coronation of failed candidates at the polls. When will the Nigerian people ever matter in Nigeria? Any answers? The readers’ opinions will be greatly appreciated.     

Franklin Otorofani, Esq. is an Attorney and Public Affairs’ Analyst

Contact: mudiagaone@yahoo.com ; also at https://mudiagamann.wordpress.com/

Un-Masking IBB’s Trojan Horse for Ndigbo

Snapshots:

• IBB is the least qualified for the job he’s applying for in a democracy. If the job was for the headship of a military regime, he would, of course, be the most qualified of the entire bunch of presidential aspirants in all the parties. But if the job is for the headship of civilian administration in a democracy, he’s the least qualified of all; in fact, he need not apply at all, because he’s way off the mark. Unfortunately for him, the available position in the presidency requires no military background whatsoever, which is, in fact, considered a minus for a candidate. But that’s all he has in his resume—an out and out military resume with nothing else associated with it even after his retirement in 17years! With no visible means of livelihood, he might have been quietly living off the $2.4 Gulf war oil windfall that he’s failed to account for till date despite repeated demands. The only position open for him to contest is the Kirikiri State House to join Bode George, not the Abuja State House.  

 

• IBB has no experience or exposure whatsoever in democracy not even by association. He has held no position even at a local government level in a democracy and he’s not even an active party member who is associated with the workings of the party institutions in particular and democratic institutions in general. He just cannot be expected to democratically relate to others and institutions and that’s revealing itself even in his crude campaigns as was demonstrated during the Abuja bombing incidents. He’s the greenest of the greenhorns when it comes to democracy. Heck, he’s not even a politician, and he’s by no stretch of the imagination a democrat for that matter.

 

• Now, Senator Nnamani is an honorable man and a distinguished Igbo son at that, who acquitted himself creditably in the eyes of many as Senate president. And I do not for a moment seek to impugn his character or to question his motivations for offering himself as the arrowhead of the IBB project in Ibo-land, nor am I suggesting that he loves Ndigbo less than he loves himself. Yet he must grapple with this simple question: if every geo-ethnic group in the nation considers IBB not good enough for endorsement, what in the world makes him think that IBB would be good enough for Ndigbo to endorse? Is Ndigbo now a dumping ground for presidential materials rejected by other geo-ethnic groups in the nation? And when he’s done answering that poser, he should please tell his people how IBB helped the cause of his people when he was in a position to do so as the nation’s maximum ruler for nine years. And by the time he’s done telling us, who knows, he just might be able to get Franklin Otorofani, Esq. to his side.—Franklin Otorofani, Esq.

 

Long before it was offered, presumably through the good offices of Senator Ken Nnamani, immediate past president of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and a distinguished son of Ndigbo, this writer saw the poisoned bait coming the way of Ndigbo. He saw a Trojan horse being prepared as a gift for Ndigbo and wrote about it in an article published back on August 3^rd 2010, titled: Permutations and Projections into Nigeria’s 2011 General Elections. Below are some excerpts from that piece on this issue:

“The Ibos will not pitch their tent with a dead horse even though IBB will try to lure them with a promise to hand over power to the Ibos after doing just one term in office. But no one will swallow that bait from him due to his past antecedent. He is his own worst enemy as his atrocious past eventually catches up with him.

Besides that, Ndigbo is keenly aware that given its historical records and attitude towards the region, the North would prefer to support the South/South to produce the next president in 2015 after its turn might have run out should the presidency be zoned to the North now till 2015. Therefore, any promise from the North to Ndigbo of supporting the zone to produce the president in 2015 is at best an empty promise and at worst an insult to its intelligence. It’s the bait that would not make a catch.”  

Since its publication about three months ago, however, we have witnessed the astonishingly rapid fulfillment of many of the predictions and projections contained therein, one of the most poignant being the reported attempts by IBB to woo Ndigbo to his side with an offer of the presidency to Ndigbo in 2015 after doing one term in office.

And in order to sell this obvious fraud, he has chosen or appears to have chosen the former Senate president as his running mate, who, in fact, has made the inchoate attempt to rally Ndigbo to declare its support for the evil genius at an aborted event slated for the Concord Hotel Owerri, Imo state, with a handful of co-opted, albeit distinguished Ndigbo sons in attendance, such as the former vice president, Dr. Alex Ekwueme. The aborted event, which has been blamed in certain quarters on the ill-disposition of the state government, the owner of the hotel, to the IBB project in the state is a telling reflection of the widespread disapproval of the people to Nnamani’s IBB gambit in the region. 

When a former self-styled military president, who is otherwise not known to be too friendly to Ndigbo cause suddenly decides to present a horse to Ndigbo in an election year in which he’s a presidential aspirant seeking his party’s nomination with major input from the south/east, such a horse cannot but be a Trojan. It’s pretty much obvious and it doesn’t take rocket science to figure that out. And it is gratifying to note that the region as a whole has seen that horse for what it is and denied it entry into the land of the legendary Azikiwes, Ojukwus, Okparas, Okadigbos, Okigbos, Mbadiwes, and the Achebes.

Now before I go any further to expose the fraud that it is, this promise by IBB to hand over the presidency to Ndigbo in 2015 as if it is his personal property to hand out as he pleases, which it’s not, presupposes that he will be accepted by Nigerians and proceed to win the presidency in the first place. However, every indication points to a certain contrary outcome for IBB’s ambition even from the assessment of the Ciroma-led Northern Leaders Political Forum (NLPF) currently in the self-appointed process of vetting northern presidential aspirants under the PDP platform.

How popular is IBB with Nigerians at the present time? The answer is probably as popular as the late President Augustus Pinochet of Chile or Pol Pot of Cambodia! But hold on a second—let me check his numbers in the opinion polls just to be sure I’m not expressing a personal opinion here. Here we go! IBB is trailing Atiku, Gusau and Saraki in the ratings in the NLPF score sheet as reported by the Tribune 11022010 edition:

“Sources in Abuja..confirmed on Monday that Babangida had been worried by consistent media reports indicating that he had been trailing Abubakar and the former National Security Adviser (NSA), General Aliyu Gusau, in the rating of the consensus committee.”

In the VOA Hausa Service opinion poll for possible Northern candidates, IBB was again trounced, this time by Buhari, with Buhari garnering a whopping 65% to IBB’s miserable, indeed scandalous 5%. (allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Buhari Tops in VOA ).

If this is so in the north imagine what it is like in the south? A recent national poll has his name as mere footnote with Jonathan clearly in the lead followed by Ribadu and Saraki in a distant third position. Is that an aspirant that the business savvy Ndigbo was being wooed by IBB’s hirelings to invest its hard earned political capital in? It’s unthinkable!

IBB is the least qualified for the job he’s applying for in a democracy. If the job was for the headship of a military regime, he would, of course, be the most qualified of the entire bunch of presidential aspirants in all the parties. But if the job is for the headship of civilian administration in a democracy, he’s the least qualified of all; in fact, he need not apply at all, because he’s way off the mark.  Unfortunately for him, the available position in the presidency requires no military background whatsoever, which is, in fact, considered a minus for a candidate. But that’s all he has in his resume—an out and out military resume with nothing else associated with it even after his retirement in17years! With no visible means of livelihood he might have been quietly living off our $2.4billion Gulf war oil windfall that he’s failed to account for despite repeated demands. The only position open for him to contest is the Kirikiri State House to join Bode George with lesser offense, not the Abuja State House.

IBB has no experience or exposure whatsoever in democracy not even by default or association. His weird experiment in democratic transition ended in a self contrived national tragedy by choice which didn’t have to be. He has held no position even at a local government level in a democracy and he’s not even an active party member who is associated with the workings of the party institutions in particular and democratic institutions in general. He just cannot be expected to democratically relate to others and institutions and that’s revealing itself even in his crude campaigns as was demonstrated during the Abuja bombing incidents. He’s the greenest of the greenhorns when it comes to democracy. Heck, he’s not even a politician and he’s by no stretch of the imagination a democrat for that matter.

Therefore, his purported application for the job is a sick joke that should call all democrats to arm more so in a nation where democracy is having a hard time taking roots, because his aspiration alone even without more constitutes a serious threat to democracy.

IBB is not associated with any movement or democratic project and has not taken a position one way or another during the numerous crises that have assailed the nation since this dispensation began in 1999 including even the most recent Yar’Adua saga that nearly tore the nation apart. He’s aloof, unconcerned, and criminally indifferent to the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians. Unlike Buhari, a former military dictator who has been exposed to the workings, ethos and rigors of democracy, IBB is still his crude and dictatorial military self and a complete misfit for any democratic leadership.

