The Nation Newspaper

Tag: ELECTION

  • Will presidential election be decided by hate campaign?

    Will presidential election be decided by hate campaign?

    For nearly three months now, the two main contending parties in the presidential election, the All Progressives Congress (APC), the main opposition party, and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), the ruling party at the centre, have been seriously engaged in vigorous electoral campaigns for support in the forthcoming presidential election. There is a lot at stake for both parties and a hard fought and robust election campaign is an essential part of the democratic process. The electoral situation is more fluid today than ever before. Marginal votes are likely to be significant and these can swing the election one way or the other between the two main contending parties. Despite this, the public still expects that the election campaign should be conducted in a civilised and civil manner, with the main focus being placed on the critical political and economic issues of the day.

    Sadly, this is not the case now as this is increasingly looking more like a rancorous, hateful and divisive campaign, instead of one with the real focus on the critical issues of the day. It is perfectly understandable that the two main contending parties, the PDP and the APC, should engage themselves in a robust manner in the election campaign. But this is no justification for the resort to the kind of foul language the public is being treated to in the course of this electoral campaign. All decent persons must find this development reprehensible. We have been having elections in Nigeria long before independence in 1960 and after. But I cannot recall previous election campaigns in Nigeria that have generated such hateful and indecorous language as this one. Nigeria’s four pre-independence leaders, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Sardauna, and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, refrained during election campaigns from calling one another names, or heaping insults and vile attacks on their political opponents. The political rivalry among them was very intense, but they deliberately refrained from personal attacks on one another. Whatever their political differences, they were decent men and conducted themselves decorously. Only during the disgraceful era of Akintola/Fani-Kayode’s dirty politics were the electorate and the Nigerian public treated to such scurrilous and foul attacks on their political opponents as we now have it.

    In this current campaign climate of hate, and resort to ethnic and religious divides, the PDP, the ruling party, has been guiltier than any of its political opponents. Shopworn lies are constantly being concocted, fabricated and peddled by some of the party’s roughnecks, veterans of street fighting and, beerhouse brawls.  Femi Fani-Kayode, head of the PDP publicity in the elections who like his deceased father, Remi Fani-Kayode, is a Cambridge educated lawyer, has constantly hauled personal attacks and insults on General Muhammadu Buhari, the APC presidential candidate. He is certainly not a proud product of Cambridge, that genteel and sedate university. President Goodluck Jonathan has not yet disassociated himself from this hateful campaign. In fact, he seems to encourage it.

    Femi Fani-Kayode claimed falsely that Buhari did not have the school certificate, the basic requirement for contesting the elections. When he was proved wrong, he came up with other incredible lies regarding Buhari’s Chatham House lecture, which were equally debunked. More recently, he claimed that the fuel crisis in the country was the handiwork of the APC, the main opposition party. Again, his allegation proved to be false as the crisis was due to the refusal of the oil marketers, who were being owed money by the PDP Federal Government to import refined oil. Femi Fani-Kayode has neither admitted his mistake in this regard, nor apologised to the nation for his misleading remarks. Governor Ayo Fayose has been equally totally unrestrained in his verbal attacks on General Buhari, going as far as to warn that if he won Buhari would die in office. This is most uncharitable and has been roundly condemned in the country. It is a real pity that Jonathan has chosen these indecorous propagandists to lead his campaign. They have done his campaign more harm than good. But what else should we expect when President Jonathan himself irreverently dismissed former President Olusegun Obasanjo as ‘a motor park tout’. How can he then call his men to order?

    In contrast to the desperate campaign of the PDP, the opposition party, the APC, has been more restrained in its approach to the electoral campaign. It has conducted a brilliant, skilful and impressive electoral campaign that has fully exploited the weakness of the PDP Federal Government. It has refused to be drawn into personal attacks on President Jonathan, Buhari’s opponent in the election. Instead, it has identified the main issues on which the elections should really be fought, namely massive corruption in the PDP Federal Government, colossal mismanagement of the national economy, Nigeria’s woeful infrastructure, the increasingly violent Boko Haram insurgency that has led to thousands of death in Nigeria, the vast number of the internally-displaced refuges in our country and Jonathan’s Abuja land grab.

    To some extent, ensuing economic and political events have also been broadly favourable to the APC. The falling oil prices, the 30 per cent devaluation of the naira, the continuing dispute over how much money exactly is missing from the national accounts, and the inability of the PDP Federal Government to maintain security, law and order in the country have all contributed to the growing unpopularity of the PDP in the country. The APC has wisely anchored its campaign on the inherent incompetence and inability of the PDP to run a clean, honest, transparent and effective government in the country. Its poor record on employment, creation of jobs, reduction of poverty level in the country has been its Achilles heel. The Nigerian economy may be the largest in Africa. But Nigeria, under this PDP government, has one of the lowest par capita incomes in Africa. Evidently, the man in the street is mystified that the country is so rich but that its people are so poor, and that there is still such mass poverty in the middle of such opulence in the country.

