The Nation Newspaper

Tag: election rigging

  • ‘Election rigging is over in Abia’

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Abia State has assured the people that the era of election rigging is over as the party is focused on winning in 2019.

    Chief Ikechi Emenike spoke during his tour of Aba North and South Local Government, in continuation of his tour of councils.

    He noted that the machinery politicians use in rigging elections has been dismantled by the APC.

    The party chieftain told election riggers to have a change of heart as the government, under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, has changed the electoral narrative.

    He said: “APC in Abia State and the country is not known for election rigging, we believe in winning election the right way, not through the back door. So those who are planning to rig should look for another thing.”

    The party leader said President Buhari, who does not believe in election rigging has changed the narrative. “Those who are still living in the past should change as workers of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), who used to write results for them, have been removed, while policemen who help them during election have a new direction”.

    Emenike lamented the presence of just one higher institution in the state, unlike in Osun which has about 18 and offers free education, besides providing employment for the people.

    According to him, the APC government will, in the next four years, ensure there are no less than five higher institutions, where educationally-minded youths would have spaces to study courses of their choice.

    Chairman of Aba South Barnabas Obioha thanked Emenike for the visit and promised to give him their vote if he decided to contest for governor.

     

  • ‘Resist election rigging’

    ONDO State Governor’s wife Mrs. Olukemi Mimiko has urged women and other eligible voters to resist election manipulation in the November 26 poll.

    She urged mothers to warn their wards against being used during and after the election.

    Mrs. Mimiko spoke at a forum featuring a lecture titled: “Women: A reliable pillar in nation-building”, at Ore, Odigbo Local Government delivered by PDP governorship candidate’s wife, Mrs. Ebunoluwa Jegede.

    Mrs. Mimiko said: “We need to go back to our various houses to talk to our children and husbands to preach politics of peace, tolerance and love to them, so that peace could reign supreme in the state during and after the election.”

    She advocated politics without bitterness to guarantee peace.

    Thanking the people, especially the womenfolk for their support over the years, she assured that her husband’s administration remained committed to their welfare and growth.

     

  • What election rigging may soon do to Nigeria

    What election rigging may soon do to Nigeria

    As a peasant farmer’s son, I knew that there were certain climbing parasitic weeds that we boys had to prevent at all costs from showing up in our father’s cocoa farm. Make the mistake of allowing them to grow there and they will climb and kill the cocoa trees.

    To the processes and health of democratic politics and society, election rigging is a killer parasite. It is the most vicious among the demons that have been gradually killing Nigeria since independence. Those of our influential politicians and top civil servants who strategized in the dark to rig our newly independent country’s first elections – the 1964 federal elections – may not have known the ultimate outcome of what they were starting. But we Nigerians of subsequent times now know that they planted the parasite that will, as things are now going, almost certainly kill Nigeria.

    Once election rigging establishes a presence in an avowedly democratic society, it is virtually impossible to remove – and the reason for that is that it titivates and romances one of the darkest and most powerful instincts of the human psyche – the urge to power, influence and glory. If others before you in positions of power in your country have rigged elections for themselves and their friends and gotten away with it, why would you not do it for yourself and your friends too? The outcome can only be that the persons in power will become more and more skilful in doing it. And the ultimate end will only be some kind of collapse of the society.

    Realistically, therefore, it seems very unlikely at this point that we can sustain Nigeria for much longer than now. It is not a question of whether or not we love Nigeria. Of course, very many of us love Nigeria and would wish that it would live on and become a great and powerful country in the world. I can never tire of saying this – that, as a young Nigerian in the 1950s and early 1960s, I grew up and matured  in a time when being a Nigerian was a huge pride in the world, and I cannot forget that or let it go away easily. But that is a totally different matter from the realities that I perceive all around me today. I love my friends and wish they would never die, but I know that, being the naturally fickle humans that we all are, we will all die – each in his or her own time. I love Nigeria, but I fear that a country that has become as sick as Nigeria has now become, and without any measurable effort at remedy too, will die and fizzle out, probably soon. It is very painful to me to write this last sentence, but at least some of us must boldly and clearly leave record of our fears and warnings about what is being done to our country today. No human country can possibly survive the periodic assault by the power of election rigging and its accompanying disruptions, especially when these are also allied to other deadly monsters like massive public corruption, massive poverty and hopelessness, massive inter-people animosities, massive religious intolerance and aggressiveness, and massive leadership and managerial incompetence.

