The Nation Newspaper

Tag: sham

  • The sham called Akwa Ibom elections

    The sham called Akwa Ibom elections

    •Govt, police: Allegations are false

    More facts emerged yesterday on how the governorship election in Akwa Ibom State was allegedly rigged.

    According to eyewitnesses, there was no election because there were no electoral materials, including result sheets, in virtually all the local government areas.

    Several polling units had either insufficient, or no electoral materials. So, voting could not hold. The materials were either not brought to the units, or were snatched by thugs working for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the eyewitnesses alleged.

    In some instances, Electoral Officers would ask the ad-hoc staff to sign for the materials, but moments later, the supplies would be snatched by rampaging armed thugs. Anyone who challenged them was either shot or attacked, it was learnt.

    But the state government through its Information and Orientation Commissioner, Aniekan Umanah, said the All Progressives Congress (APC) was crying wolf where there was none.

    The number of those killed remained unknown last night but a source said: “Those who tried to resist the thugs were shot instantly and killed.”

    In Obot Akara Local Government Area, it was learnt that there were no result sheets. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ad-hoc staff allegedly connived with Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) agents to either have them snatched, or not supplied.

    The source said there were no result sheets in virtually all the units in Ikot Ekpene, yet results were written and announced.

    In Etinang, even before voting began, all electoral materials were allegedly taken away by thugs and PDP agents. Ballot papers were allegedly thumb-printed at a popular guest house in Uyo. The police were said to have done nothing when a report was made.

    The Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG) deployed to Akwa Ibom was said to have “sounded like a man overwhelmed” as the people were left unprotected.

    “This was very, very organised. When we raised alarm, nobody took us seriously. We did not have elections in Akwa Ibom,” the source said.

    It was learnt that the state government procured hundreds of buses for  thugs, which they drove round the state, snatching electoral materials.

    When they got to a unit, they would shoot into the air, disperse prospective voters, snatch the materials and flee unchallenged by security agencies.

    One of the thugs was said to have shot and killed himself after mishandling an AK47 rifle. It was learnt that his colleagues left his body behind and drove off.

    Apparently because more of the observers would be in Uyo, materials were released on time, and accreditation began, but between 1-3pm, the thugs were unleashed, moving from one location to another, seizing materials.

    All Progressives Congress (APC) chiefs received hundreds of messages reporting lack of materials or their snatching by thugs from across the state.

    Contrary to the Electoral Act, collation was never done either at the ward level or local government centres.

    Every centre was said to be devoid of any activity when party chiefs visited. INEC’s office, usually full of activity on election days, was in darkness at about 9pm. The gate was shut.

    It was also learnt that in the units where voting took place, ballot papers were far lower than the number of registered voters, sometimes as low as 300 out of 1000.

    “What happened in Akwa Ibom goes beyond election. It was like a declaration of war against the people of the state,” APC governorship candidate in Akwa Ibom, Umana Okon Umana told reporters.

    “We couldn’t find any location where collation had been done. There was no collation anywhere. We challenged the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) to take us to one place where collation was taking place, but he couldn’t.

    “It was a coup against our people. It’s almost like treason. What happened in Akwa Ibom is a crime against humanity. It was a conspiracy of all state agencies against the state. The thugs operated unchallenged and anyone who dared them was shot and killed,” Umana alleged.

    The former Secretary to the State Government (SSG) accused Governor Godswill Akpabio of entrenching impunity in the state.

    “A man like Akpabio should be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC). This was state terrorism, not election.

    “I could not vote even as a governorship candidate. I don’t know why Akpabio was so desperate, or what he’s trying to cover,” Umana said.

    He said he would have congratulated the “winner” had it been something close to an election in Akwa Ibom, vowing to challenge the “exercise” at the tribunal.

    His party has called for the cancellation of governorship and House of Assembly election.

    The APC chairman in Akwa Ibom, Dr Amadu Attai, petitioned INEC chairman Prof Attahiru Jega, listing massive violations of the law.