    The resort to vile language and personal insults by agents of the PDP shows quite clearly that its campaign has no real merit and that the party cannot defend its appalling record in office. Vast sums of money, most of it public funds, illicitly acquired, are being expended by the party to bribe the churches, the mosques, and the traditional rulers. But it is doubtful, given the structure of Nigerian politics, that this will have any effect on the electoral fortunes of the party in the March elections. In the case of Afenifere that has so shamelessly and so strangely declared its support for President Jonathan, its support is worth little or nothing to the PDP. Afenifere is no longer the formidable political organisation or movement that it once was. None of its present leaders can win elections in the Southwest. They have become irrelevant in the politics of the Southwest where their political influence has fallen considerably. Equally, the traditional rulers in the Southwest that President Jonathan has been trying desperately to woo have little or no influence on the electorate in the region. Even in Ife, the Ooni, the leader of the pack, has little or no political influence now. So trying to bribe the Obas is a waste of money, time and effort. They cannot deliver the votes Jonathan needs to win the elections, if they are free and fair.

    Instead of focusing its attention on the real issues of the elections and defending its record in office, the PDP has been trying desperately to scuttle it. First, it fraudulently procured a shift in the date of the elections. Then it rejected the use of the voters’ card reader for which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was provided by the PDP Federal Government with the necessary funds. Then its leading spokesmen, particularly Chief Edwin Clark, the self-acclaimed ‘god father’ of President Jonathan, attacked Professor  Attahiru Jega, the fair-minded chairman of INEC, demanding his premature suspension from office. Altogether, the PDP has run a negative electoral campaign, which is counterproductive. It has alienated quite a lot of the few uncommitted voters and will not secure for Jonathan the marginal votes he needs to win the election.

    It must be said to the credit of Buhari that he has stood above the petty electioneering of the PDP propagandists. He has looked more confident, charismatic and presidential than Jonathan, his main opponent. He has refused to be drawn into any negative campaign, preferring instead to focus on the main issues of the day. He has his own faults too, but on the basis of his campaign strategy and his steady and unwavering commitment to defining the real issues of the elections, many consider him to be a far better candidate than Jonathan. He deserves to win the presidential election.

  • Niger East by-election: PDP, INEC lose appeal

    The Court of Appeal in Abuja on Monday dismissed two appeals filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Niger State and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), against the verdict of the National Assembly Election Tribunal, which declared David Umaru of the All Progressives Congress (APC) winner of the Niger East senatorial by-election.

    The court also reserved judgment in the appeal filed by Dr. Shem Zagbayi Nuhu of the PDP challenging his removal by the election tribunal as the senator elected at the August 30 and September 6, 2014 Niger East senatorial by-election.

    The independent appeals filed by the PDP and INEC were struck out by the Court of Appeal panel comprising Justice A. D. Yahaya, Justice T. Akomolafe Wilson and Justice J. E. Ekane, on technical ground, as the two appellants failed to transmit the records of proceedings of the lower court that ruled on the matter to the Court of Appeal.

    The court adopted the briefs by both parties on the appeal filed Dr. Shem Zagbayi Nuhu, which prayed the court to set aside the judgment of the National Assembly Election Tribunal that quashed his victory as the Niger East senator- elect.

    Nuhu argued that the tribunal erred in law by acting on the dumped documents. He also argued that the petitioner (David Umar) called only 33 witnesses out of 111 polling units during the trial.

    Counsel to the petitioner, Ibrahim Mujaheed, raised preliminary objection to Nuhu’s appeal.

    He said the documents presented at the tribunal were not dumped but presented by witnesses on oath and tendered as exhibits after INEC’s confirmation before the court.

    Mujaheed told the court that the documents were not tendered through the Bar but by witnesses and that they were deemed read in court session after INEC’s confirmation of the documents as certified true copies.

    The appeal panel, after hearing both parties, adjourned judgment on the preliminary objection and the adopted reply and briefs by both parties to a date yet to be fixed.

    Reacting, the petitioner said the dismissal of the PDP and INEC appeal suits at the appeal court was a major victory for the rule of law and for democracy.

    Umaru said he was optimistic of victory in Nuhu’s appeal.

    The National Assembly Election Tribunal for Niger East senatorial by-election on January 30 in Minna returned Umaru, the APC candidate, as the lawful winner of the by-election after voiding votes in several polling units due to malpractices and non-compliances with the Electoral Act.

     

  • Election cold feet: the dying gasp of a ruling party or of the Nigerian predators’ republic?

    Election cold feet: the dying gasp of a ruling party or of the Nigerian predators’ republic?

    Cold feet: (1) apprehension or doubt strong enough to prevent a planned course of action. (2) to have ‘cold feet’ is to be fearful to undertake or complete an action.
    Dictionary.com (online)

    One of the most interesting revelations made by the INEC Chairman, Professor Atahiru Jega, during his appearance at the Senate on February 18, 2015 was the fact that for the Ekiti State gubernatorial elections in June 2014, only about a third of the Permanent Voters’ Cards produced for the election was collected by registered voters. This, in effect, means that les than 35% of PVC’s produced were collected. Although this revelation is interesting for many reasons, I will mention only three of such reasons.