    Among most Nigerians at home and abroad, and among most informed observers in most parts of the world, Nigeria’s coming elections of 2015 are arousing serious fears and questions. The vibrations emanating from Nigeria about the elections speak mostly of competing determinations to settle issues by crookedness and violence; they also very pointedly portend conflict and ruin. All over the country, people are no longer speaking of the well-known election rigging methods of the past, but of mind-bogglingly high technology rigging devices and methods of today. Fears that the federal government and its agencies (INEC, the Nigeria Police, the SSS, and even parts of the military) are bracing to carry out the most horrendous election rigging in Nigeria’s history are frightening masses of people and making others shake their heads in wonder. In Nigeria’s north-eastern region, one of the world’s most violent Islamic fundamentalist terror groups is expanding its massacres, kidnappings and destruction, as well as its area of control, and preparing to extend its devastations to the rest of Nigeria. Significant groups of leading citizens in the North-west and the South-south are escalating their already troubling sabre rattling. Openly and loudly, secretly and quietly, Nigerians in their millions are saying that 2015 is likely going to be the year of Nigeria’s implosion that many in the world – including well-informed agencies of the United States government – have been predicting or warning about for years.

    In fact, no serious-minded person now expects that the 2015 Nigerian presidential elections are sure to end peacefully in victory for any side. The talk of rigging is so totally universal and so trenchant among Nigerians. And the reasons for that are obvious and understandable. In over 50 years of the existence of Nigeria as an independent country, Nigeria has not succeeded – or even sincerely tried – to nurture federal agencies and public servants that can be relied upon to do their duties as impartial umpires in the political process. Politicians controlling the federal government at any time want the top police, secret service, electoral officials, and electoral tribunal judges, to see themselves, and to operate, as partisans of the ruling political party, and the officials, for the most part, do just that. They are therefore widely and profoundly distrusted by all other parties and groups. Naturally, to have a chance to compete reasonably at all, these other parties dig in and strive to influence and buy the officials of the federal agencies – which they sometimes succeed in doing.

    Therefore, whichever side is declared winner by the widely suspected electoral officials, or adjudged winner by the electoral tribunals, the other sides will very loudly and insistently claim that rigging has been done. And then, there is likely to follow the violence that some significant groups have been preparing for, and the rolling out of the sophisticated weapons that various groups have built up. And what may follow after that is impossible to tell – other than that countless Nigerians may lose their lives, that more may be displaced from their homes, and that the widening chaos may overflow and drown much of Africa.

    And yet – and yet – no notable Nigerian group is urging that the persons who rule and lead Nigeria should stop and look into this whole situation. No notable group is seriously suggesting that concerted efforts be made to halt the looming disaster. All that the rulers and influential politicians are talking about, all they are bent on securing, is “victory” – that is, victory for their own particular groups and desires. Simultaneously with the scenes of President Goodluck Jonathan’s victorious and jubilant declaration of his candidacy for the 2015 presidential election in Abuja last week, there appeared on television worldwide the horrifying sight of tens of Nigerian students who were blown to pieces at about the same time by a suicide bomber in a college in the Nigerian Northeast.  To the sane world, Nigeria has become something unknown, unknowable, and baffling.

  • ‘Election rigging will continue in Nigeria until…’

    Aremo Taiwo Allimi is a veteran broadcaster and currently the chairman of the Nigeria Elections Debate Group. In this interview with Assistant Editor, Yetunde Oladeinde, he talks about the forthcoming general elections and its challenges, insecurity and the problem of leadership among other issues. Excerpts

    THE 2015 general election is around the corner. Do you think the nation is ready for the elections?

