In 1999 the military regime handed over power to a civilian
government in Nigeria. The political bottle changed, but the military
wine in it remained the same.
Always elections are rigged at all levels, the ruling party rigs and
the opposition party rigs; all in all the party with the highest rigging
structure always wins the election in Nigeria. In the past in most
areas in Nigeria, elections didn’t even hold, the ruling party just
write results from the comfort of their homes and the electoral body
(INEC) announces it.
This has been the foundation of corruption in Nigeria. Politicians
get into office and instead of serving the Nigerian people, they now owe
their allegiance to the godfathers that rig the system to get them into
office.
In 1999, the military spared no effort in rigging the system to make
sure one of their own emerged as president, The opposition party
candidate Chief Olu Falaye of the APP/AD cried out in the face of the
obvious manipulations that went on, but there were no institutions to
listen to his plea, the judiciary was still under the control of the men
with guns (The Military), and so general Olusegun Obasanjo of the PDP
was sworn in as president.
In 2003, General Muhammadu Buhari of the ANPP contested against
General Olusegun Obasanjo of the PDP. I worked as an adhoc staff then
for the electoral body during the elections and I saw firsthand how
elections were conducted in the Niger-Delta. The governors and major
chieftains to the ruling party are actually the employers of majority of
the men and women in charge of election. Elections didn’t even hold
over there, they just write results and the stooges of the ruling party
working in INEC just announce false results; irrespective of what
happens in the streets, the military will always be sent to brutalize
the noisy Nigerians.
General Buhari went to court to challenge the result, the case
dragged for 30 months, at the end, the Nigerian Judiciary that is yet to
express independence succumbed to the ruling party PDP, and the circle
of corruption, deprivation of the masses, unaccountability, and deceit
and murdering of our institutions continued.
In 2007, the worst election ever held in Africa’s history by my own
estimation was conducted under President Obasanjo where results were
announced on television and radio stations by Professor Maurice Iwu the
then INEC chairman, even though days after the election ballot papers
were yet to arrive in some communities and wards for them to vote.
Again General Muhamadu Buhari went to court to challenge the
absurdity organized by President Obasanjo which he called elections.
After 18 months the case got to the supreme courts consisting of 7
judges. The all agreed the election was messy, but somehow the judges
allowed the mess to go unaddressed, and the candidate of the ruling
party Umaru Yaradua remained as president even though he himself
acknowledged that the elections that brought him to power was rigged;
and so the mess continued, corruption, deprivation, unaccountability,
godfatherism etc.
In 2011, a popular candidate was running under the platform of the
ruling party, President Goodluck Jonathan had the sympathy of Nigerians,
he said he had no shoes and the millions of poor people in Nigeria
identified with that situation and supported him. There was almost no
need to rig the elections because Nigerians queued up for him and made
sure he won, however the fraudulent electoral system remained unchanged
and uncorrected.
This is 2015 – four years after, and President Jonathan has betrayed
the love and trust of majority of Nigerians. He has presided over the
massacre of Nigerians in the north east, having recorded the highest
number of deaths of innocent Nigerians in his administration since the
Nigeria/Biafra civil war of the 1960’s due to his naivety and refusal to
defend innocent Nigerians living in the north east from a rag tag
insurgent group called Bokoharam.
President Jonathan abused the mandate given to him freely by
Nigerians with his obvious lack of appetite to fight corruption. The
Nigerian President surrounds himself with so many dubious characters and
charlatans that shade him from the truth about what is going on in the
streets of Nigeria; the President even said that the fact that a lot of
his cronies are buying private jets is a sign of Nigeria’s prosperity.
His six year reign has being plagued with series of corruption
scandals from ‘trillions stolen in phony petroleum subsidy contracts to
bribery everywhere’, Stella Oduah’s aviation scandal, stealing of
pension fund of Nigerian workers and pension fund of even the police,
and yet no big wig is in jail for these wrongs, in fact President
Jonathan protects the corrupt elites.
President Jonathan was never prepared for leadership, it fell on him.
That’s why he still doesn’t understand the value of leadership. He got
into power and immediately outsourced the work of the economy to the
former vice president of the World Bank Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Nigerians
expected him to lead but instead he spent his six years playing internal
politics within his party seeking a second term, with the hope that the
fraudulent electoral system he inherited from General Obasanjo will
always work for him, and the Nigerian Judiciary can never pass a
judgement against an incumbent Nigerian president.