    First, it shows a depressing level of voter apathy in EkKiti state, an apathy so vast that it more or less constitutes a danger to the survival of democracy in that particular state, if not indeed in the whole of our country. Secondly, it shows that in Ekiti State as in many other states of Nigeria and many other countries of the world, voter apathy provides no justification for the postponement or cancellation of elections. It is not an inspiring thing to say, but voter apathy is an aspect of electoral politics in the world, including even the most stable bourgeois democracies on the planet. The antidote for it is not postponement or cancellation of scheduled elections; rather, it is the institution of policies and actions that expand popular participation of all segments of the population in democratic governance, most especially in economic and social affairs. If the benefits of democracy reach the most marginalized, if the gap between the haves and the have-nots are significantly decreased, if people across the board feel satisfied that they have rulers who listen to them, voter apathy substantially decreases. The third and perhaps the most important reason why Jega’s revelation about the low collection rate of PVC’s in the Ekiti State gubernatorial elections of June 2014 is of great interest today is the fact that the PDP at that time was quite satisfied to go ahead with the elections despite the extremely low rate of PVC collection. Today, the story is very different and that is the thing that I wish to reflect upon in this piece.

    Of all the registered parties in the country, the PDP is the only party at the present time making noises about the collection of PVC’s. Two weeks before the formerly scheduled date of February 14 for the presidential elections, collection of PVC’s had already reached 65%, a figure more than twice the figure for the June 2014 Ekiti State governorship elections. At the present time and as revealed during Jega’s appearance before the Senate on February 18, collection of PVC’s countrywide has reached 75.9%. And yet, the PDP is shouting to the high heavens that presumably unless collection of PVC’s reaches 100%, the elections cannot and must not be held. If, dear reader, you wish to know why it was okay with the PDP to go ahead with the Ekiti State elections in June 2014 with less than 35% of PVC’s collected and why it is not okay now for the same party to go ahead with elections with 75.9% PVC collection rate, look no further than what in the title of this piece I am calling “election cold feet”. Permit me to give a few other indications beside PVC collection rate of this malaise of “election cold feet’ that, in our own symbolic Ides of March, has suddenly stricken the ruling party.

    The most dramatic dates in the etiology of this malaise that now afflicts the ruling party are February 2 and 5, 2015. As I have previously written in this column, on February 2 in Abuja and before a world press conference, the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshall Alex Badeh, the Chief of Army Staff, General Kenneth Minimah and the Chief of Air Staff, Air Vice Marshall Adesola Amosu all affirmed that the Nigerian armed forces were in a state of complete readiness for February 14, the scheduled date for the 2015 presidential election. They made this assertion in response to then growing rumours that the elections were going to be postponed. However, three days later, on February 5, these same men, together with the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Usman Jibrin, completely reversed themselves and wrote the infamous letter to Jega saying that the armed forces were not ready for the scheduled February 14 date and needed six weeks in which to bring the Boko Haram insurgency to the minimum level of containment that could free the armed forces to assure countrywide security during the elections. To date, these Service Chiefs have given no reason, no justification whatsoever for why they reversed themselves. The reason for this is not difficult to discern for in what language, in what rational codes of military strategy and tactics can they explain the “election cold feet” of their Commander-in-Chief, Goodluck Jonathan. For this is what explains the gap between those fateful dates, February 2 and 5, 2015: about slightly more than a week to February 14, the President realized that the collection rate of PVC’s was not enough as an excuse to postpone or scuttle the elections and assuage his growing election cold feet; something more “weighty” and more inscrutable was needed. And for that the Service Chiefs willingly reversed the assurances they had given on February 2.

    I may be wrong, but I don’t think we have ever encountered “election cold feet” in the history of electoral politics in our country. Massive, messy and violent rigging of elections, yes. Election returns in which the figure recorded for actual voters is higher than the figure of registered voters, yes. Elections in which a declared or eventual victor happened not to have been on the ballot, yes. But never, never “election cold feet”. Thus, as the new or postponed dates of March 28 and April 11 draw nearer, the “cold feet” of the PDP, as a unique and special kind of electoral malaise, has risen to the level of a raging, feverish inferno of total unwillingness to have elections or to have elections only on terms completely controlled by the ruling party. Thus, this very week, Ayo Fayose, the Ekiti State Governor, the antihero of Ekiti-Gate, a man for whom the level of impunity in obscenity and bad faith is bottomless, Ayo Fayose has this week been screaming “sack Atahiru Jega and the skies will not fall!”

    For obvious reasons, for most people in our country and among interested forces in the larger international community, “election cold feet” is all too transparent as the disease of a ruling party that is so terrified of a resounding electoral defeat that it will do everything possible not to face the electorate. For this reason, there have been speculations as to just what it is that makes the PDP so terrified of going before the Nigerian electorate. Some talk of a power lust that is fueled by the money lust of an administration that has overtaken all previous records in the looting and mismanagement of the nation’s wealth and the public purse. Others talk of the terror of what a new administration will do to the kingpins of the PDP, the revelations, the exposures with which, for months and years, we will be inundated after May 29, 2015, the inauguration date for the new administration. Others talk of the fear, the certitude even of the bosses of the PDP that once the party loses its hold on federal or central power in Abuja, it will simply wither away as a national party since it has never forged any organic or viable links to hold it together as a party beyond the sharing of loot, the spoils of office and the actual and symbolic uses of power. All this is true and especially of characters like the Ekiti State Governor, Fayose. Where in the world can he run to after May 29, 2015?