    Quite often we refer to Nigeria as a democratic country but I believe we are still in transition to democracy. Every four years, you do elections and Nigerians now know that INEC has announced that there would be elections in 2015. That means that both the electorate and the political parties must be preparing right now, to pursue how to have free, fair and credible elections. But what is important is that even with INEC, with the political parties and with elections due in February; there are no serious politicking outside what we call engaging in how to get nomination as candidates. I don’t think we have serious good timing for the February elections. Political parties have not held their conventions; primary elections are not taking place to select candidates. Therefore, we simply must pray to God to assist us.  With the development in Nigeria today, the question is not whether we are ready but that we don’t know the candidates for the presidential election which is the first. We don’t know who the political parties have now given to Nigerians as their respective candidates.

    What do you think is responsible for this?

    What is responsible is the case of those who presently occupy political elective offices who want to go again. They would now be doing electoral maneuvering in their respective political parties. Those who are not in office and want the office are now fighting within their respective political parties as to who should become the candidate. The major situation in Nigeria is that there is an abuse of political office, an abuse of privilege. This is not good for the electorate.

    In the past, when there wasn’t this kind of confusion and we had what was described as free and fair elections, we still had problems. What does this scenario portend for the country?

    Well, I don’t know what past you are referring to.

    The June 12 election in 1993 was for example adjudged to be free and fair but it was annulled.

    That was not exactly what I was talking about. What I am saying is that we do not have a democracy in Nigeria. We only have attempts at civilian administration. Even when we had June 12 annulment, we had a military administration that wanted to go into civilian administration and not necessarily a democracy. So that was the power of the military to annul elections. Therefore what is serious and essential is that in 1982, I had made a public statement that rigging is a sub-culture in Nigeria .Therefore, until you democratize the system, elections, whether you like it or not, would continue to be rigged. They would still be rigging the elections in Nigeria until you are able to reform the political situation in the country. But a lot of people are not taking a look at that and that was where the National Conference came in.

    The national conference has come and gone. They put together a report but what is happening to the report? What do they want to do with the report? There is no way the present National Assembly, the present Federal Government, would implement the recommendations of the report of the National conference. Therefore, you have a problem there.

    You are right and I still believe in my 1982 statement that rigging is a sub-culture in Nigeria and rigging is not really perfected on rigging day. Rigging has been done long before the election. All political parties in Nigeria rig elections.

    Added to the confusion of the political class is the problem of Boko Haram and general insecurity. What can be done to save the situation?

    Whether it is Boko Haram or Ebola virus, what you have in Nigeria is simply bad governance. That is what has brought all these. For you to have enduring good governance in Nigeria, we must change from top-to-bottom to bottom-to-top approach to governance.Some people say we are a peculiar nation and we have our peculiar problems. What do we make of our peculiarities?

    There is no such thing as Nigeria being peculiar. Nigeria remains the most blessed nation on earth given all the resources the Almighty has given to the country. That is one aspect of our nation, the most populous country in the black world. We are blessed with all the resources but we do not use it well. So, there is no such thing as Nigeria being a peculiar country. What is happening in Nigeria is bad governance and bad governance through bad leadership. And until you have good leadership, you won’t have good governance. So, there is nothing peculiar to us. What we need is good leadership and we do not have that in Nigeria today. That is all.

    Apart from leadership, some also believe that the followership is faulty?

    I don’t agree with that; any person who is saying that is partisan. Today, over 90 percent of the population is hardworking, industrious and very honest people. You wake up very early in the morning you would find ordinary Nigerians carrying their baskets and going to sell. Therefore people should not believe this statement. The leadership is bad. Finish.  It has nothing to do with followership. Even the electorate, what is the percentage of those who vote during elections? It is very few. Therefore, what we need in Nigeria is good leadership, the followership are already there. But for the informal sector which is the private sector, you would have not less than 99 percent of the youth that would be jobless. The private sector is the leading employer of labour in Nigeria. What has that got to do with followership? You know that the average market woman has two or three workers with her and then you have the small scale industries, the medium scale industries all over the country not relying on government. Therefore, followership has to do with the public sector. But for the informal sector, Nigeria would have collapsed. Many firms in the organised private sector have relocated to Ghana but those who fry chips are not relocating. That is why we must take a look at it.

