The cacophony of newspapers’ howling headlines such as ‘APC picks Bello as Audu’s replacement’, ‘Faleke picks Audu’s son as ruining mate’, Kogi’s State House of Assembly threatens to impeach any governor-elect other than Audu’s son’, ‘PDP and Wada pray court to declare Wada governor elect’, that daily hit us on the face, more than confirm the confusion going on in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital.
The confusion as many have argued is a subterfuge by PDP and its INEC sympathizers to destabilise Kogi following their loss of yet another state to APC. And still for many others, the logjam is the price the nation is paying for the indiscretion of President Buhari who many believe did not search deep enough for an independent-minded person that can measure up to the larger than life image of Jega, the immediate past INEC chairman.
Those who speak of conspiracy theory base their analysis on the facts as presented by INEC. There is sufficient evidence to show that the election pronounced ‘inconclusive’ had been won ‘round and square’ by APC candidate. Matters are not helped by the actions and pronouncement of defeated PDP and its candidate who is scheming to reap from the misfortune of Audu in character with PDP that massively rigged elections in 2003, 2007 and which was wrestled to the ground in 2015 by Jega who insisted on the use of card reader machines to check electoral frauds.
Preceding the current contrived confusion, INEC’s returning officer for the Kogi governorship election, Emmanuel Kucha credited APC’s Audu with 240,867 votes to PDP Wada’s 199,514, leaving the former with a positive variance of 49,953 votes. His report also showed Audu had secured no less than one quarter of the votes cast in 16 out of the 21 local governments of Kogi state while Wada managed to secure a quarter of votes cast only in five states. Audu by that declaration had fulfilled the constitutional and electoral acts provisions to be declared winner of the contest. The outstanding 25, 000 votes will not positively change the fortune of Wada and PDP.
But curiously even though it was obvious that only 511,000 of the 1,379,000 INEC registered voters turned up for accreditation for the election, INEC’s Kucha still went ahead to pronounce an election already won ‘inconclusive’ on the basis of 49.000 registered voters out of which only 25,000 had permanent voter cards. ‘This figure as well as the accredited number of voters ought to have been the concern of INEC’, according to Jiti Ogunye, a clear-headed legal mind. But INEC, according to him “went overboard and started talking about registered voters that they didn’t all give PVCs.” For him, “that was a pretext by INEC to stalemate, for whatever reason, the election.”
That ‘whatever reason’, from the point of view of those who talk of conspiracy theory is the desperate rush by PDP and its thoroughly trounced candidate to court praying “that in view of the death of the APC candidate, Abubukar Audu, Wada should be declared the winner of the November 15 governorship election, that INEC be compelled to issue a Certificate of Return to Wada and finally that INEC be restrained from conducting the supplementary election scheduled for December 5”. PDP’s Uche Secundus and Wada seem to have forgotten St. Paul’s admonition to the foolish Galatians (Galatans.6:7) that ‘a man cannot reap what he does not sow’. But no one can blame PDP for catching on APC indecisions and mutual suspicions arising from intra-party struggles among coalition groups. For instance, it is the dumped APC deputy governorship candidate that is fighting the battle that APC ought to lead.
Before APC oligarchy could settle down to address their internal demons after the party’s victory, Buhari, detested by northern parasitic elite that had held their people down for 16 years suddenly became their hero. Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank under Soludo, Yar’Adua’s Minister of Finance from May 2007 to January 2009 and Jonathan’s Minister of National Planning between January 2009 to March 2010 representing the group, first tried to create disharmony among APC oligarchy by publicly claiming Buhari won the election on his own merit without the Yoruba votes.”So what’s it that the region is bringing to blackmail Buhari into handing over the government to Tinubu who thinks controlling Lagos is same as Buhari?” he was quoted to have said. What an old man sees sitting down may be invisible to a young man standing up, as Yoruba saying goes. Pa Akande alerted the oligarchy about the new strategy of enemies of change. Strangely, the president himself started saying: ‘I belong to no one; I belong to everyone’ adding that he was indifferent as to those who preside over the National Assembly. The enemies of change started quoting him to justify the trading off of APC victory to the defeated PDP.
Those who wanted the president to celebrate his righteousness forgot he finally won the election after repeated failed attempts not by being righteous but by playing hard politics. Oyegun, the APC chairman is a perfect gentleman who believes society like our mother earth is governed by laws. But you cannot apply Biblical and Koranic moral laws and physical science absolutes when dealing with those whose Bible is the 1513 Niccolo Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’, which celebrates the real nature of man over abstract ideals such as morality.
Mistrust and lack of coherence more than absence of strategic thinkers explain why there has been hardly any decision taken with sure-footedness since Nigerians gave APC victory. It was this weakness Saraki and Dogara exploited. Today as Senate President and Ekweremadu as his deputy and with Dogara as Speaker, and PDP’s control of half of the chairmanship of the House committees including those of all important petroleum resources (upstream and downstream, gas resources, aviation, works environment and Niger Delta Commission), APC may be in government, it is PDP that wields power. In fact Saraki and his ‘like minds senators’ have become a threat to the change Nigerians fought for.
These intra-party feuds, many believe deprived the President the much needed support and rigour required in the appointment of an INEC chairman. Yakubu Mahmood the new INEC chairman, a professor of political History and International Studies at the Nigerian Defence Academy with a first class degree in History from the University of Sokoto and a PHD from Oxford, was first appointed the executive secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, by President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2007. He also served as Assistant Secretary of Finance and Administration at the 2014 National Conference. There were unproved allegations by ex-President Jonathan’s political enemies that he secured his 2010 PDP ticket by mobilizing funds from TETF with the help of Sanusi Lamido as CBN governor.
Even if this was untrue, from the experience of Lamido Sanusi who ably supported PDP policies but was humiliated out of office following his criticism of government; General Patrick Aziza, former National Security Adviser to Jonathan, removed for alleging PDP was behind Boko Haram; and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who tried to ‘walk the tight rope’ by covering up PDP stalwarts that were involved in fuel subsidy and import waivers scams, we know PDP can hardly keep anybody who does not share its worldview in office.
It is for the above reasons critics believe that Mahmood, although a first class material and an eminent Nigerian was a wrong choice for the INEC chair by virtue of his association with PDP. His involvement in the on-going INEC’s contrived constitutional crisis in Kogi seems to further confirm that. As Jiti Ogunye puts it: “He failed the litmus test in his first outing”.