    I suggest that we need to look well beyond the anxieties and fears of the ruling party as we ponder the ramifications of the PDP’s election cold feet. There are many reasons for this. In the first place, in the intensity of the current fierce struggles to defeat the PDP’s desperate efforts to scuttle the elections, many people are beginning to slide ever so slightly into a terribly complacent presupposition that because we are all determined to have the elections against the PDP’s calculations, we are all APC diehards. I speak for myself but I hope that I speak for many others in asserting most vigorously that my total commitment against the PDP’s efforts to deprive the Nigerian electorate of the civic and constitutional right to exercise their choice directly through the ballot box and not at the behest of the Service Chiefs is a value in itself and is not attached to the electoral fortunes of the APC or any other party. Let me express this idea in a more concrete form: I wish, oh how I wish that the PDP’s election fever is the last, dying gasp, not just of the ruling party, the PDP, but of the entire Nigerian predators’ republic that has been at the helm of affairs in our country at the center in Abuja and in the states since 1999. But I know that this is not the case. The road to that will be long and hard. This brings to my mind the Chinese adage which states that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Defeating the PDP’s election cold feet is, in the light of this Chinese adage, the first step in a long, long journey. Let that first step commence, firmly and resolutely.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Jonathan and Ekiti election scandal

    Few people are likely to be surprised that the Jonathan administration has not reacted to the recording released by Sahara Reporters in which a junior defence minister claims that he was mandated by the president” to draft a couple of army officers to facilitate and coordinate a subversion of the  2014 Ekiti governorship elections. Having personalised state security institutions, and having become accustomed to suborning law-enforcement agencies for partisan, often criminal, political assignments, any president overcome with hubris enough to play the strongman can afford to treat the people with contempt. Incidentally, barring a columnist’s comments, as well as brief stories from some newspapers, the public has maintained a funereal silence over this horrifying revelation. Does this seeming lack of interest imply a feeling amongst the populace that the country has, in any case, opted out of the civilised world, owing to the barbarity of Nigerian rulers, and their impunity-hardened proclivity for criminality?

    Or, perhaps Nigerians themselves have become indifferent to their own collective plight because everybody is preoccupied with “claiming” his personal material salvation in accordance with the individualism-ethos of miracle-peddling Pentecostal neo-Christianity? That none of our civil-society associations has so far raised its voice over this affair – NLC, NBA, Roman Catholic Bishops and Guild of Editors – also gives the impression that one and all have taken the Sahara Reporters’ revelation as no more than the latest token of the moral collapse of the Nigerian state.

    Nevertheless, I am personally surprised that Jonathan’s no. 1 attack dog has not been fuming with righteous indignation at what would, if untrue, be outrageous slander of his master’s reputation. This must indeed also be an awkward time for even the urbane artists at white-washing sepulchers. But, what can the smartest geniuses at advertising deep-black as sparkling white (depending on circumstances and inducements) do in this difficult-to-deny involvement of the president in a subversion of the electoral process? For now, these professional equivocators appear to be waiting for it to blow over, seeing their boss, like the proverbial dog fated to be lost, can no longer hear the hunter’s horn.

    In a situation like this concerning the alleged involvement of powerful people in serious crime for which they have not been formally charged, and over which they themselves are keeping silent, perhaps the only way to go is by the law of probabilities. The main issue, then, is what is already known about the abuses to which the Jonathan government has often subjected the security forces, including the military, during national elections.

    All Nigerian rulers, right from Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, have always considered it part of their prerogative to use the army for partisan political interests, including influencing the conduct of elections. However, in matters of scale, and in the brazenness of the abuse, Jonathan would appear to have been far more daring than his predecessors. It was in the Ekiti elections of June 2014, conducted when the Boko Haram insurgency which began five years earlier was still fiercely raging, that the largest numbers of troops so far were deployed for elections. Yet, the polling was far outside the theatre of the insurrection. Apart from the regular army, the Ekiti elections, as well as the ones in Osun two months later, for the first time in the country’s history, witnessed a number of uniformed, gun-toting masked men. These “soldiers” it was subsequently learnt, were used to pick up opposition party candidates, along with party officials and agents, to be either locked up, or guarded by the uniformed and masked, party thugs for the two or so days the elections lasted. Some of these masked soldiers of spurious provenance also went about the streets of Ekiti and Osun towns, shooting into the air, intimidating the populace, and causing consternation and panic. It is also instructive that during the Ekiti elections, two state governors, who are members of the APC opposition party, were prevented by soldiers from entering the state. A “chieftain” of the ruling party, a professional political thug with obnoxious reputation, from Anambra State, was however escorted by soldiers to Ekiti where local opposition politicians had already been put away to ensure that they could not monitor the process and conduct of the elections either at the polls, or at the collation centres.

    A number of questions are pertinent at this point: Were the soldiers who prevented Governors Rotimi Amaechi and Adams Oshiomhole from entering Ekiti to monitor the elections, and those who escorted Chris Uba to the state not acting under orders? What duties, under the constitution were the police minister and junior defence minister, in Ekiti to perform during ‘the elections? And finally, why were the opposition party men incarcerated during the course of the elections, only to be released without charges immediately after? Whoever can adequately explain away these questions in relation to the mysteries of what actually transpired at the Ekiti governorship elections, can as well cast doubt on the audio, and now even the video, recordings, of the conclave of criminals, haggling over how to rig the elections.