And this is quite apart from his heavy baggage of misdeeds which alone are sinking his presidential ambition even without consideration of his lack of democratic credentials. That he has forced himself out in this race shows poor judgment on his part and reason enough to toss his candidacy in the trash can where it right belongs. It’s a national distraction and a source of instability in the polity that the nation cannot afford at this time.

To attempt, therefore, to sell the candidacy of such an atrocious, notorious and unqualified individual to a democratic, respected, and knowledgeable people like Ndigbo for selfish reasons is, indeed, an insult on the part of those in the doomed IBB project. If he’s facing rejection in his home north for obvious reasons; if he’s equally facing rejection by northern youths, and he’s facing rejection too by the so-called former “IBB Boys,” why would anybody in his right sense want to sell his candidacy to Ndigbo at all of all people? Is somebody out there suffering from amnesia and forgot to take his medication? The Ndigbo I know might have been used and dumped in the past to prosecute self-succession plots by evil minded military regimes, including one headed by IBB. But this is one plot that will not fly with them.

Political strategists must be smart enough to read and understand the trends in generational shift in leadership all over the world. They must come to the understanding that in a multi-media environment such as we have today, Nigerians are not looking up to some grizzled, grey haired African leaders as role models, but to foreign leaders abroad, particularly those in the west for the simple fact they dominate the global news coverage via the web, BBC, CNN and the other global news outlets, and they exemplify the kind of purposeful and accountable leadership that Nigerians have been yearning for, not unrepentant dictators staging comeback bids to strut their demented, megalomaniac stuff on the public stage again.

Therefore, in the age of United States’ Obama, France’s Sarkozy, Britain’s Cameron, Russia’s Medvedev and Canada’s Harper; all youthful, vigorous and energetic leaders that are not only in tune with, but the very purveyors of modernity, the dumbest thing any political party or ethnic group would do is to sponsor or present a dinosaurian military throwback as its presidential candidate and ask Nigerians to vote for him, or for that matter, for a serious ethnic group desirous of attaining the presidency to line up behind such a geriatric anachronism.

It’s like asking a young lady to go marry a decrepit old man who is nearer to the grave than to the altar. It’s the biggest joke of the year. IBB will be over 70 years old at the time of the next election. And you’ve got to ask the question, what happened to all the youths in the nation that old, discredited men are taking to the stage again in this day and age? Have they been put to sleep in such a vibrant political environment filled with youthful brains?

It is clear that Nigerians are ready to turn the page. Therefore, anyone who casts his lot with any of these geriatric candidates must count on the high prospects of losing his investments because it is almost certain that there will be no returns on such investments except total loses. Like all investment risks, political risks must be coldly calculated by any serious investor who desires good returns on his investment (ROI). This has nothing to do with disrespect for age but with the technological imperatives and dynamics of the modern era. And that’s why the field should be cleared for Jonathan, Ribadu, and Saraki in a three-way presidential slugfest come April, 2011.

I’m comfortable with any one of the threesome emerging president in 2011, not an ex-coup plotter and killer of democracy, particularly IBB who has sinned against humanity on all fronts. The man who decreed out old politicians in 1993 obviously to clear the way for his self-succession plot has no business showing up at age 70 to contest the nation’s presidency. It’s nothing short of sheer hypocrisy and unprincipled gambit that should not and must not be rewarded by any political party fielding him for the next elections.

Only in a country like Nigeria where anything goes would a man like IBB dare to show his face again in public. In more decent and accountable environments, he would forever live in infamy and die unsung should he manage to escape the gulag.

It’s unfortunate that some people simply refused to come to terms with the reality that their time is past and have been left behind. They still insist that they’re relevant when they have clearly become anachronisms of history. And it’s even more tragic that there could be democrats like Ken Nnamani who would associate themselves with the presidential ambition of such an individual for purely selfish reasons when principled individuals like Wole Soyinka and all progressive elements in Nigeria have declared him a persona non grata and therefore totally unworthy of political leadership.  

In Nigeria today, there is no presidential aspirant that is as despised and as hated across the board and across all demographic groups as IBB and for obvious reasons too. He is persona-non- grata (PNG) in the entire south/west, south/south and north/central, his own geo-political region. He doesn’t stand a chance either with Buhari in the north/east and north/west. Northern youths have demanded insistently that IBB and Buhari should quit the stage for younger generation of leaders to emerge in the north. Both of them are holding the north to ransom by preventing the emergence of young leaders from the region. Everywhere IBB turns, he’s met with extreme hostility and disapproval from virtually all demographic, ethnic and professional groups, including his very own erstwhile military constituency.

The man is a totally damaged product that belongs to that category of political merchandize and has simply become unmarketable in any part of the country. Why then would Ndigbo be lured with a poisoned bait to cast its lot with a damaged good and a man who personifies all that is wrong with Nigeria in the past; whether it is about corruption, coup plotting, military rule and the murder of our democracy? Is that the kind of character that Ndigbo should be asked to do business with? I don’t think so and Ndigbo knows better too. Ndigbo sure knows enough about the man’s past to know better.

But does that prevent any selfish Ndigbo son or daughter to do business with him in his/her private capacity? Not all and this writer is not advocating that either! This is a democracy with guaranteed freedom of association for all and even the Devil himself is entitled to a vote or put himself forward to be voted for in an election. It is the duty of the electorate to take him out of the field unless he succeeds in passing himself off as the Angel Gabriel.

Therefore, Senator Ken Nnamani is entitled to his political association with IBB to promote his political ambition, whether anybody likes it or no. But Nnamani is on his own and that much is pretty clear to this writer, because the Ndigbo I know is a whole lot smarter than to be made the fall guy for anybody’s political ambition. Sure Ndigbo desires the presidency, but not at the cost of going to bed with the Devil himself, whose past is determined to abort his future.

Now, Senator Nnamani is an honorable man and a distinguished Igbo son at that, who acquitted himself creditably in the eyes of many as Senate president. And I do not for a moment seek to impugn his character or to question his motivations for offering himself as the arrowhead of the IBB project in Ibo-land, nor am I suggesting that he loves Ndigbo less than he loves himself. Yet he must grapple with this simple question: if every geo-ethnic group in the nation considers IBB not good enough for endorsement, what in the world makes him think that IBB would be good enough for Ndigbo to endorse? Is Ndigbo now a dumping ground for presidential materials rejected by other geo-ethnic groups in the nation? And when he’s done answering that poser, he should please tell his people how IBB helped the cause of his people when he was in a position to do so as the nation’s maximum ruler for nine years. And by the time he’s done telling us, who knows, he just might be able to get Franklin Otorofani, Esq. to his side.

Secondly, the IBB promise also presupposes that he has the power as he apparently had during his inglorious nine-year military dictatorship to single-handedly offer the presidency to the south/east without recourse to anybody in the nation including the south/south, south/west and even the north as a whole including the Middle-Belt. It is not exactly clear to me that IBB has the power and authority to do that even if he wants to and it is entirely clear to this writer that he will never ever want to it in the first place.

How do I know that? Precedents! We judge people by their past deeds not by empty promises made to secure votes during elections. History should be our guide in matters like this and history and precedents have been pretty consistent in its verdict on IBB. History tells us loudly that IBB is never a character to be trusted by anybody because he does not even trust himself and a reason he earned the unflattering nickname “Maradona”.

When OBJ and Murtala promised to handover power in1979 and Murtala suddenly died in a military coup, OBJ could be trusted to hand over power to civilians as promised earlier at the beginning of the regime. They said they would do that in just four years and at the end of it, power was promptly handed over as promised to Alhaji Shehu Shagari of then NPN. Right from the beginning of the Murtala/OBJ administration it left no one in doubt as to the sincerity of its promise to hand over in 1979 by constituting a Constitutional Drafting Committee (CDC) headed by the late legal luminary, Chief Rotimi Williams otherwise known as “Timi, the Law” that produced the famous 1979 constitutional which formed the template for the present 1999 constitution; no contrived excuses or crisis, no postponement of handover dates—and get this—no annulment of election results! That was a legacy worthy of emulation that placed Nigeria at the forefront of democratic transitions in Africa as a whole only for IBB to come later with his voodoo transition to rubbish the nation’s stellar records in democratic transition.

