Owei Lakemfa
19 November 2008
opinion
AFTER the Court of Appeal exposed the criminal manipulation of the Edo State gubernatorial elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) the Commission made some comical, half hearted, if not cynical responses.
First, it announced that it would study the judgment with a view of identifying the lapses observed and correcting same.
The "lapses" the Court of Appeal identified were simply a reiteration of those identified eight months ago by the Electoral Tribunal which annulled the said elections. If INEC were sincere, it would have studied the Tribunal's Judgment and identified the "lapses".
Then INEC went on to claim that it intends to investigate the source of the "errors" to determine if there was willful negligence or mischief. This claim itself is mischievous.
If the Appeal Court found that INEC had awarded votes to contestants rather than count the legitimate votes, how can this be "errors"?
Does it need a soothsayer to pronounce that these "errors" were willful, and simply another attempt to rig elections and award political offices?
In any case, what did INEC do to its officials who eighteen months ago messed up the entire electoral system?
The gubernatorial election in Adamawa State was annulled because the Iwu-INEC had criminally crossed out the name of the Action Congress gubernatorial candidate, not on the basis of any court order or legal process, but that there were 'investigations' that he might be corrupt.
It did the same thing in Kogi State by striking out the name of the All Nigeria Peoples Party candidate based on similar rumours. It is inconceivable that an INEC led by a professor and peopled by lawyers would find Nigerians guilty of alleged crimes without their being tried.
If INEC were truthful, would it not have brought to book its officials who rigged the gubernatorial election in Cross River State by allocating votes to the ruling party? In the new elections, lots of public funds were expended by INEC. But nobody is held culpable.
An honest INEC would have taken disciplinary actions against its Commissioner, Mr. Philip Umeadi who was busy in Abuja announcing gubernatorial results when the votes were yet to be collated in the state.
But we are left for the Iwus and Umeadis to continue assaulting our psyche with provocative comparison and analysis of the Barack Obama electoral victory in America.
We might not have been in the electoral mess we are now if INEC had not tried to psychoanalyse the then President Olusegun Obasanjo by trying to disqualify Vice President Abubakar Atiku and doing his hatchet job.
It is not by accident that we had the highest number of electoral protests last year than at any other time in our history. Yet the litany of electoral malpractices by the INEC umpires in the gubernatorial and presidential elections is quite short compared with the atrocities they committed in the State and National Assembly elections.
Yes, we have lessons to learn from the American elections, but how do we learn and imbibe such lessons when we have diametrically opposed values? In the American system, the votes count; in the Nigerian system, the votes are allocated. So what lesson can the Iwu-INEC learn? Or what can Chief Obasanjo tell us about Obama's election for which he is taking valuable media space?
For Obasanjo, elections were a "do-or-die" affair. For the Americans it was about how to move their country forward. The elections under Obasanjo were a "Carry Go" fraud where the electorate did not matter.
Obama's mettle was proven in the primaries in which he defeated the combined might of the Clintons. In Nigeria under Obasanjo, primaries were an anathema; Atiku Abubakar's "crime" was that he attempted to run in the 2003 PDP Presidential primaries against Obasanjo.
Even when he was not in the race last year, Obasanjo simply bullied out of the primaries other aspirants like Donald Duke and Peter Odili. He imposed his choice on the party, and subsequently on the nation.
So if Obama were a Nigerian, and member of the Obasanjo PDP, he might not have been allowed to run the primaries not to talk of contesting the elections.
Were Obasanjo, George Bush, he would not allow a free contest, the candidate of the ruling party would simply have been declared winner by an INEC that even without prompting, rigs elections for the ruling party.
The difference between us and America is quite wide; there, sovereignty belongs to the people from whom all power flow, in Nigeria , sovereignty belongs to the powerful and the rich who control State power.
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