    Short of a personal confession, it is obvious that only a judicial pronouncement can determine whether Jonathan indeed authorised a subversion of the Ekiti governorship polls. I am only, like any citizen is entitled to, expressing dismay at the president and his administration pretending that they are unaware of the grave allegations about their involvement. Equally grave are the implications for the president’s person and office, and for the image of the country and its people. This is as if Richard Nixon and his administration were to keep mum when the Watergate story’s dirty ramifications began to unfold. Even if Jonathan, in his usual self-and-office- compromising attitude, does not “give a damn” about what Nigerians think of his excesses, does he also not care about the standards and values which prevail in the conduct of public affairs in civilised countries, and about the opinions and feelings concerning pariahs that dare defy and defile these international usages? ‘Unfortunately, whether he takes these things into consideration or not, it is the country which ultimately suffers, just like during the regime of Sani Abacha, whose infamy Jonathan seems to be now aiming at surpassing.

    In view of the above, Jonathan should immediately empower the Chief Justice of the Federation to set up an independent panel of inquiry into the Sahara Reporters’ revelations. Should the president fail to do this, the Nigeria Bar Association should proceed to organise the probe.

    While the issue of Nigeria’s image in the international community over the Ekiti governorship elections affair is of the utmost importance, a far more crucial issue is the implications of the scandal for the current situation in Nigeria itself. In one respect, the Sahara Reporters’ revelations could not have come at a more appropriate occasion. Today, Nigeria again seems to be drifting into another crisis of political succession, a situation generated in the main by the ambitions of an incumbent ruler to do what other presidents before him have brazenly gotten away with – namely, to appropriate state powers to manipulate the electoral process to his advantage and that of his party. The eight-year rule of the loathsome moral nihilist, Babangida, was a study, as well as a variation of some sort, in this tragic political chicanery. Nor was the Obasanjo presidency much different. (In this context, I believe it is high time Abdulsalaami Abubakar, came before Nigerians to apologise for the stable-institution-inhibiting, and the pro-one-party dictatorship of a fraudulent constitution that he imposed on the country in 1999).

    Given Jonathan’s constricted and clannish worldview, unredeemed by weak character, he thinks that to fail in his bid for a second term in power would be tantamount to discrimination against him because of his ethnic origin. Hence he does not seem to care whether his schemes for re-election bring the country crashing down over his head. Jonathan should rather see his entitlement to enjoy the prerogative of even appointing the INEC chairman (not to talk of otherwise influencing elections) as comparable to exercising the antiquated divine right of kings. For, when the people decided to terminate such sweeping powers, they chopped off the heads of monarchs who resisted the tide of change. By the way, Jonathan swore to uphold something called the Nigerian constitution. So what does the faith he wears like his trademark hat say about allegiance to this sacred document? Perhaps his crowd of spiritual advisors should remind him.

  • Group warns against interim govt, election shift

    A Human rights group, Nigerians United for Democracy (NUD), has cautioned the Presidency and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) against any act that could truncate the nation’s democracy

    The group said, based on his body language, President Goodluck Jonathan is tilting towards the convocation of an interim government.

    Its National Convener, Comrade Waheed Saka, frowned at the decision to shift the general election, which was initially scheduled to hold on February 14 and 28, saying any further untoward development may spell doom for the country.

    Saka, who spoke at a press conference in Lagos, said his group will join other groups to mobilize Nigerians to protest against the institution of an interim government or a further shift in the election dates.

    He said there are indications that the new election dates are not sacrosanct, as the Chairman, Independent National Electora Commission, Prof. Atahiru Jega was planning to further shift the election dates.

    According to him, “INEC appears not to have fully prepared for the election and recent statement by the INEC Chairman that only the service chiefs could guarantee the conduct of elections was an indication that the elections may still be postponed.”

    However, he stated that the rights activists across the country have resolved to mobilize students, artisans and others to protest against further shift of election dates.

    He urged INEC not to postpone the elections again for any reason, adding that “any attempt to postpone the election will not augur well, as the human rights community will fight the anti-democratic forcesto a standstill.”

    Saka called on the National Security Adviser and all security chiefs in the country to sign an undertaking that the elections would hold as scheduled and that contrary action should be treated with disdain.

  • APC alleges PDP plans to push for new election dates

    APC alleges PDP plans to push for new election dates

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday raised the alarm over the “relentless scheming” by the Goodluck Jonathan Administration and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to push for another postponement of the 2015 general elections, unless they can perfect a rigging plan, and called for the imposition of global sanctions on whoever scuttles the polls.

    In a statement issued in Dubai by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the multi-pronged efforts to prevent the elections from holding as rescheduled include the use of some 23 portfolio political parties to seek a further shift in the election dates and the destabilisation of INEC’s election plan through the orchestrated removal of its Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega.

    It said the “same 23 satellite parties” of the PDP that were used to push for the six-week postponement of the elections have again started testing the waters by pushing for a further shift in the elections in the six states of the North-east, ostensibly to allow the conclusion of the counter-insurgency battle and also to allow those displaced to return home.