    You just mentioned that some businesses are relocating to Ghana. One of the reasons for relocating is electricity. Now that the sector has been privatised, do you think we are in the right direction?

    Not at all; we are not in the right direction in terms of electricity supply in Nigeria. What is critical about electricity is that the economy is not giving attention to what ought to be done. And what ought to be done is not just to privatise. What ought to be done is not the trading or the monetary aspect but for the government to put money there for individuals through the privatisation. We have enough resources and facilities to have 24 hour electricity supply in this country but government is not paying serious attention at all. And to give it to some people who now decided that we would call it power holding is bad. This is because they want to be holding power supply and government approved that as a name and they have been holding the power. The same people are the ones who went to form new companies, did bidding and won. We simply do not have serious leadership in Nigeria.

    Still talking about electricity, some people are calling for alternative sources of energy to tackle the problem, what do you think about this?

    That is part of why I am saying government is not serious. You must go to several sources of giving power to the people in terms of electricity and then you must move from bottom up. You must concentrate on rural electrification. Once you are able to do that in the rural areas where over 70 percent of Nigerians are and not just in the urban areas, things would get better. Rural electrification is critical and all the other sources must be explored. Government has no excuse not to have done this in the last four or 10 years. That they have not done it means that they do not care, since they can afford generators and the poor cannot afford generators.

    The media which is the fourth estate of the realm should checkmate the system. How would you assess the performance of the media?

    Today’s media is compromised and this is due largely to bad system of approving licenses for those who want to establish media organs. For instance, if you take print, there is no serious regulatory agency for the print media in Nigeria. If you talk of electronic, radio and television, it is the same thing. Therefore, media organs are all compromised today. How this can change is to have serious media regulatory agencies.

    As long as we don’t have that, people would not have correct information about public affairs that affect their lives.

    Let’s also talk about one or two memorable moment while you were practising full time as a journalist?

    First is when I was with NTA channel 10 in Victoria Island around 1979. I was very happy, first it was a federal government organisation and I had a week night programme called Lagos Report (Monday to Friday).

    Every night, I gave critique to federal government’s parastatals and policies that were bad. At that time, General Olusegun Obasanjo was the Military Head of State and people were saying how come a federal government organ was so critical of initiatives that were bad? General Obansanjo caled my leaders: Christopher Kolade, late Ambassador Segun Olushola and Vincent Maduka. He called them to Dodan Barracks and told them that they should remove me from the programme. They asked why and he said I was embarrassing them by critiquing their programmes and policies. Dr Kolade then asked him to tell them where he had lied on air and he said no. Then they said if Taiwo Allimi is saying the truth then you should learn from that and make the necessary corrections. That was leadership of the industry, not now.

  • Warning against election rigging in the South-west

    The virulent disease that is killing Nigeria is the belief by those who control the powers and resources of the federal government that it is their right and prerogative to control all things and all choices in all corners of Nigeria. Whoever is President lives in the deluded belief that he simply determines and does all things in Nigeria – takes all decisions, authorizes, countermands, or stops, the smallest pieces of infrastructure, decides who will hold all public positions, and dictates who will win elections anywhere in Nigeria.

    The symptoms of this destructive delusion showed up immediately at independence in 1960. At independence, an alliance of the NPC (the party ruling the Northern Region) and the NCNC (the party ruling the Eastern Region) controlled the federal government. A third party, the Action Group (the party ruling the Western Region), formed the official opposition in the federal parliament. In the perverted thinking of the NPC-NCNC allies, it was utterly unacceptable to them that they were not controlling the Western Region too. They were not prepared to wait until the next western regional election to try and win the Western Region; they were obsessed with using federal power to grab the Western Region immediately. And so they embarked upon plotting to disrupt the Western Region in order to destroy its government and appoint their own nominee as ruler there. From 1962, they achieved their purposes over the Western Region – shut down the elected regional government, enthroned a sole administrator, and blatantly rigged the elections. In those insane actions, the Federal Government of Nigeria at independence established the pattern for the political future of Nigeria – and the path to Nigeria’s ultimate destruction.