Now, contrast the Murtala/OBJ record with the promise of IBB in 1985 to hand over power in 1990, then in 1992, and later in 1993. Thrice he shifted his handover dates while he was busy digging in to succeed himself and was eventually forced out by pro-democracy forces in 1993. And even so he schemed to break his third promise the third time by contriving to annul the universally acknowledged freest and fairest election Nigeria ever had in her history through ABN led by Chief Arthur Nzeribe.

In the dead of night ABN obtained an order from an Abuja High Court preventing the Professor Nwosu-led NEC from announcing the results of the concluded elections. This was quickly followed by an announcement of the total annulment of the election by IBB even when nobody complained about or questioned the results, including the loser, Alhaji Bashir Tofa of then NRC, who was, in fact, reported to have prepared his concession speech to late Chief MKO Abiola, the presumed winner—a rare feat that’s unknown even today in Nigerian election outcomes. IBB moved in to scuttle Tofa’s announcement and thus set the stage for yet another roller coaster of military dictatorships. He’s the number one enemy of democracy. It’s quite ironical that IBB is now scheming to reap where he did not sow.

However, history is not known to reward such opportunists. He should not count on OBJ’s fortunes for a repeat of history. OBJ was rewarded because he sowed the seeds of democracy in his first outing as military ruler and continued to fight for democracy through his Association for Good Governance (AGG) and suffered incarceration for his democratic advocacy in the hands of IBB man, Gen. Sani Abacha, while IBB was missing in action all the while. There are different strokes for different folks and people are rewarded or punished by their past deeds. IBB did quite the opposite of what OBJ did and will likewise reap quite the opposite of what OBJ got in return.    

IBB never handed over but was chased out of power with his tail tucked behind his back liked a runaway dog. If a man of this pedigree is making you a promise of handing over power to you, at very least, prudence and commonsense should dictate that it should be taken with a “modu” of salt.

Does Ndigbo need to be told that MKO Abiola was promised the same exact thing that IBB is offering Ndigbo to hand over power at the end of a term certain only to set him up for incarceration and eventual death? Does Ndigbo need to be reminded that Abiola suffered incarceration and death after he accepted the Trojan horse that was offered to him by the military then headed by this same IBB, who’s obviously hunting for another prey in Ndigbo? Who amongst the civilians was closest to IBB than MKO Abiola? And who paid the ultimate price for that closeness to the evil genius? Abiola, of course! Here is the bottom line: Any proposed power relationship with IBB should, ab-initio, raise a red flag because the end is always a tragedy for the victims. The poet Gen. Vasta paid the supreme price for his power relationship with IBB and so too was Abiola, just to name but a few.

Thirdly, IBB’s north has never considered yielding power to the south/east in its wildest imaginations and has done everything to drive this message home to Ndigbo in the past. Even Ndigbo sons in the military had a glass ceiling in their promotions, well, until recently when OBJ and Jonathan came in to break the glass ceiling. Somebody has to ask, why has it taken the nation so long to break this glass ceiling when northern leaders were in power all along, including IBB? I would respectfully leave the answer to Ndigbo because it knows why far better than I do.

Like Nigeria, the US north fought a brutal civil war with the US south which claimed millions of lives in which the north was victorious. But the US south has produced more presidents since then than the US north or at least as many as the US north. The US south suffers no residual effects of discrimination in appointments to political and military positions in the nation. That was the purpose of General Gowon’s famous three Rs, which his military successors, including IBB, jettisoned and replaced same with further attacks on Ndigbo in the north in the name of religious fanaticism. Those who aided and abetted those atrocities against Ndigbo can only present a horse to Ndigbo that is decidedly Trojan. There is no mistaking it.

Now, witness IBB’s treatment of Vice Admiral Ukiwe who was his second-in-command and how he was unceremoniously replaced by Admiral Augustus Aikhomu from the south/south. Witness how the then VP to President Shehu Shagari, Dr. Alex Ekueme, was reduced to a robot or at best an errand boy even though Shagari was not even qualified to be his student to begin with.

Contrast that with how VP Abubakar Atiku was so empowered by OBJ that he secured the loyalties of almost all the PDP governors at OBJ’s expense and almost upstaged the man in 2003 PDP presidential primaries. The contrast with VP Ekueme’s stature in the Shagari administration couldn’t be clearer.

Witness also how Ndigbo sons and daughters are slaughtered like cows whenever and wherever there were sponsored religious riots in the North while IBB and his likes looked the other way in the North. Witness how General Agui Ironsi was slaughtered and the pogrom that followed in the north-inspired civil war.

Witness how Alex Ekweme was used to destabilize the south/east during the NPN days when the besieged late Governor Sam Mbakwe called on the British to come and re-colonize Nigeria due to the machinations of the NPN in his state.

I have not brought out these historical antecedents to drive a wedge between the south/east and the north but to point out that when an opponent or enemy that has done so much evil suddenly turns around smiling at you with promises, such smiles and promises should be taken or accepted with extreme caution, in fact, rejected out of hand, if possible, because they’re nothing but poisoned baits.

If the north truly believes in Ndigbo presidency why not demonstrate it by letting Ndigbo take a shot at the presidency in 2015, at least for a four-year term before it passes on again the north in 2019? Is that too long a wait for a region that has been holding the presidency for 38 out the 50 years of the nation’s existence and has just relinquished it by providence only in May, this year?

Is that too long a wait, I ask again? If Ndigbo has been waiting to occupy the presidency since 1966 when General Agui Ironsi was murdered by northern military officers in a revenge coup against the Major Nzegu led putsch that put Ironsi in power, why can’t the north wait for a mere 8 years to let Ndigbo rule for four years starting 2019? And if the south/south could wait for eternity until providence came to her aid through Jonathan, why can’t the north wait? Or is the Nigerian presidency a national or northern patrimony? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, not promises. Let Ndigbo propose that to the North and watch the reactions of the Ciromas, Atikus and IBBs. That is the litmus test not promises of pie in the sky.  

Let me say this point blank: the north will only go so far as to give the south/east a vice presidential slot and no more. And that’s precisely what IBB has offered and no more can be expected from the north to Ndigbo when it comes to the presidency. It will be utterly foolish to count on IBB’s promise to give what he does not have and will not have.

If an Ndigbo son were to be Yar’Adua’s deputy when he died in May, this year, there could have been an automatic military coup to prevent Ndigbo son from becoming the president. It would have put paid to our nascent democracy. All that security breaches in Abuja when Yar’Adua was surreptitiously flown in, in the dark of night could have dovetailed into a full blown military coup sponsored by the north with northern generals in charge to take over the reins of government under the pretext of the political class not getting its act together and the nation becoming rudderless.

That was how Shehu Shagari was removed in what was regarded as a pre-emptive, palace coup with no bloodshed apart from his ADC, Col. Bello who lost his life in unclear circumstances. Allowing President Shagari to complete his second term would have brought a southerner, possibly Dr. Alex Ekueme, his deputy, to succeed him and that was anathema to the north. It was the un-spoken reason for the Buhari coup.  

That Jonathan was allowed to stay was due to his geographical background of south/south, which the north is more comfortable with just as it is with the south/west. The south/south had been a trusted political ally of the north, well, until now that the Ciromas in the north are busy throwing spanners in the wheel of that political relationship.

Besides, the PDP had made it known through it chairman, Chief Vincent Ogbulafor, that Jonathan was only a bird of passage and power would return to the north in 2011 through its so-called zoning arrangement. Taken together, this saved our democracy and helped to stay the hands of mischief makers. What Ciroma is doing today in calling for President Jonathan’s impeachment to pave the way for a northern president would, in all probability have been carried out back in May by instigating the military to strike and get it over with had it got the slightest inkling that Jonathan would contest the 2011 election. And it would have been a completely different story if Jonathan was from the south/east. The north would not have taken such chances as it did with Jonathan Ogbulafor’s assurance notwithstanding.

With these historical facts, it should be clear even to the most politically naïve that Ndigbo’s path to the nation’s presidency passes not through the core north, but first and foremost, through the minority ethnic groups both in the north and in the south, then followed by the south/west. In other words, Ndigbo must seek and strike deals with its immediate neighbors in the south/south, south/west and north/central first before even attempting the core north in the north/east and north/west. And this should not be done on the pages of newspapers or by making a fetish of calling for Igbo presidency all the time, but discreetly and diligently carried out with a sense of mission behind the scene from the prying eyes of newshounds in the media.

It would be foolish therefore to accept and ride on IBB’s Trojan horse to the presidency because it is not headed in that direction but in the opposite direction.  