    ‘’The plan is to use the same bogey of insecurity in the North-east to push for another postponement in the elections. The signs are ominous indeed. The body language of the President and his party does not support the holding of elections. They are mortally afraid of losing because the use of PVCs and Card Readers have thwarted their rigging plans,’’ APC said.

    The party said while the 23 parties are pushing for the elections to be further postponed, the Jonathan Administration and the PDP are simultaneously forging ahead with their plan to remove Prof. Jega and replace him with a malleable acting Chairman whom, they believe, will do their bidding.

    ‘’Once they remove Jega, his replacement will either seek more time to organise the polls or simply jettison the plan to use Card Readers, thereby opening the door for those who have been buying up PVCs to use them.

    ‘’Is it not interesting that the same Administration that has been flaunting free and fair elections as a key achievement has now gone for the jugular of the same man who organised those polls? Is the man they don’t want not the same person who organised the 2011 polls which the administration has described as free, fair and credible? What has now gone wrong between them and their poster boy for successful elections? it queried.

    APC warned that the consequences of another postponement of the elections will be dire, indeed, especially because it will create a constitutional crisis that is capable of endangering the country’s democracy and destabilising the country in its entirety.

    The party called on Nigerians, especially the civil society, to be very vigilant in the days ahead, as the cloud of uncertainty becomes thicker and the vultures begin to circle.

    It also called on the international community to consider imposing stiff sanctions on key members of the Jonathan Administration if they force another postponement or scuttle the polls.

    ‘’However, we also believe that the international community has a role to play in helping to check the desperadoes who are using the Laurent Gbagbo rule book as if it was made for them, and who will not hesitate to bring the whole system crashing down on all if that is what it will take for them to perpetuate themselves in power.”

  • PDP has conceded defeat before election, says APC campaign

    PDP has conceded defeat before election, says APC campaign

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Organisation has described the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) allegation that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu was nursing a presidential ambition after General Muhammadu Buhari becomes president as a concrete evidence that the party had conceded presidential ticket to the APC.

    Director of Strategic Communications of the APC Presidential Campaign Organisation Mr. Dele Alake said this in a statement yesterday.

    Alake, while analysing the allegation credited to the Director of Media, PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, said the scenario started with the assumption that the APC would win the presidential polls on March 28.

    He said the time-frame of six months for the action to take place meant that Gen. Buhari and Prof. Yemi Osinbajo would have been sworn-in as president and vice president on May 29, 2015.

    “Any psycho-analyst can read the mind of the purveyors of this concoction of falsehood. Their assumption gives away the fact that they themselves accept the certainty of victory of the APC in the presidential election,” Alake said.

    He said the massive support for the APC presidential ticket locally and internationally has inflicted a devastating damage on the psychology of the PDP campaign managers, “leading to an acute case of schizophrenia.”

    Alake said the PDP presidential campaign spokesperson shot himself in the foot in his desperation to spin a conspiracy theory that was childish and merits the condemnation of all right-thinking persons.

    The statement reads: “Our attention has been drawn to a statement credited to the Director of Media of the PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation on the APC and its leaders.

    “Fani-Kayode alleged that Asiwaju Tinubu would become president by asking the Vice President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo to resign after six months in office in the belief that the president, Muhammadu Buhari, may have terminal health challenges.

    “That the message came through Fani-Kayode, who, just a few days ago, was brought to answer corruption charges, makes the message incredulous.  The whole world knows the other reasons for the incredulity of any message delivered through him.

    “However, to the uninformed, there is no iota of truth in such allegation. It is a product of infantile and wild imagination of a convoluted, distorted and warped mind.”

    It added: “In the APC, we do not indulge in oath-taking, pact-signing and such other rituals that the PDP establishment is adept at. Such PDP-induced Okija scenarios have no place in the APC.

    “Prof. Osinbajo is a thorough-bred, accomplished professor, teacher, pastor, mentor and preacher, who is nationally and internationally acknowledged as a man of probity, integrity, transparency and competence, who can never be part of such inanities.

    “Asiwaju Tinubu, on his part, is the foremost national leader of the APC, who has achieved an enviable political status, fame and stature. He has gone far beyond using subterfuge to attain any political position.

    “It is widely known globally that he had been pivotal in midwifing the most potent and formidable opposition movement that has become the nightmare of the incompetent behemoth called the PDP, and to the delight of Nigerians, the desired change they are waiting for.

    “Having lost substantial ground politically and seeing the inevitability of an APC victory at the polls, it is the PDP that is strenuously engaging in all kinds of subterfuge from hurling personal abuses and attacks on Buhari and Tinubu; to election postponement antics; to evading elections at all costs and even the unfashionable idea of foisting an interim government. It is the PDP that is generating crisis to make the elections difficult, if not impossible. Unknown to its campaign machinery, these gimmicks portray the PDP as deep in conclusive disarray.

    “Indeed, the fact that the PDP campaign machinery can construct a post-presidential election scenario in which APC would be in power is a significant testimony of their admission that they have lost this election.

    “We note this mental and psychological concession of victory to our party’s presidential candidate, but reject the odious scenario. Nigerians should please ignore this latest antic because it is untrue, ridiculous, ludicrous, mundane and jejune.”