    He said: “In areas where polling materials were received, hordes of deadly armed thugs, escorted by men in police and army uniforms, stormed the polling units and made away with the election materials mid-way into accreditation…

    “In a meeting with APC governorship candidate Umana Okon Umana, the electoral officer of Nsit Ubium Local Government admitted that the election process in the area was marred by security failure which allowed PDP thugs to hijack election materials and take them to private homes for thumb-printing,” the party said.

    APC painted a gory picture of killings and injuries from eyewitness accounts of party agents and others. It said two of its members were killed in Ibiono Ibom when over 50 thugs invaded the area to cart away ballot materials.

    “The PDP thugs similarly killed one of our members in Nsit Ubium. Three APC supporters were also killed in Uyo. One death was recorded in Uruan. One APC member was killed in Ini Local Government Area…

    “Given the widespread failure of INEC to supply election materials to most parts of the state, the rampant snatching of ballot boxes and the bloodletting by PDP thugs that characterised the conduct of the elections, we as a party hereby call for an outright cancellation of the elections.

    “The results cannot be allowed to stand because they can never reflect the wishes of Akwa Ibom people,” the party said.

    Before the election, a group, the Concerned Akwa Ibom State Elders,  petitioned the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Suleiman Abba, accusing the State Commissioner of Police,  Mr. Gabriel Achong, of being partisan.

    They accused him of “providing police cover to PDP thugs who invaded polling units and collation centres in the state to cart away ballot boxes and election materials” on March 28.

    The group, in the April 6 petition, said: “The police were quick to arrest supporters of parties other than PDP and even ordinary citizens who dared to question the marauding PDP thugs and the high government officials who led them to polling units across the state.

    “Over 100 people ended up behind barred in what was clearly well-ochestrated exercise to intimidate the public and supporters of political parties other than PDP.

    “It is equally noteworthy that no PDP thug or sympathiser is in police custody despite the fact that many of them openly carried and used firearms and other dangerous weapons during the elections and in the presence of the police,” said the group.

    It was learnt that a group of INEC workers, under the aegis of the Concerned Staff of INEC in Akwa Ibom State, sent a petition to Prof Jega, asking that the governorship and House of Assembly election be postponed on April 6, .

    The workers alleged that electoral materials were “escorted” to the homes of PDP stalwarts instead of to the polling units.

    They also alleged there were plans to reduce materials meant for areas known to be the strongholds of the APC, Labour and Accord parties.

    The petitioners urged Jega to shift  the April 11 election because “the indices on ground posits that there would be a serious clash between PDP and other opposition parties which may culminate in loss of many lives and bloodshed.”

    Alleging that the original copies of result sheets were “handed over” to a top government official, they  demanded for the redeployment of  the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) and all the electoral officers.

    “No one should be surprised if INEC’s office in Uyo is burnt down to cover their tracks,” a source said.

    But the government denied the allegations, describing them as false.  Mr Umanah said: “Those things they are saying are false.”

    He directed our correspondent to seek more clarification from the Commissioner of Police, even as promised to forward a “report” on the polls to our correspondent.

    But no mail was received from him as at the time of filing this report.

    When our correspondent contacted the state police Command through the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Mrs Cordelia Nwawe, she said the police commissioner would speak on the issues “in due course.”

    “The commissioner of Police will address the issues in due course and at the appropriate time,” she said.

     

  • The sham peace accord

    The Peace Accord signed by the candidates is nothing but a decoy as PDP will rig mercilessly

    On Thursday 15 January, 2015,  Feyisara  Falana wrote as follows on  the Face book wall of Comrade Adeboye  Adebayo: “JUST BE INFORMED: URGENT: “I just discovered a secret being planned by Campaign for Goodluck Jonathan Group. They are giving forms out for masses to fill telling them that they will get benefit from the president. The secret behind this is when you fill this form you have to include your voter’s card number on it. How are we going to use this voter’s card? We will insert the voter’s card into a machine that will read the card. Once anyone has sold his card unknowingly for the Goodluck campaign, the machine will reject his/her card on Election Day. It will show that you have voted already, because the number must have been used to vote before the election for Goodluck. Please spread this news before our ignorant people sell their votes for peanut. This is my contribution to save this honourable country from sinking to another FOUR years. Good morning Nigeria”- Feyisara Falana.