However there is a joker for the Nigerian people this time, the
electoral body has gone for biometric voting to almost eliminate
electoral fraud, snatching of ballot boxes, having cronies of the ruling
party write results from their bedrooms etc. President Jonathan was
busy playing internal politics and destroying his party (the ruling PDP)
to further his ambition only to wake up one morning and realize its
election time and there was nothing to show for six years but sorrow,
tears and blood all over the north east. President Jonathan is now
scavenging looking for projects to show to Nigerians, but leadership is
not about projects only, even a fool can start a project.
Political Leadership is all about inspiring confidence, giving your
people a direction, a focus, a goal and a reason to hope for a better
society where they can dream higher with the evident possibility of
achieving their dreams.
This coming election Nigeria is less about the contestants President
Jonathan or General Buhari, it’s about the Nigerian people, and the
eagerness to own the process and take control of their destiny, to break
away from the claws of a ruling elite that has bleed the nation dry for
16 long years. The huge votes against President Jonathan would be
protest votes against a demonic elite that would steal public funds to
buy private jets, pay themselves obnoxious salaries and allowances in
the midst of so much poverty in the land, destroy the public health
sector because they can afford medical tourism, allow our public schools
to dilapidate because they have enough to put their children in schools
abroad, even when millions of Nigerians go to bed every night hungry
with nothing to eat.
President Jonathan, discovering so late in the game that his time is
almost up, he is now playing his last cards which might put Nigerian in
jeopardy just like he has weakened and destroyed his party the PDP.
Sensing imminent defeat, the President through his national security
adviser asked for elections to be postponed by 6 week by sabotaging the
electoral body INEC through the refusing to provide security with the
excuse that the army is now ready to go on a belated offensive against
Bokoharam, after 6years of trauma, loss of businesses, homes and
properties in the north eastern part of Nigeria and an estimate 18,000
innocent deaths – President Jonathan now needs 6 weeks to solve the
problem of insurgency. Where was this idea all this long while before
the last week to the elections?
If President Jonathan wins this war against insurgency within these
six weeks, it means he always knew what to do and didn’t do it, thereby
allowing the insurgency to spread and his people die in vain.
If President Jonathan loses the war, the shame of incompetence continues.
The loopholes have being blocked by INEC, the rigging advantage of
the ruling party has being reduced by the introduction of biometric
voting. President Jonathan has played his first card of mischief by
sabotaging the electoral body to postpone the election. What next is on
his mind?
It’s all over the news that President Jonathan is now plotting to
sack the Chairman of Nigeria’s electoral body six weeks to elections and
replace him with an unscrupulous character to turn the electoral
commission upside down and Jonathan as President. If this happens, it
means Nigerians have a leader who would prefer to win an election and
loss a nation by destroying a democracy he never fought for.
Alternatively, he would likely go back to court to purchase a verdict
that will disqualify his opponent, or force the electoral body to drop
the biometric voting option and go back to the old ways of rigging that
has always assured the ruling party success; if any of this happens,
there is no guarantee that Nigeria would not go up in flames.
Worse still, President Jonathan will unleash his fixers to go about
blackmailing all every elite in other to get their support. These are
old tricks, I still wonder how well it will work today.
Every nation has its trying times, and Nigeria continues this long
march to emancipation from the clutches of its political elites, I call
on world leaders not to ignore the fraudulent chess game going in the
Nigerian polity powered by greed and lust for power and not for the
service of the Nigerian people, @BarackObama, The British Prime Minister
David Cameron @Number10gov, The Chinese President #XiJinping, German
Chancellor Angela #Merkel etc. not to allow the unclean politics played
by some naive and lucky politicians to destroy Nigeria.
No country can exist and prosper alone, if not for the support from
the international community, South Africa would most probably still be
in apartheid, and keep destroying itself.
If not for the international community there would be no South Sudan, and the Sudan nation would still be destroying itself.
At such a time as this, the Nigerian nation needs same support to
stop a desperate incumbent and it’s beneficiaries from bringing down the
Nigerian roof with their personal ambitions and turning more and more
poor Nigerians into refugees within their own country or refugees in
neighbouring countries as we have now in Chad, Cameroun and Niger.
By Chinedu Enebeli
Calljonas@yahoo.com, Twitter@calljonas
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