  • Agenda behind annulment of Feb. 14 election date

    Agenda behind annulment of Feb. 14 election date

    The postponement of the general elections from February 14 and 28 to March 28 and April 11 has thrown up some perinent questions about the role of the military in the electoral process. In this article, Professor of Philosophy and Director-General, Awolowo Centre for Philosophy, Ideology and Good Governance, Osogbo, Osun State, Moses Akinola Makinde (FNAL), argues that the military is acting the script handed to it by the Presidency and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    A few days before the annulment of the February 14 date for the presidential election by President Goodluck Jonathan and the military Service Chiefs, the army, navy and airforce had asserted categorically that they were more than prepared for the election. To the delight of most Nigerians, they even told the nation about the preparations made for the exercise. But, the Service Chiefs who had shown readiness for the election two weeks earlier said the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must shift the date because the President wanted it that way.

    For about five years, the security operatives, especially the military, have been helpless in “crushing” the Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast. Now, just as the election was about two weeks away, the National Security Adviser Col. Sambo Dasuki said “we will crush them in six weeks”. Now, the questions:

    1. How come the same Service Chiefs who had failed to provide security for the people of Borno, Yobe, Adamawa states for five years now decided to do their job only for the sake of postponement of February 14 election? The implication of Dasuki’s statement is that it was the Presidency and the military that were behind the insurgency and the attendant killings of innocent people in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states in the Northeast, a stronghold of the All Progressives Congress (APC), all these years! This means that only those who are behind the problem can solve the problem. We now know why the military and security operatives have refused to stop the insurgency in the region, even after more than N3 billion had been wasted on the matter. It is either to prevent the election or find excuses to postpone it as a result of their unreadiness and unwillingness to perform their constitutional duty of creating a conducive atmosphere for a peaceful election in the APC’s stronghold. By this postponement, they have now exposed their hidden agenda by telling us that what they had willingly failed to do in three years they can now willingly do in six weeks!

    2. The postponement of the elections till March 28 and April 11 was to give the PDP time to prosecute their case against the APC presidential candidate Gen. Muhammadu Buhari’s certificate saga, a case which even the PDP lawyers said could not be won by any stretch of the imagination. As for the claim of perjury being prepared over Buhari’s certificate, Gen. Alani Akinrinde had made the point that the military did not return certificate to their owners and, in most cases, it appeared that these certificates were lost or misplaced by the military. After all, the Vice President claimed that his certificate was lost in an inferno and has not provided any evidence for this with a police report.

    3. Perhaps, the most important and dangerous agendum of Jonathan and the PDP is their plan to “sack” Prof.  Attahiru Jega, the hardworking and totally uncommitted cerebral Chairman of INEC, before the election on March 28. This was another reason behind postponing the election for six weeks; so that Jega would be asked to proceed on terminal leave by the middle of March 2015, until the end of his tenure on June 30, 2015. In this way, he would not be allowed to complete the elections he had started. Jega’s sin was that he, a reputable intellectual that he is, could not afford to soil his hands and reputation by heeding Jonathan’s and the PDP’s instruction to rig election for them at all costs. They now want to appoint a stooge to rig the election in their favour. Of course, Nigerians and the whole world know that Jonathan cannot stop Prof. Jega from completing the assignment he had started about five years ago, which is to conduct the presidential and other elections in 2015. To think that stopping Jega is possible is to demonstrate a high degree of illusion and folly; not even when no new appointment could be made without the consent and approval of the National Assembly. To such hidden agendum, Nigeria and indeed the international community say “no way” to Jonathan. He should stop behaving as if he owns Nigeria, and whatever he wants he gets by force, just as he forced Jega to postpone the election. Prof Jega enjoys the confidence of Nigerians and the international community, while members of his constituency, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), stand behind him as a tested man of integrity and honour, and will stand behind him to the end.

    4. The military’s unholy and dangerous alliance with the Presidency might just be another hidden agendum. Could it be there was a secret pact between the military and the President to precipitate a crisis before or after the election for the army to take over from Jonathan in order to allow him a soft landing instead of facing a Buhari administration? Or could it be a preparation for interim government or tenure elongation, also by the aid of military, that would allow Jonathan to spend another two years to make up for the constitutional limit of 8 years as president, since he cannot be president for 10 years? Under the Nigerian constitution? That is probably why the Service Chiefs said the election was postponed for six weeks “in the first instance”. The second instance may be to create a constitutional crisis that would lead to an army take over in favour of Jonathan. For Jonathan, it is as the Yoruba would say, “kaka ki eku ma je ere, a fi se iwadanu” (instead of the rat not being allowed to eat the peas, it would scatter the peas, so that nobody would be in a position to eat the peas). But, my fear is that this time around, the army cannot succeed, as the result of any army take-over for Jonathan or for themselves would be greater than the Egypt’s or Algeria’s Arab Springs where the whole country stood up for their rights, and eventually the army and the police had no choice but to be on the side of the people. The Nigerian case would be worse because the military had already been perceived to be supporting Jonathan against the people.