And lastly, the IBB promise presupposes that the PDP will be there and continues to win elections in the future with its zoning arrangement preserved. For all practical purposes zoning is dead at the presidential level. President Goodluck said that much in his explanation of the zoning arrangement. The Nigerian presidency is open to all comers and it’s after the presidential slot has been filled that the rest of the posts are zoned accordingly to balance the federal character. It is after the president has emerged that senate president, speaker of the house of reps and their deputies as well as secretary to the federal government and party chairman and secretary will emerge.

This has been the tradition in the PDP and will continue to be so in the foreseeable future. The Presidency is never formally zoned to any region, because that would be illegal and unconstitutional, but open to all parts of the country, and all other positions follow after that position has been filled with the party’s victory at the polls. There is, therefore, no guarantee that the PDP will formally “zone” the presidency to south/east in 2015, God forbid, with or without IBB in power. It’s therefore tantamount to building castles in the air for a whole region to be asked to put its hope on PDP zoning formula, that neither here nor there and so fluid to be trusted to deliver for Ndigbo in future.

If northern presidential aspirants could offer or attempt to offer themselves for the party’s presidential primaries against a sitting president from the south like OBJ in 2003 as did Barnabas Gemade, Abubakar Rimi, and even former VP, Abubakar Atiku, now hypocritically championing zoning when it suits him, what makes Nnamani think it will be offered to Ndigbo on a platter in 2015 by the north without challenge from the same north?

IBB could afford to offer his Trojan horse to the south/east now just to enable him secure the PDP nomination, but what leverage Ndigbo has on him to keep his promise in the future? Is it a written agreement behind closed doors or a blood covenant between IBB and Nnamani and co-travelers in the IBB project? Is such an agreement or covenant, if any, enforceable and binding on the nation at all or even on the north for that matter? Is the north privy to it in the first place? I don’t think so. Denying or outright repudiating such undertaking in the future is as easy as ABC in our political environment. And the same Ciroma who is now hypocritically talking about honor of keeping so-called zoning agreement will be the very first to disavow any such agreement with Ndigbo and wash the hands of the north totally free from it. The things that have been revealed about the character of Ciroma by folks like Uba Ahmed as an unprincipled man who fought consensus arrangement in the past with everything at his disposal but now championing the same thing should serve as red flag for Ndigbo.   

The entire Nnamani IBB project is hinged on a basket of presuppositions as to render it an unattainable proposition and something of a hallucinatory, delusional affliction. The attention of Ndigbo need not be drawn to such individual maladies so long as there is no indication that it has become an epidemic in its domain.

Options for Ndigbo

This reality dictates a pragmatic rather than a dogmatic approach to the emerging scenarios in the nation’s political arena. The reality on the ground is that there is a president who is actually in power and who can get things done for Ndigbo now in real time, not promises. If anyone wants to cut deals shouldn’t commonsense dictate that he should cut deals with one who is actually in a position to deliver rather than one who is merely hoping to be in power someday with no guarantees whatsoever of getting to power let alone delivering? That would appear to be the question that was asked and answered by the Umeobi of Ohaneze Ndigbo and the governors and legislative bodies of the region before coming out in support of the Jonathan candidacy as against any other out there in the crowded field. And it’s a position that’s totally in accord with commonsense and pragmatism. It’s a position that emphasizes the utility of the proverbial adage that a bird in hand is worth more than a thousand in the bush.

Analyzing the stark realties on the ground, Ohaneze wisely came to the inescapable conclusion that it would be unwise to gamble with its future and the future of generations unborn by looking up to a pie in the sky but seizing with both hands the opportunities presented by the Jonathan presidency to right historical wrongs and move the region forward now, without waiting for the future, for, no one knows what the future holds.

In the light of this reality, the immediate preoccupations of Ndigbo should not be about having an Igbo face in the presidency but working to secure strategic deals with whoever is currently in power to secure maximum economic and social benefits possible for Ndigbo through the fulfillment of all past promises to upgrade infrastructural facilities in the region. After all the purpose of having Ndigbo face in the presidency is not for photo ops, but to help secure such benefits for the region that have all too often been denied the region by past leaders including notably IBB who is now offering it a Trojan horse.

By pitching its tent with Jonathan, Ndigbo is killing two birds with one stone. (1) It is securing the support of the south/south toward a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction down the road in the near future and; (2) securing in the now great socio-economic benefits for the region under the present Jonathan presidency, including full rehabilitation of Ndigbo in the national scheme of things by removing any semblance of second-class citizenship from her sons and daughters just as it is for the south/south. In this sense Jonathan could be seen at the very least a partial fulfillment of the quest of the region for a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction. Jonathan was not named “Azikiwe” for nothing. That name has Igbo roots and I stand to be corrected.  

It is in this connection, therefore, that the upgrading of the Enugu Airport to international status, the construction of the much delayed second Niger Bridge, addressing of the ecological disasters and the dire security situation in the region, as well as general upgrade of infrastructural facilities in the region should become a fait accompli under the Jonathan presidency.

Ndigbo must put the president’s nose to the grind with regard to these critical areas of demand. But I must not fail to mention the appointments of highly qualified Ndigbo sons and daughters in prominent positions at the center as it was done under former president, Olusegun Obasanjo. The star-studded administration of the former president was composed mainly of Ndigbo sons and daughters in the persons of Charles Solubo, Oby Ezekwesili, Ngozi Nweala, Dora Akinyuli, Joe Madueke and others, who constituted the face of the administration and made Nigeria proud in their respective porfolios. And that trend has continued under President Jonathan.

I’m referring to the likes of the Petroleum Minister, Diezani Allison-Madueke (first of its kind), US Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Joy U. Ogwu (probably first of its kind too), Information and Communications Minister, the adorable Prof. Dora Akunyuli of NAFDAC fame, (again the first for both portfolios), Adviser on Power sector reforms, Prof. Barth Nnaji, and of course, the newly appointed Army Chief of Staff, (first in over 40years), ex-cetera, ex-cetera.

And this should only be the beginning of the rehabilitation of Ndigbo into the mainstream of national leadership in all strata, not just PDP chairman or chairmanship of INEC or as someone put it, as “town criers” to both military and civilian regimes as was the case with the propagandist, Chukwumerije, for instance. It is needless to add that many of these positions were no-go areas for Ndigbo sons and daughters heretofore since the end of the civil war. The marginalization of Ndigbo is being redressed one step at a time, not under northern leaderships but under southern leaderships. This is a critical component that must not be overlooked.

In fact the benefits and possibilities are endless and I don’t see Ohaneze and the governors in the region letting this opportunity slip through their fingers by allowing themselves to be distracted with IBB’s barely disguised Trojan horse tethered at the bank of the Niger. It should be drowned in the River Niger! Some might hold that Ndigbo is entitled to all these and more without being used as bargaining chips. Fine. But there is a world of difference between being entitled to something and actually receiving the entitlement. The question is, did the Ndigbo get its entitlements in the past? That is the question and if the answer is no, then it is all the better that it is getting them now even if it is in exchange for support for the president. And I’m not for a moment suggesting they are. I don’t know that. But that is neither here nor there as the motivations for the project are not inscribed on the projects when they’re completed and put to use. It is enough that they’re completed and put to use to help redress the infrastructural atrophy in the region.

Like the severally abused and despoiled Niger Delta, the rehabilitation of Ndigbo by making whole its war ravaged, gullied territories, is indeed the beginning of the healing process as promised by Gen. Gowon’s famous “No Victor, No Vanquished” declaration at the end of the Nigerian civil war in 1970. That should be the starting point for President Jonathan and must form the plank for his engagement with the region as a historical imperative and a national debt that should and must be perfected for the perfection of the union as a whole. I have long placed the rehabilitation of the south/east at par with the rehabilitation of the south/south. These are the forgotten twins who have suffered similar fate in the Nigerian union and both deserve similar response from the government of Jonathan. I can’t count on others. 

Jonathan appears to be on the right track in this endeavor. The Nigerian union is being perfected one patch at a time. And Ndigbo should be at the forefront of the process more than any other region in the federation that has been denied political power at the center because it has borne the brunt of Nigerian unity together with Niger Delta, and both regions should share in the spoils of office, so to speak. And why not, I should ask? The pendulum of power necessary to right historical wrongs has swung back through providential happenstance and it should be put to maximum use while it lasts to remake Nigeria in the image of all its component units and not in the image of one of its parts.   