    Let me quickly add that I would not be surprised if all the signatories TAN coyly  obtained  from the youth of  every  geo-political zone  allegedly endorsing the president have also inserted their voters cards number and will be treated accordingly. In which case, the presidential election has already been won well ahead of 14 February, 2015. Therefore, like the peaceful, but scientifically rigged Ekiti election, the presidential election, in particular, will be peaceful only on the surface.

    On the same day that Feyisara Falana was doing that yeoman’s patriotic duty, I wrote as follows on the ekitipanupo web portal concerning the boast by the Senate President, David Mark, that PDP will not only win the presidential and other elective positions in the 2015 general election, but will do so transparently in a free and fair contest, such that it will be acceptable to the opposition, the APC: “I sincerely thank David Mark for this since it appears APC has learnt nothing from Ekiti. The Peace Accord signed by the candidates is nothing but a decoy as PDP will rig mercilessly. They have too much to lose not to rig in addition to using security agencies to protect and cover their tracks. Kofie Anan and Anyaoku, two highly regarded international diplomats, should help Nigerians further by telling us how they got involved in this. Since when have they been thinking about intervening? Was it before or after Prof Bolaji Akinyemi flew the kite of a MOU? Is this diplomacy or duplicity? Nobody wants violence but how has PDP shown they won’t rig? Will the president deploy soldiers, policemen, militants in masks or not? Why did the diplomats not emphasise transparency and integrity of the electoral process? Left to me, this accord is a carte blanche to the PDP to rig to their hearts’ content and so they will in which case the CHANGE being celebrated all over the place will be a chimera. APC should immediately seek legal ways of making rigging impossible. February 15 will be too late.  It is not too late. With this PDP, huge campaign crowds for APC is no guarantee of victory. They showed us that in Ekiti. Having been once beaten, therefore, APC in my view, should be TEN times shy. I have seen nothing to that effect.”

    In “It Will Be Most Unlike PDP Not To Rig The 2015 Election”, 4 January 2015 , I had written as follows about Musliu Obanikoro: “In an interview, published in the Punch of Sunday, 28 December, 2015, Obanikoro declared assuredly: “Ogunlewe said in his interview with Sunday Punch that he doesn’t know whether the PDP will win in the Southwest. He said it is not yet time for him to talk about that. But it is time for me to talk about it. I can tell you that we are going to win. The president is going to win BIG; we are going to clear the Southwest. You can Mark today’s date and quote me.”

    Also, in:  “Prof Bolaji Akinyemi Vs PDP’s History Of Electoral Apostasy”, 28th December, 2014,  I wrote: “He  recently wrote a letter to  both President Goodluck Jonathan and General  Muhammadu Buhari which, in my view, was either misplaced, or failed to lay emphasis on the appropriate issue thus indicating that he failed to reflect deeply on the ill-consequences of  his 1993 letter to General  Abacha, also at a time of considerable anxiety in the country. In the letter, he suggested that the two presidential candidates of Nigeria’s two foremost political parties should sign a Memorandum of Undertaking to have peaceful campaigns as well as having their supporters ACCEPT WHATEVER THE RESULT(caps mine) of the 2015 presidential election. Not a few see this suggestion as anything other than offering a carte blanche to a rig-prone party like the PDP to rig the 2015 election to its heart’s content  since such an understanding would have completely tied  APC’s ‘hands’ behind its back. Recent elections during which President Jonathan turned the concerned states into virtual garrisons with all manner of ‘security operatives’, some of them masked, and who in turn manacled the opposition, more than justify this conclusion. It could only be a shame that many believe that Professor Akinyemi is probably only the messenger here, given his well known capacity for original thinking, and that he most probably knows more than he volunteers given his well known chummy relationship with the government.”

