Grandiose Parlor

Levi Obijiofor of Guardian Newspapers captures one of the many issues that have continued to bugged the life out of me. His article titled “Electoral Magic in Ondo” is one. Full text below:

IF you want a clearer insight into how results of the 2007 national elections were pre-determined ahead of the election dates, you need to make a quick trip to Ondo State. But you must be prepared to spend hours sifting through tonnes of startling evidence tendered at the various election petitions’ tribunals in the state. Suddenly, election petitions’ tribunals have become something of a spectacle. The tribunals have assumed even greater importance because mounting evidence at the hearings provides us with a first hand foretaste of the enormity of electoral magic performed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in last year’s elections.

What is unfolding in Ondo State represents a minute picture of the deeper fraud that took place across the nation in April 2007. How did Maurice Iwu, the cavalier and noisy boss of INEC, and his officers pull off this audacious trick on the nation? Come with me to the venues of the election petitions’ tribunals in Ondo. Newspaper reports this week showed the extent to which dishonest election officers went to ensure their preferred candidates won the elections.

According to evidence tendered at one of the tribunals, some non-residents of Ondo State and some non-Nigerian citizens such as Mike Tyson (former world heavyweight boxing champion) had their names inserted into the voters’ list. In this particular case, someone had to rush Mike Tyson to Nigeria so he could participate in the elections, not as a foreigner but, believe it or not, as an eligible Nigerian citizen and voter. For that to happen, Tyson’s occupation had to change from boxing to farming and fishing. Dizzying stuff, eh! That’s in a surreal world. If you are not fazed by that revelation, you should move on to the next level of the election scam.

The next stage of the swindle involved the indiscriminate use of names of political and economic leaders whose identities somehow managed to crawl into the voters’ list. Worst of all, the list was in the custody of INEC. In the history of election rigging in Nigeria, nothing comes as close to fiction as this phony plot by INEC. The perpetrators of this crime deserve national award for making the impossible assume the status of reality. But wait! There’s more bizarre stuff.

Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan somehow dashed to Ondo State to vote in the crucial governorship election. But his occupation and age had to be amended to fit the fictional script. According to this fabrication scripted by INEC officials, the vice president acted in concert with other public figures such as the outgoing chairperson of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Ahmadu Ali. Even the governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, was listed as one of those who voted in Ondo during the election, as did Central Bank governor Charles Soludo (who allegedly took on the name Akinola Olanipekun to vote); Oceanic Bank managing director Cecilia Ibru allegedly voted as Sade Osabehi; and Sarah Jubril - the politician — also voted but took on the pseudonym of Funke Asabiha.

If you were Justice Garba Nabaruma, head of this particular tribunal in which these staggering revelations were tendered, you must be wondering whether you had been hit by a debilitating bout of malaria which makes people see things that don’t exist. How on earth could these high profile Nigerians be scandalized without anyone noticing until now? How could their names and photos (as in the case of the Chief Justice of the Federation) have been used freely to deceive voters? Someone in INEC must provide answers. And Maurice Iwu, the chief defender of the purity of the 2007 elections, must produce his own version of events.

Even as news of the scandal filters across the country, INEC officials have more questions to answer. At another election petitions’ tribunal in Ondo State, this time in Akure, Justice J.S. Ikyegh was stunned to hear that voting papers marked for use in two states - Rivers and Cross River - during the house of assembly elections were diverted illegally and used in the election of the Ondo State House of Assembly Speaker.

If you are still wondering what might have possibly gone wrong across the nation during last year’s elections, you must widen the lens of your imagination. With INEC, anything is possible. INEC has demonstrated the anemic nature of voters’ imagination. Things we never imagined occurred before, during and after the elections. The fictitious names, figures and voters’ register produced by INEC for purposes of the 2007 elections belong to the land of deception. They must now be vetted and queried.

Does anyone still need to be convinced that the 2007 elections were hijacked, planned and executed by a clique of corrupt officials of an agency of government that was expected to display transparent independence in the conduct of the elections? In full view of the nation, INEC twisted the wishes of voters to suit the preferred choices of the ruling political party. INEC’s treachery has been exposed in Ondo State, as in other states.

Evidence of the election sham that took place in Ondo State is bewildering. Iwu should explain to the nation how it was legally possible for an American citizen to vote in Ondo State, even if that was done under an alias. Surely, INEC has attained the zenith of its blunders. We are now looking feverishly at the equivalent of a magician’s box of tricks.

Even as these scandals were damaging the public profile of INEC, Maurice Iwu was busy in far away London hurling insults at some British parliamentarians who dared to criticise INEC’s conduct of the 2007 elections. In an interview with The Guardian correspondent in London, Iwu fired blank shots at British parliamentarians. He said: “From the Prime Minister to the Parliament, they’re a failed debacle; let them resign first, then I’ll quit. I’m really sick of people who think they can stay in Westminster or Washington and then dictate what should happen in Nigeria.”

Only Iwu can perceive as right what the rest of the world sees as flawed elections. Iwu believes he is the only one who can distinguish between electoral fraud and fair election. Every time Iwu is confronted with the malpractices that tarnished the 2007 elections, he snarls at his critics like a hungry Alsatian, uttering indecipherable tantrums sometimes in his vernacular language. Iwu lacks decorum. As boss of INEC, he ought to speak with the grace and humility of a man who is willing to learn. But what we see in Iwu is a nervous man consistently mocking his critics.

In a forthright editorial that examined the future of INEC, The Guardian (Thursday, 6 March 2008) stated that “INEC emerged from the elections with its credibility in tatters. From local to foreign monitors, the verdict was that the polls were a travesty of freedom of choice, a key ingredient of democracy.” Somehow, Iwu continues to prance about the national stage, arguing like a drunken sailor, that the 2007 elections were conducted in a free and fair environment. Why Iwu cannot accept that the elections were flawed is beyond belief. All over the country, election petitions’ tribunals and the courts are busy trying to untangle the injustices committed by INEC.

When we celebrate judicial decisions that overturn the results of last year’s elections, we must be worried by the financial consequences of repeating elections that had already cost the nation millions of naira. Conducting fresh elections will cost the nation even more. What’s the point of holding elections if the results would be overturned and fresh polls ordered? How many flawed elections would make a fair election?

INEC’s flagrant violation of the will of voters across the country is the penalty the nation has to pay by way of organising fresh elections. The cost will be huge but no one can argue that electoral injustice should be allowed to stay because of the high cost of rectifying iniquitous election results. As The Guardian editorial of Thursday last week concluded, “it would be incongruous and tragic to retain the present INEC, whose incompetence and partiality aided last year’s electoral fraud, to be the umpire in the forthcoming by-elections and beyond… Iwu and his commissioners should go.”