God forbid, should the ethnic bigots in the north succeed in preventing Jonathan from running or winning the 2011 presidential election and the north succeeds in installing one of its own in power, Ndigbo can kiss the nation’s presidency goodbye for another 50 years. By making it possible for a man from a minority group to occupy that position, Ndigbo makes it that much more possible for her son or daughter to occupy that position in the near future, and that’s’ the whole logic of this piece.

Viewed from this standpoint, therefore, it can be seen that Ndigbo’s political  investment in the Jonathan presidency is actually an investment in Ndigbo’s future presidential project by carrying the south/south and all the minorities along without whom any majority ethnic group would be hard put to win any election in Nigeria, if not entirely impossible. History has demonstrated that truism time and time again. The minority ethnic groups hold the balance of power in Nigeria without any shred of doubt.

Without the support of the south/south the north would never have smelt power at the federal level. Now that same support is there for the asking in the future if Ndigbo plays its card well and sticks with them as Ohaneze has obviously done by rejecting IBB’s Trojan horse and sending it back to its sender.

Ndigbo would not cut its nose to spite its face. It pays to form a strategic relationship and partnership with the south/south in a mutually beneficial manner in order to present a strong and formidable platform at the national arena. After all, they are friendly neighbors sharing common destiny; both have been politically marginalized and have suffered similar fate in the union heretofore.

Therefore, the fulsome decision to go with Jonathan is a no brainer. It’s a smart move from a smart people! And Senator Ken Nnamani should be man enough to take that message back to IBB and return his Trojan horse.   

Franklin Otorofani, Esq. is a lawyer and public affairs’ analyst and can be reached at mudiagaone@yahoo.com

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Jega: Promising More—Delivering Less (PMDL)

Rather than perfecting the electoral process for which he was hired, Jega is busy perfecting the art of blackmail at the nation’s expense and preparing the nation for the ultimate failure of the 2011 general elections. He has succeeded in foisting on the nation a state of inertia where it can neither move forward nor backward until a looming disaster is upon it. He has held us all hostages to his wiles and guiles by subjecting the electoral process to unnecessary contortions, twists and turns.—Franklin Otorofani, Esq.

The question to ask is this: must Jega be looking for and raising alarm about every imperfection in our national life that could negatively impact on his job as INEC chairman? It is his duty to discreetly manage the imperfections whatever they may be and not to cry and raise alarms on the pages of newspapers. If every head of every agency goes to town complaining and raising alarms about the problems he is facing on his job nothing will get done.—Franklin Otorofani, Esq.

Philosophical Constructs

In recent times, probably far back in time, Nigerian leaders have been crafting some philosophical constructs in their deliberate attempts not only to differentiate, but to distance their administrations from the previous ones that had either actually grown unpopular with Nigerians or needed to be rendered unpopular by all means necessary, including demonizing them.

This is considered necessary in order to legitimize their usurper regimes of military adventurers or their civilian counterparts, as the case maybe. The whole effort is usually geared toward securing the goodwill of Nigerians even if only temporarily in order to help stabilize their illegal regimes, at least for the time being, at their most troublous and uncertain beginnings.

Therefore, unlike other more stable nations where regardless of politics, mature incumbent leaders somehow always find reasons to laud their predecessors’ achievements in office even when they belong to opposition parties; crediting them for the success of one development program/ policy or another as it should be in any civilized environment, their Nigerian counterparts are stuck with the habit of distancing themselves completely from the programs and policies of their immediate predecessors, especially in military regimes. Treated like some impressionable kindergartens who could not think and reason for themselves, Nigerians were told by the new strongmen in power that their predecessors’ administrations were headed by devil incarnates.  And as such, their policies and programs were evil and satanic, both in forms and contents, and must therefore be done away with.

It sure would make no sense for a successful coup plotter to be heard lauding the government he had just overthrown to high heavens. On the contrary, he would make sure its legacies were rubbed out completely from the face of the earth, including even badly needed ongoing development projects for which billions of naira had been expended or committed under subsisting contracts. It mattered not to the military junta whether the nation would benefit from the projects or not or wind up incurring severe contract cancellation penalties; all in the name of contract reviews that serve no real purposes than to line their pockets at the nation’s expense.

However, while military regimes acquired notoriety for this deleterious affliction, it is by no means limited to them as their civilian successors found reasons to copy from them. This is one of the bad legacies of the military the present civilian governments must eschew in all its ramifications. And thank goodness, Jonathan seems to be doing just that by continuing with the policies of the late president, Musa Yar’Adua. But Yar’Adua too was guilty of this evil.

Yar’Adua found reasons to indulge himself in this wasteful past time for two years in regard to several of OBJ’s policies and projects that he inherited, including but not limited to the Nigerian Independent Power Projects (NIPPs), the mega billion naira Mambilla Plateau power project, the railway modernization project, as well as the implementation of the power and energy sectors reform initiatives; all of which were undertaken under the Obasanjo administration but soon abandoned by Yar’Adua. But he shot himself in the foot, for, had Yar’Adua been a little more broadminded and surefooted in governance, he might have left an enduring and tangible legacy of vastly improved power supply by, at least, completing the NIPPs, many of which had reached advanced stages of completion when he took office. The glory would have been his and his alone and the nation much better for it.

Sad to say though that in his rather naïve efforts to please his implacable foes he chose to follow the negative drumbeats of the opposition elements against Obasanjo and wound up achieving nothing tangible in two and a half years before he died. I don’t want to sound uncharitable to the late leader who was understandably weighed down by his debilitating health conditions. But it is fair to say that Yar’Adua died with most of his initiatives still on the drawing board, including his signature program, the Niger Delta Amnesty program, after dismantling OBJ legacies so far as it was within his powers so to do. Those he couldn’t dismantle like the GSM revolution and EFCC, he simply ignored while fiddling endlessly with his so-called 7-point agenda that never got off the ground—a disposition that earned him the epithet—“Yaraslow” from disappointed Nigerians. He was indeed a study in the art of indecision and procrastination.

Obasanjo too caught the flu in 1999 when he came to office the second time and equally abandoned Abacha’s Vision 2010 which the nation had invested in just because Abacha, who had already expired at the time he came to power in 1999, sent him to jail and therefore his enemy number one. Anything Abacha, had to go whether good or bad; the baby had to be thrown away with its bathwater! And his Vision 2010 was interred with him.

While OBJ could be forgiven for dismantling the policy of one who wanted him dead in incarceration like he did to Obasanjo’s former second-in-command, Shehu Yar’Adua, it should nevertheless be made clear that governance is not a personal thing but a public business, therefore the settling of personal scores has absolutely no place in public governance. As such, good policies inherited even from an enemy need not be thrown overboard merely to spite a former leader. If we continue to go down that road the nation is condemned to underdevelopment. The result is a Nigerian landscape littered with abandoned projects with hundreds of billions of naira going down the drain, just like that. No questions asked.

Many of these abandoned projects have had to be re-contracted out by subsequent administrations at double if not triple their original costs, a good example being the defunct Lagos Metroline project undertaken by the Jakande administration and, if my memory serves me well, at an estimated cost of N2.8bn (arguably a lot of money back then). This project was callously abandoned under the Buhari administration and now costing the Tunde Fashola administration a whopping $2.6bn for the first two lines alone of the seven lines proposed for which a down payment N8.05bn is reported to have been made for the Blue Line to be constructed by the now ubiquitous China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC).

Yet this whole Lagos Light Rail project is a vastly scaled down version of the more ambitious Jakande’s abandoned Metroline project. Even if the costs had not gone up this astronomically, the fact remains that Lagosians have been denied rail services for 27 odd years since 1983 when the Jakande administration was booted out of power by military adventurers, no thanks to Buhari—and that, indeed, is the real cost of abandoned projects in the nation—denial of services to the generality of the citizenry to which they’re otherwise entitled in a modern nation/state in the 21^st century.

And that should give the reader just a little window to peep into Nigeria’s world of waste created by her callous and unthinking leaders who would refuse to proceed with inherited projects unless the contracts bear their signatures. Yet these leaders are quick to introduce their own pet programs, projects and policies after abandoning the ones they met on the ground and turning the hand of the clock back with similar fate awaiting them after they might have left either voluntarily or forced out. And with that the cycle of waste and underdevelopment continues unceasingly.