    I am sure something preposterous is afoot and APC had better wake up.  There is no doubt whatever, in my mind, that, unknown to these distinguished international diplomats, they are again being used to hoodwink Nigerians like they did in the MKO Abiola case in 1998. I am not certain their involvement is a happenstance nor is it altruistic. If anything surprises me in all these, it is the failure of the  astute and  experienced politicians as  well as the  egg heads in the APC  to see how they are walking into a trap with their eyes open because not a single one of the five terms of the accord talked to a fair and transparent election. None.  I repeat again: I do not want any violence before, during or after any of the elections.  But, for Christ’s sake, what assurances do Nigerians have that the PDP, with the connivance of INEC and some rogue international scientists will not rig the election from source and through the use of soldiers, kill and go police men, as well as members of the Niger-Delta Volunteer Force who are usually masked as they did in Ekiti or scientifically as we also saw there. I had never seen a more peaceful election than that of Ekiti but that was because the ballot papers had been pre-programmed and rather than supply Indelible ink, INEC deliberately supplied Ekiti voters vanishing ink.

    I am also quite aware that hundreds of thousands of the forms referred to by Feyisara Falana have been distributed all over the Southwest by a chieftain of the PDP under the pretence that he was going to offer all manner of employments, loans, etc to these  youth. If APC is suffering from an unimaginable failure of intelligence, let me tell them that hundreds of thousands of this form have been distributed from the Ijebu Igbo axis of Ogun State. APC just must stop this or forget everything about victory. It would thus have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

    It was former Governor Segun Oni of Ekiti who first drew our attention to this evil form during his maiden outing with the APC, warning Ekiti people not to sell their souls to the devil, picking forms from those who would take them through rituals. Back in Lagos, a top official of the Bus Conductors Union  came to my office to show me a copy of the form and I saw with my very eyes where applicants were being asked for their voters’ card numbers as well as their mothers’ names; the latter for ritual purposes.

    I think the way out is for the APC to quickly go to court to obtain a ruling outlawing the use of Card Readers in the 2015 election on the grounds that its integrity is already compromised.

    A stitch in time will safe more than nine.

  • Jonathan’s electricity programme, a sham

    President Goodluck Jonathan’s Electric Power Sector Reform, ballyhooed over the years as the magical bullet for the  debilitating electricity situation in the country, is a big flop. The nation has since April been in the rainy season when public power supply perennially improves dramatically because of sufficient water in the dams for the three hydro plants at Shiroro, Kanji and Jebba—all in Niger State—but this has not been so. If anything, power supply has been worsening.

    Going by the projections of the Electric Power Sector Reform programme, which President Jonathan launched with fanfare on August 26, 2010, at Eko Hotel in Lagos, the nation should by now be generating, transmitting and distributing at least 15,000 megawatts (MW). But what is currently generated is a far cry. The country is producing less than 4,000MW, or about a quarter of the projected quantum of power! For a nation of some 170million, the electricity per capita is embarrassingly poor, falling behind Ghana’s, among others.

    After announcing for months that 10,000MW would be generated by December, the Ministry of Power on August 3, announced, without any sense of embarrassment, that the new target for the period is 6,000MW, a little above half of the figure bandied about for some time. Even so, no one is realistically expecting the nation to hit 5,000MW by December which is only four months away.  After all, the dramatic improvement which Power Minister Chinedu Nebo promised the nation that would be experienced from last June has yet to be realized. The power sector has been  a shambles since hawks, anti-reform and extremely corrupt elements in the Jonathan government forced the world renowned engineering authority, Professor Bart Nnaji, to resign as Minister of Power on August 28, 2012. The steady improvement in power supply experienced under Nnaji, who raised power generation, transmission and distribution to an all-time high of 4,500MW, ended a few weeks after the professor left office abruptly; ever since then, the country has been on a downward slope, electricity-wise.

    The new owners of the six generation companies and eleven distribution companies privatized since November 1, 2013, are all in a mess financially. If great care is not taken, the banks which loaned them huge sums in the belief that they were assisting a worthy national development cause will be shaken thoroughly. All the assumptions upon which the entrepreneurs committed huge investments in the electricity privatization programme have turned out to be calamitous. Generation firms are unable to produce much because there is no gas supply from the Nigerian Gas Company, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) under the leadership of Deziani Alison-Madueke, the Minister of Petroleum Resources. Apparently, she has shown little interest in addressing this problem, preferring instead to focus on petrol and kerosene and crude oil lifting contracts. The President commissioned the Geregu power utility in Kogi State and the Omotosho plant in Ondo State without a single molecule because there was no gas pipeline to any of them. The nation was taken for granted.