    Be all this as it may, both Jonathan and the military have boxed themselves into a corner. Their dilemma is a follows: (1) crush the insurgency in the Northeast in six weeks and admit that the President and the military have been behind and supporting the escalation of the activities of the insurgents for more than five years. (2) Fail to crush the insurgents in the Northeast in six weeks and admit that you want to use the failure as a reason for further postponement in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a military take-over, just to prevent Buhari from ruling the country, and provide a soft landing for Mr. President and his galaxy of sinners against the people of Nigeria. In either case, Jonathan and the military are in great trouble and have questions to answer before Nigerians and the international community. Already, the postponement has already backfired, as more and more Nigerians are now angry and only waiting to nail the coffins of Jonathan and PDP with protest votes at the March 28 and April 11 election.

    The bottom line and the most important of course, is that Professor Jega must complete his assignment of conducting the elections by which he is to be judged for the sake of posterity. You cannot prepare so hard for an examination only to be cruelly prevented from taking the examination for which you have prepared so hard and for so long. The examination must be taken and results of your efforts made known to you and the public. Having told the US and the UN that the election would be free and fair, Jonathan must not confound Nigerians and the international community by a super rigging device i.e. changing the umpire in the last minute in order to give room for rigging of the 2015 election.

  • Mass protest looms if election is shifted again -Balarabe Musa

    Mass protest looms if election is shifted again -Balarabe Musa

    Second Republic governor of the old Kaduna State, Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa, said Nigerians will massively protest any fresh attempt to shift this year’s elections.

    The insurgency in the Northeast, he said yesterday in Kaduna, is not sufficient to warrant further postponement of the polls.

    The Presidential/National Assembly  Elections originally scheduled for February 14 and the Governorship/State Assembly polls fixed for February 28 were shifted to March 28 and April 11 respectively following pressure from the military that its men would not be available this month in view of their engagement with the terror sect, Boko Haram.

    However, Alhaji Musa told reporters at the end of a meeting of his de-registered Peoples Redemption party (PRP) that government should not take Nigerians for a ride any longer  on the issue.

    “If election is shifted again, majority of Nigerians will oppose it, they will demonstrate against it,” he said.

    “Nigerians will come out massively to oppose it because another shift will not be in their interest. Another shift will mean that government wants to remain in power.

    “If ,therefore, a six-week delay is the sacrifice which Nigerians have to make to ensure that every registered voter is given an opportunity to exercise (or not to exercise) his constitutional right to vote, so be it. But Nigerians cannot tolerate another shift of election date.

    “We will not tolerate another shift because we are nobody’s slave; we are free people, and this country is free. This country belongs to all of us, it does not belong to a clique.”

    He added: “Continuation of Boko Haram activities is not an excuse to shift election again because Boko Haram is occupying less than 14 percent of Nigeria. We can tolerate this.

    “We should conduct election in spite of the insurgency. The moment we can have free, fair and transparent elections leading to eligible government in the country, even Boko Haram will respect such government, and they will go to the negotiation table.”

    He deplored the high cost of contesting elections in the country.

    According to him, anyone seeking to be president will require in the region of N50billion to make an impact.

    He also expressed disgust at the deteriorating standard of living in the country saying: “The situation in the country has continued to nosedive and the impact of this on the material well being and circumstances of the mass of our people continues to bite very hard.

    “All of this is happening in the midst of unmitigated profligacy, institutionalised stealing of public resources and the political unaccountability of the ruling classes.

    “When we turn to the security situation in the country, matters are not better. Again, things remain as bad if not worse: Boko Haram continues to wax stronger, in spite of all the exaggerated claims by President Jonathan and his security chiefs that they are on top of the situation.

    “For us in the PRP and other parties and organisations in the Credible Alternative Alliance (CAA) the postponement of the elections was necessary and inevitable, not for the security excuses proffered by INEC, but because of the poor handling of the distribution of Permanent Voter Card, (PVC) by INEC.

    “This is because the right to vote is an entitlement protected by the constitution of the country and so cannot simply be wished away, expunged or nullified by any measure whatsoever, administrative or otherwise, emanating from any government agency and certainly not INEC.”

  • How NLC election’s fiasco was planned, by union leader

    Presidentof the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN), Dr. Ayuba Wabba, has said that plans to frustrate the workers from electing a new leadership was hatched long before the beginning of the delegates’ conference.

    Ayuba, who was one of the presidential candidates in the election, said the plan was put in place early in the year by a group of union leaders who wanted the presidency of the congress ceded to unions in the private sector through undemocratic means.

    Addressing a news conference on the development, Dr. Wabba criticised the system adopted in the printing of the ballot papers.

    The system adopted, he said, was different from what had been used in the past in which names of all candidates for an office were printed on one sheet.

    He denied claims that he was being sponsored by the government for the election, saying: “Those saying that does not know me. If they know me, they will not be saying such things. We know who the real government candidates are.”

    Dr. Wabba also accused members of the credentials committee, who his opponents alleged were planning to rig the election in his favour, as part of those behind the ploy to disrupt the election.

    Opponents of the MHWUN president had accused members of the committee of trying to favour him by printing his name two or more times on the ballot paper booklet.

    “Let me call the attention of the public to the fact that the first attempt to cause confusion began on the second day of the conference when some delegates of NUPENG disrupted the proceedings of the conference by throwing chairs and smashing the head of one of the delegates of the Civil Service Union.

    “All other delegates decided to keep their calm as they have never been part of violence and will want to protect the integrity of NLC,” he stressed.