However, their sloganeering mantras somehow still live on in the memories of Nigerians though defunct and abandoned by their successors. For Muhammadu Buhari, it was “War Against Indiscipline” (WAI), arising out of the gross indiscipline and egregious corruption that defined the previous Shehu Shagari administration. For Olusegun Obasanjo, otherwise known as “OBJ”, it was “Due Process” and “War Against Corruption” in his second outing as Nigerian leader, arising out of the profligacy and monumental corruption that characterized the previous Abacha regime, coupled with his determined efforts to retrieve the multi-billion naira loot of the bespectacled late general stashed in bank vaults abroad, particularly in Swiss banks. And for Musa Yar’Adua, it was “Servant Leader” and “Rule of law,” arising from the perceived brusqueness and imperial disposition of the Obasanjo presidency.

Seeking legitimacy arising principally from his stiffly contested presidential mandate, the late leader wasted no time crafting some couplet of governing mantras that sought to distance his style from that of his immediate predecessor in office. “Rule of law” and “Servant leader” came in handy to help calm frayed nerves in the opposition even if both meant very little and largely tokenistic in practice. They still remained benchmarks for assessing his administration’s overall performance and leadership style, regardless.

PLDM Paradigm

And lastly but never the leas;, for Goodluck Jonathan it is “Promising Less and Delivering More,” (PLDM), arising from the litany of failed promises in the past, interestingly, including but not limited to Yar’Adua’s failure to implement electoral and the power reforms that he had promised the nation during his inauguration, both of which never saw the light of day and had become incubuses on the path of his administration till his abrupt end.

Confronted with such an unflattering generational record of failed leadership Jonathan decided to flip that paradigm of more promises less delivering and turned it on its head with the following words:  

“I know you are tired of empty promises, so I will make only one promise to you today. The only promise I make to you my friends, fellow citizens and Nigeria, is to promise LESS and deliver MORE if I am elected,” he promised. And with those few words, a new era is born in the nation.

What then is PLDM, the reader might ask? PLDM is a simple construct just like its author, Jonathan, and nothing complicated to understand and appreciate. It is simply a paradigm that simply replaces promises with performance rather than the other way around as we have been used to in these parts of the globe. In Jonathan’s own words written in his Facebook declaration:

“I do not want to win your affections by giving you promises of things I would do in the future which others before me have given and which have largely been unfulfilled.”

“I know you are tired of empty promises, so I will make only one promise to you today. The only promise I make to you my friends, fellow citizens and Nigeria, is to promise LESS and deliver MORE if I am elected.”

At the heart of this paradigm is DELIVERING on already promises made, as opposed to regurgitating the same old promises or adding new ones to them. It is not a promise to deliver either. It is simply delivering without more! It’s a policy that places performance over noise making promises. But that is just words which in and of itself is a promise. What is the practical demonstration of this new paradigm? Here again is Jonathan:

“My team and I made no promises on adequate fuel supply in Nigeria. We simply did what was expected of those who govern, we delivered it, and you are living witnesses to that. We made no promise to revamp the textile industry.

“We delivered a bailout package worth 150 billion naira that is being dispensed as I write. We made no promises of securing the highest U.S Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) aviation clearance, the Category 1 Certificate which enables Nigerian registered airlines to fly to ANY U.S city. We delivered. We made no promise to give Nigeria a brand new INEC under a proven God-fearing and incorruptible leader. We placed Nigeria first and delivered. We made no promises of protecting your loans, deposits and investments in the banking industry over and beyond what is covered under the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Scheme.

“We delivered it via AMCON. Rather than tell you what we could do to improve power, this administration demonstrated it by initiating a brand new national Super Grid as well as launching a concrete Road Map to the Power Sector with realistic goals tied to realistic dates. I understand from some of your mails that there has been some small improvements in electricity supply in some communities. We met an economy that was beginning to slow due to the global recession. Today, the economy has verifiably grown by 7 per cent this half year ending in June.”

Getting on board Jonathan knew that there was nothing else left to be promised that had not been promised by his predecessors in office before, but left unfulfilled. All the promises that needed to be made had been made. He was not going to add another layer of promises to the existing layers. If half of the promises made by past Nigerian leaders were fulfilled Nigeria would have been on the moon by now and basic social necessities like good roads, water, quality medical and educational services, and electricity would be taken for granted in the country. More than enough promises have been made. The only thing conspicuously missing was their fulfillment and that is the area he needed to address. Expectedly that is what Nigerians have been crying for all along! To paraphrase what one American mattress commercial says, “That is what their backs have been aching for!”

That, in a nutshell is the philosophical plank on which the Jonathan administration now rests. However, it is so easy to promise but difficult to fulfill promises made by others. Yet fulfill he must because governance is a continuum and because he has committed himself to that. By so doing he is seeking to change the narrative going forward—a narrative of poor leadership and failed dreams. And by changing the narrative, he is hoping to restore the people’s faith in their government, which has been badly shaken, indeed battered beyond recognition—which is why Nigeria is now a nation of seemingly incurable cynics, skeptics and pessimists. He recognized that a litany of unfulfilled promises had turned a once hopeful, positive and forward looking people into chronic pessimists and self-doubters who do not for a moment believe in themselves much less in their government.

Amid the drumbeat of cynics and naysayers Jonathan is seeking to turn this around and make Nigeria work again for Nigerians and prove the cynics wrong because “We are delivering on our promise towards electoral reforms, adequate power supply, and peace in the Niger Delta. On these and other reforms, we will not relent,” said the president on the occasion of his N500m fundraising dinner haul at the Abuja International Conference Centre, (ICC).

But note the words carefully: He is not promising to deliver; he didn’t say he has delivered. He says “we are delivering,” indicating work in progress, not promises.  

Constraints and Limitations

That said, while it may be easy to judge a leader based on the fulfillment or lack thereof of promises made or inherited, it may not be so easy to judge a leader based on his philosophical postulates. The reason for this is because philosophical postulates are intangibles or conceptual objects that are not always amenable to institutionalization. In this sense therefore we must begin to distinguish between mere sloganeering and real development programs or tangible policies associated with particular administrations.

It must be recognized in this connection that slogans are not executable categories but development programs are. Therefore, while some of these philosophical paradigms were programmatic and therefore executable, others were entirely conceptual and border on mere sloganeering. As such, they’re not amenable to institutionalization to make them permanent.

Thus or instance, while OBJ succeeded in institutionalizing his Due Process paradigm comprised in the Due Process Office and the EFCC both of which were able to outlive his administration, others never cared to articulate and institutionalize their governing philosophies mainly because they were not conceptualized as executables in the first place.

For all his failings, OBJ has proved to be one of the smartest, if not the smartest leader Nigeria has ever had, if only for this reason alone. Sensing that his legacies might be rubbished, he took his time to institutionalize some of them, including the war against graft in the form of EFCC and Due Process even before the so-called “third term” fiasco. But for that deft move, Yar’Adua and his AGF, Akaase Aondoakaa, would have made the war on graft and EFCC a thing of the past, just like IBB did to Buhari’s WAI.

EFCC is still around today despite everything thrown at it because it has legal and physical structures that cannot be dismantled and thrown overboard by succeeding administrations without hell being let loose and going through tedious and contentious process of abrogating the laws establishing them.  Yar’Adua’s attempt to whittle down the powers of EFCC through his AGF after he sent its head packing elicited uproarious reactions from Nigerians so much so that the administration had no choice but to let EFCC be as is even though the administration had nothing but death wish for the anti-graft agency that was after its corrupt ex-gubernatorial patrons.  

The same is equally true of the Due Process Office which he likewise institutionalized with the Public Procurement Bill he proposed and sent to the National Assembly before he left office; eventually passed and signed into law by President Yar’Adua in July 2008 as the Public Procurement Act, giving birth to the Public Procurement Bureau.

In point of fact, OBJ himself was severally quoted to have promised that his reforms would be legally encoded to ensure their survival after he might have left office, and that’s precisely what he did. Now, that was a very smart move on his part that I would recommend to President Jonathan.

Taken together, both represent Obasanjo’s anti-graft policies that remain legislative and institutional landmarks after his exit. The point being made here is not to sing the praise of Obasanjo (he has received some knocks already here), but to underline the fact that “Due Process” was not just an airy slogan as Yar’Adua’s “Rule of Law”. On the contrary, it was an executable policy complete with its legal and institutional framework, and so also is the “War on Corruption,” both of which have become national institutions and heritage, just like Gowon’s National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).   