    The joint press conference on the power situation addressed by Mrs Alison-Madueke, Power Minister Chinedu Nebo, National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) chairman Sam Amadi and  Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Godwin Emefiele on August 3, was a panic public relations stunt to calm Nigerians who are becoming increasingly restive over power supply as the 2015 election is fast approaching. NERC’s decision to substantially  increase tariff during the next Multi Year Tariff Order (MYTO) will not make a dent on the distribution companies’ obligations to banks if there is no considerable increase in quantum of power generated and transmitted by various firms. Distribution companies themselves have already been over-billing customers in a desperate effort to remain afloat, and in some instances, they have refused to supply power to rural communities because of the paltry returns. In other words, electricity is worse for the Nigerian people than in the pre-privatisation days.

    Worse still, the transmission network is in a mess. It cannot wheel up to 5,000MW because it is old and poorly maintained. Politicians in government and elsewhere have been swooping on the limited resources available to the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), which has in the last one year had two chief executives and two board chairmen. Manitoba Hydro International of Canada, contracted three years ago to manage it for three years, has not been given a free hand to run the company professionally.  As if to add a comic touch to the farcical drama, President Jonathan announced two years ago, a unilateral cancellation of the $20m contract, only to swallow his own vomit in public a few days later when the international community challenged him over his unilateral action.

    Nigeria’s power sector is in no doubt in a fiasco. Perceptive analysts knew  all along that this fiasco was an accident waiting to happen. Any government which could afford to dispense with the services of Nnaji as Minister of Power cannot possibly mean well.  Any government which sold the Kano Electricity Distribution Company and Sapele generating facility to cronies of some people in The Presidency cannot mean well for the Nigerian people. Any government which sold the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company to unknown quantities in power, over and above the Southeast state governments and their most accomplished entrepreneurs and researchers. has merely sentenced the South-east permanently to the dark age of history.

    A serious government will appoint only professionally sound persons as Minister of Petroleum Resources and Minister of Power and heads of agencies under them, so as to work with honesty and a sense of urgency on various electricity projects.  A serious administration will look into petitions of controversial privatizations of key power assets to fronts of government officials.  A fair minded administration will simplify and reduce the current requirements for power generation and distribution so that state and local governments as well as private organizations can produce and distribute electricity without the federal administration breathing down their neck.

    A serious administration will create a lot of incentives in the gas sub-sector so that investments will flow into it. It will also encourage the exploitation of resources like coal so that it could serve as a major source of power;  our coal is among the best in the world, given its low sulphur content. In addition, it will aggressively explore alternative sources of energy like solar, water, wind, biomass, etc, in collaboration with international development agencies and friendly countries like Germany which have advanced technologies in this field. Such power should be off-grid, that is to say, generated and supplied to end users in the vicinity, instead of being sent to the transmission network. A serious administration should cause electricity distribution companies to provide pre-paid metres to consumers within 12 months of coming into being.

    It is no longer in dispute that the President Jonathan’s Electric Power Sector Reform, advertised as elixir for the crippling electricity mess, is a big flop—in fact, a national swindle. Instead of generating light, it is generating heat and darkness. It is not working because of a profound lack of sincerity of purpose, a profound lack of vision, a profound lack of commitment and a profound absence of depth and rigour.

    • Dr Ishaku and Engr Nwosu signed this article on behalf of Electricity Stakeholders Conference.

  • ‘ Constitution review a sham’

    An Itsekiri leader, Chief Rita-Lori Ogbebor, has described the weekend public hearing on the proposed constitution amendment as a “sham and monumental failure.”

    The exercise, according to her, was fit for the trash bin because “it was nothing more than a ploy to rubber-stamp the selfish agenda of those who organised it.”

    Addressing a briefing in Lagos yesterday, the women’s leader said: “The exercise was designed to fail.”

    She expressed disgust at the way the Warri exercise was conducted, saying the event slated for 9am did not start until 4pm.

    “And because of the wishy-washy mannner in which the programme was handled, people got angry and walked out on the organisers.

    “What we need is not state creation but how to address the issue of the minorities as stated by the Henry Willink Commission of 1958.”