    Every Federal Government of Nigeria has trodden that path since then. The military dictators of 1966 to 1999 did it very atrociously. Since 1999, every presidency has done it. The Jonathan presidency is doing it totally mindlessly now.

    Officials of the federal government have always commanded unlimited financial resources, have always enjoyed unrestrained freedom to use such resources without accountability, and have always blatantly used the money to “settle”, subvert and emasculate enough influential citizens in any part of Nigeria. Consequently, they never lack enough eminent citizens to assist them in their crimes against our country, and against our people.

    State elections are due in Osun and Ekiti states of the South-west soon – before the end of this year, probably hidden under the shadow of the National Conference which is expected to commence soon. Already, the cry is up that the federal agency responsible for elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), is already manipulating the registration of voters for these two elections. We heard this kind of distress cry in Anambra State recently, when a gubernatorial election was on there. The Anambra election was rigged – so badly rigged that the international community had to take notice and even raise voices. The elections in Osun and Ekiti states will be rigged too – unless enough resistance is mounted by those who want democracy in Nigeria and the world. The resistance starts now.

    But, first, a note about identities. Gbogun Gboro does not belong to, support, oppose, or represent, any Nigerian political party. That has always been obvious in this column. Gbogun Gboro springs from the accumulated, and by now enormous, Yoruba Diaspora, with great and rising influences in all parts of the world. Because many of the most educated Nigerians have had to flee the Nigerian mess in recent decades and seek opportunities in other lands, almost every Nigerian nationality now has a very substantial Diaspora across the world, each dedicated to the well-being of its own people in Nigeria, and to an orderly and stable Nigeria in which every citizen, and every nationality, can thrive. From intensive researches by an intellectual section of the Yoruba Diaspora, we are confident that the Yoruba nation owns great cultural assets that can give the Yoruba nation a decent, progressive and prosperous society in the modern world. We have no doubt that being part of a chaotic country like Nigeria is seriously hurting the well-being of our Yoruba nation (and of other Nigerian nationalities). We are resolved to resist the destructive effects of Nigeria on our Yoruba nation, and to contribute dedicatedly to the making of an orderly, stably democratic, and prosperous Nigeria (in which our Yoruba nation and the other nations can prosper together). Above all, and urgently, we are committed to reviving and re-energizing our Yoruba nation – in the context of Nigeria if possible, out of Nigeria if Nigeria’s resistance to change and improvement should make that necessary.

    This is why we are focused now, among other things, on the issue of elections. For about 1000 years, we Yoruba have operated a monarchical political system in which selection of rulers (kings, chiefs and other leaders) by the people have been the rule and the practice. We attach great importance to fairness and integrity in the selection of our rulers. We know that, when selections are handled without integrity, the usual result is conflicts and troubles in the community. In our history, there were instances when whole towns broke up because of these kinds of conflicts and troubles. As a nation, we do not play games with the selection of our rulers. And when, in the 1950s, the British introduced ballot-box elections to Nigeria, we Yoruba in the South-west brought our traditional integrity into the new system. No Yoruba leader or party tried to rig elections. Even our most powerful political leaders had serious opponents who gave them good fights at elections. In the federal election of 1954, the opposition party in our region beat the party in power in the region. We heard stories of tampering with elections in some other parts of Nigeria, or of the power of government being used there to harass and frustrate candidates, but we never had such things in our region. We were a confidently growing democracy.

    When the controllers of the federal government launched the attack on our Western Region in 1962-5, they immediately struck down our democracy and introduced truculent practices of election manipulation. At last in late 1965, we could no longer tolerate it. We exploded in a big and stubborn revolt which went on until some elements of the military had to step in and destroy the civilian government. However, even after this, the rigging of elections did not go away. But, each time elections have been rigged in the Yoruba South-west, it has provoked our people into serious reactions – often leading to the violent deaths of many of our youths.

    Let the notice be sounded therefore that there are quite formidable forces in the wider world now that will rise and fight any attempt to rig any more elections in the homeland of the Yoruba in Nigeria. And the most powerful forces in the international community will be roused too.

    And let it be repeated that this is not about any party or politician. It is about preserving the qualitative cultural assets of the Yoruba nation for the benefit of the Yoruba nation in the world.