Other leaders were not so smart as OBJ and had their legacies tanked. Together with Buhari, WAI was one of the first casualties of the IBB coup that swept Buhari and the late Idiagbon out of power in 1985. IBB, whose regime proceeded in earnest to institutionalize corruption rather than Buhari’s WAI, wasted no time disbanding the crude, ad-hoc WAI military structures Buhari had used to terrorize the masses while leaving the captains of corruption untouched, which by the way, was why it was easy for the evil genius to disband them without incurring public outcry as was Yar’Adua’s case with EFCC, because the masses were relieved of laboring under Buhari’s discriminatory, heavy handed, military jackboots that routinely violated their basic human rights and decency.

Similarly, Yar’Adua’s servant leader and rule of law mantra were more of fanciful slogans than well articulated and coherent governing principles and could therefore not lend themselves to institutionalization in such a way that they might become his enduring legacies. And so, there are no monuments erected for them—and no monuments for Yar’Adua either after his demise; in fact his slogans are gone with the wind. And this is because, as earlier indicated, they have no institutional platforms to stand on.

In the same vein Jonathan’s PLDM mantra may not go beyond verbal pronouncements, because it is not otherwise amenable to institutional construct that could outlast his administration. As of today, PLDM is just so many words without structures like Yar’Adua’s “Servant Leader” and “Rule of Law” mantras. President Jonathan needs to translate this philosophical construct into permanent structures that could outlive his administration.   

But even in the absence of that it could still become a potent philosophical force and a compass that not only drives but guides his administration’s goals and objectives if deliberate efforts are made to internalize it on the part of government’s officials, at least. PLDM could be transformed into a potent instrument or tool for focused and purposeful leadership and governance throughout the polity, and it seems to have found a life of its own. Already government’s officials are being asked, in fact, admonished to talk less and do more, the most recent being the advisory from the AGF to the chairperson of EFCC, Mrs. Farida Waziri, to talk less and do more in his reaction to her so-called corruption list sent to the PDP. And what’s more, INEC chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, Chairman of INEC, the electoral agency, is similarly being asked to talk less and do more. Gradually but steadily, the message is taking hold and sinking in, one head at a time. And if that happens, it will be a breath of fresh air in the Nigerian polity.

The whole idea is to get public officials to simply perform their duties for which they were either elected or appointed without unnecessary grandstanding or inundating us with empty promises they know will not be kept until they leave office. And all that sickening ceremonies of governors calling the whole world to witness the commissioning of boreholes, taxis and buses or some feeder road tucked somewhere as their crowning achievements must stop. The widespread practice trivializes the art of governance.

If state chief executives have nothing better to do with their time, they have no business being in their states’ executive mansions in the first place. Only the commissioning of major development projects should attract the presence of state governors and the president, for that matter. The commissioning of minor projects must be left for local government officials or commissioners, and that is if they must be commissioned at all before being put to public use. Why formal commissioning before being put to public use, anyway? The practice is utterly wasteful and must be stopped except for major projects as indicated above if state chief executives truly know their onions.      

Odd-Man Out

However, it has become obvious to the discerning members of the public that the chairman of INEC, Attahiru Jega, has not been entirely sold on the idea. He is one government’s official in the Jonathan dispensation who has yet to imbibe the administration’s new credo of promising less and delivering more. 

Since his well received appointment a few months ago he has been running his mouth like a canary at every given opportunity in utter disregard for the administration’s disposition of promising less and delivering more. He has instead been promising more and delivering less, and thereby turning the president’s mantra on its head. In other words, he has been talking more and doing less.  

Part of the reason for this could be found in the very name of his agency—“Independent—“ by virtue of which he is not beholden to the directive or philosophical orientation of the administration. He is his own man living in his own world unfettered by the strictures of public service. He gets to set his own rules and goes by his own dictates. After all, he is not part of the presidents’ cabinet. He belongs neither to the executive, legislative, nor the judicial branch. He’s simply independent and towers above all, including those who appointed him and those to whom he cries for money.

As the head of INEC he is expected to show his independence at all times and there is no better way to demonstrate his independence than to do the very opposite of what the administration is doing and that means promising more and delivering less. It seems Jega has discovered that the only way to assert his independence is to talk more and do less. That way, he has succeeded in distancing himself and his electoral body from the dictates of the administration. He has refused to follow the philosophical dictates of the administration and continues business as usual. Pray, how much more independent could he be?

The bearded, publicity hungry INEC chairman has found a cheap and effective means of proving his independence by simply talking, and talking until the elections are over, or rather until the elections are forgotten entirely, while the nation waits for eternity for the award of the contracts for Direct Data Capture (DDC) machines, which alone have taken him nearly half a year to award and will probably take that much longer to deliver. And that is if they’re delivered at all. There is always a handy excuse for non-performance right up there in his sleeves. He has plenty of them up there, all designed to suit particular occasions as the need arises.  

Under the barrage of criticisms from both the National Assembly and concerned Nigerians, he has quickly moved to announce the training of those who will operate the yet-to-be-delivered DDC machines. I guess the trainees will use the pictures of the machines to do their drills. It’s all in his theoretical world. As a professor, Jega probably didn’t have access to or need no real machines to train his students. He probably was content with Marxist theoretical postulations in the lecture halls as a socialist academic with no need for machines.  After all, Communism/Socialism needed no laboratories to test it. And if ever there was such a need the tools existed not in Nigeria but in far away China, Cuba, and the former Soviet Union; all outside his immediate grasp. Jega probably still thinks that he’s on sabbatical at INEC doing his lecture rounds with his staffers as students. 

And each time he runs into rough waters he raises high decibel alarms. First it was about the amendment of the Electoral Act for which he was not only duly consulted by the leadership of the National Assembly in the amended Electoral Act and the constitution passed, but his inputs and timelines were duly incorporated in the Act and the amended constitution. The amended constitution was gazetted back in July 2010, and the amended Electoral Act was signed into law by the president back in August precisely on the 12^th within just three days after it was presented to the president for his assent. That should pass as one of the fastest presidential assents ever given to a bill passed by the National Assembly presented to the president for his assent.

However, between the consummation of the amendment of the Electoral Act and its transmission to the presidency for presidential assent, Jega cried out raising the alarm that its delay was hampering his ability to prepare for the elections. With the signing of the Electoral Act, into law, however, Jega went to town talking more and doing less. He dredged up another excuse for not doing his job. This time it was funds. A whopping N78bn naira was requested for ordinary computers and scanners just for revising the Voter’s Register alone, again blackmailing the presidency and the National Assembly to sign off on the requested amount else the nation could as well forgot about 2011. His highly inflated figures which were computed on the basis of windfall profit for the suppliers that was questioned by the lawmakers but nevertheless left almost intact by the National Assembly. No one wanted to be accused of standing in the way of Jega and INEC. Whatever he wants he gets. Period! If he wants a thousand human heads to be sacrificed to the gods of INEC to ensure smooth, free and fair elections, so be it. They will be delivered to him in a presidential jet—one of those that were recently ordered. Like a spoilt child whatever Jega wants he gets without question—and without delay too!

But does he ever get enough? He’s always asking for more. Like Oliver Twist he has gone cap-in-hand pleading for financial assistance from EU members who called at his office to ascertain his level of preparedness who went back utterly disappointed at his absolute lack of progress, only for him to use the occasion to again blackmail the National Assembly on the fresh amendments he has requested. This raises the question as to whether Jega will not spring another surprise on the nation about lack of adequate funding. What else is next in Jega’s trick box? But wait a minute:

If the nation thought that with adequate funding and the passage of the Electorate Act as well as the amendment of the constitution, everything was in order, it again got a rude shock when Jega went to town declaring the 2011 elections impossible with the timelines mandated in the Electoral Act and the Constitution which he was privy to in the first place!

Because he was talking more and doing less, he soon realized he had run out of time and therefore impossible to meet the statutory and constitutional timelines for the conduct of the elections. With that declaration he has set the nation up for failure. This declaration has set the political class scampering to find a way out, which invariably translates to another amendment of the amendments that have already been carried out on both the constitution and the Electoral Act.

This man has totally messed up the nation’s constitutional order and the electoral process. The nation’s sacred document is being messed up like a piece of trash; not even an ordinary law has been subjected to this unedifying treatment at the behest an underperforming university professor who is finding it extremely hard to come to grips with the real world.

Now, the worst time to carry out constitutional and statutory amendments is during an election when politics is already thick in the air. Nothing gets done during elections. There is always gridlock during election years in the United States, for example, and although young, Nigeria’s parliament is witnessing similar results at the moment. The senate failed to pass the amendments proposed in the bill before it due to political calculations both by inside and outside forces.  And if the National Assembly is having this difficulty one can only imagine what it will be like in the state legislatures.

However, sensing an opening to dump the blame of potential failure on the doorsteps of the National Assembly, Jega came out flaming on 10/11/2010, warning that delay in the amendments he requested was dangerous to the conduct of the 2011 elections and could return the nation back to square one.  In his words uttered in response to the pleas by the European Union Election observers for him to ensure free and fair elections as reported by The Guardian Newspapers 10/12/2010 edition, Jega had this to say:

“Let me say here that we have faced some challenges which have set us back by two weeks now, in terms of the procurement of the Direct Data Capture Machines. These things are addressed by the so-called 10 per cent rule. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong sometimes. And unfortunately, in spite of everything that we did, something still went wrong and set us back, and we were also very concerned about that. That was why when we were talking about how tight the timelines were, we were worried about that.

“Our worry is not necessarily the new time-frame. We need to have the legal instrument in place and if there are delays from the National Assembly about it, obviously that will also affect how soon we can roll out our plans for the conduct of the polls. We will continue to engage all stakeholders in order to make, particularly the National Assembly members, realise that the faster they are able to conclude the amendment processes, the better it will be because there is no time. If we are going to get the extension and it takes up to November or December, it is of no use or at best I would say, we are perhaps back to square one, because we will need a very clear legal frame-work for us to proceed with our preparations”.

Now, here is a man who has admitted to his own delays in awarding ordinary contracts for DDC machines trying to shift the blame on everybody else but himself and in fact blackmailing the National Assembly about the nation going back to “square one” if he did not get the amendments in October. Here is a man that got his request for funds approved since August and the funds promptly released to the commission. Yet he could not award a simple contract for computers and scanners and waited two whole months before realizing he had run out of time for the elections.

He botched the computer contracts right from the beginning only to begin to run his mouth again such that a fellow academic Senator Adego Efrakeya had to call him to order with these biting words to Jega: “You should talk less because we have heard a lot of reports. You are talking more. One has to be careful the way you talk. If you have fears, why not come to the National Assembly, talk to the Senate President. He is there to listen to you.”

Come to the National Assembly and talk to the Senate President about his fears? Not Jega! The honourable senator doesn’t get it. Jega would not quietly express his fears to the leadership of the senate as advised by the senator. Rather he wants to put the blame for his failures on the doorsteps of the National Assembly. Period. He has carefully set them up as the fall guys to take the blame.

Now, if the award of computer contracts has proved such a daunting challenge to Jega how in the world would the nation and the world expect this man to deliver credible elections in 2011 when such simple issues as contract awards are causing him terrible nightmares? That is the question that the nation must begin to grapple with now before it is too late and before his “back to square one” threat becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

As a Tribune reporter puts it: “If the man continues with the undue grandstanding we have seen since August; if he fails to fix things in the most practical ways, he could be unwittingly returning the nation to the dreaded “square one.”

With due respect to this reporter, we’re already back to square one! We’re back to where we started already. The whole process of constitutional and electoral act amendment is beginning afresh and Jega has not moved one inch from where his predecessor, Professor Maurice Iwu, left off. Which other square one are we talking about, the square one of square one? Anyway, I’ll leave that to the mathematicians to figure out the result of that mathematical formula, because I’m not a mathematician.

What is clear to me, however, is that this man has literarily held the nation by the jugular. He has become the quintessential blackmailer. Rather than perfecting the electoral process for which he was hired, Jega is busy perfecting the art of blackmail at the nation’s expense and preparing the nation for the ultimate failure of the 2011 general elections. He has succeeded in foisting on the nation a state of inertia where it can neither move forward nor backward until a looming disaster is upon it. He has held us all hostages to his wiles and guiles by subjecting the electoral process to unnecessary contortions, twists and turns.

And this is a man who belongs to the class of so-called progressives who were loudest in condemning the former chairman of INEC, Maurice Iwu, who was literarily bundled out of INEC to please the types of Jega in the nation. Nobody cared to listen to the avalanche of problems confronting the electoral body under Iwu. He was singled out for vitriolic attacks on his person by the myopic Nigerian press and its patron saints in the opposition. The result is Jega; the result is the mess that has become the electoral process; the result is the unmitigated disaster that awaits us if no drastic steps are taken to make this man sit up and face his jobs as man, not as a parrot.

If the nation thought Iwu, who successfully midwifed the 2007 general elections was a failure Jega is promising to be a disaster waiting to happen. The man Iwu must be chuckling in retirement. He had told this man, Jega, that there was no need to embark on a fresh Voter’s Register, and all that he needed to do was to update the existing one and sanitize it where needed; in other words to build on the records and achievements on the ground which seemed reasonable and cost effective too. But Jega preferred to rebuild the house from the ground up instead of fixing the leaks in the roof even though he knew he had no time to do it with elections around the corner and the nation in a hurry to get things done. He wanted his own date with contractors. This man preferred to award new contracts; he probably had not been doing so as a university professor and former ASUU president. Now is his time! The lure of multi-billion naira contracts and its many benefits was too strong for Jega to resist and that has brought us to square one.

An indication of this came from the Jega himself during his recent lecture delivered at the Trenchard Hall of the University of Ibadan in which he was reported to have declared that “although he had expected that there were going to be problems on the ground when he took the job of INEC Chairman, he had, however, been astounded at the level of problems facing the commission, such that there could be ‘a crisis of expectation’ at the end of the day,” and adding that “the crisis of expectation could come about when everything wrong had been put right, yet due to some factors and apathy of Nigerians, things  still didn’t work out.” There he goes!

Apathy of Nigerians, he said? What the heck is this man talking about? What apathy? Does anybody still need convincing that this man is preparing the nation for the ultimate fall? Does anyboby need a soothsayer to divine where the nation is headed in 2011? Does anybody need to be told that this man is not up to the job he has been contracted to do? By the way, what were Jega’s qualifications for the job in the first place? Has he held any executive position in the past to prepare him for such a demanding job at a time of great national urgency and expectations? How was he vetted for this job? Was he given the job purely on the basis of his socialist leanings and academic qualifications or on tangible and demonstrable cognate experience in executive functions?

Do you want to hear some more excuses for failure from Jega and his persistent efforts to condition the minds of Nigerians for possible failure of the 2011 elections? Here again is Attahiru Jega in yet another speech raising yet another alarm about insecurity in the nation as reported by the African Herald Express:

“…some recent security developments have now placed security issues on the front burner as we strategize for the 2011 polls. The threats to security are many especially in terms of recent developments in our national life; abductions, and other forms of insecurity. The competing demands on our resources send a sense of trepidation and news reports about arms build-up and arms proliferation is frightening to even the hardened mind”

The question to ask is this: must Jega be looking for and raising alarm about every imperfection in our national life that could negatively impact on his job as INEC chairman? It is his duty to discreetly manage the imperfections whatever they may be and not to cry and raise alarms on the pages of newspapers. If every head of every agency goes to town complaining and raising alarms about the problems he is facing on his job nothing will get done. Must Jega be whining, complaining and crying everyday on the pages of newspapers? Must this man be allowed to disturb our peace all the time by continually raising fears about the forthcoming elections?

Doesn’t that show that he’s not matured enough for the job to begin with? Can’t he do his job quietly and discreetly without dragging all of us into the mix all the time? Aren’t Nigerians already aware of the state of insecurity in the nation? Do they need a Mr. Jega to remind them? Was he not aware of this situation before he accepted the job or is he just finding that out now? What does that say about his maturity and experience for the job?

The public profile of Jega emerging is that of one who has sensed his inadequacies looking for excuses to justify his imminent failure and trying to pass the buck on others. Jega is seeing failure starring at him in his face. And that would explain why he is seizing every opportunity that comes his way to raise alarms and pass the buck on other agencies. To him that’s the only way to absolve himself of blame. But he’s miscalculated. Should our fears materialize in 2011, Jega will not escape the fate that befell Maurice Iwu and all his predecessors-in-office, right from the nation’s independence. No electoral helmsman has escaped that fate, however much he tries to pass the buck. Jega is condemned to reliving similar fate. 

Therefore, while it was politically expedient to remove Iwu at the end of his tenure, it was not wise to do so. Whenever political expediency is allowed to override wisdom, the result is Jega—leading the nation into a dead end.

Those who wanted Maurice Iwu out by all means necessary should be held accountable for the looming Jega fiasco and imperilled 2011 elections. They put us in this bind and must get us out of it before it is too late.

Franklin Otorofani, Esq.—Attorney and Public Affairs’ Analyst

Contact: mudiagaone@yahoo.com