IMPRESSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS FROM IWU’S RELEASE OF ELECTION REPORT IN AMERICA

By Jimmy Osifo, Virginia Beach USA josifo@yahoo.com

After reading some essays posted to the internet on the subject of Maurice Iwu’s recent trip to America to release the report of the 2007 general elections, I decided to also write my own impressions and conclusions based on my personal and first hand observations of how the two events turned out. The first event was the one in downtown Washington DC in the morning, and the second was at the Nigerian Embassy in Northwest Washington DC that commenced in the evening and ended quite late at night. Present at the morning event at the Press Club in Washington DC and known or introduced to me were: Banjo (who ran for Governorship in one of the Southwestern States under NCP); Harris Ugo Ukandu (a public policy analyst based in Washington DC); Ambassador Usman Baraya (acting Nigerian envoy to the United States); Colonel Bello Fadille (who I was told is INEC legal adviser or something of that nature); Dr. Amanze Obi (of the SUN editorial team); Sunny Ofili (who moderated); Andy Ezeani of INEC (who also moderated); Derrick Edwards (a white American who represented some pro-democracy think-thank based in the US); Dr. Tamuno Jonathan (a research scholar out somewhere in the Washington DC area); one Mamman (whom I believe to be a Professor out in Arkansas, USA); Robert Ngwu (President? of NIDO); Professor Mobolaji Aluko (of Howard University, Washington DC); Sam Uwandu (a former gubernatorial candidate of PDP in Imo State); a delegation of Nigerian Lawyers in the US led by Aloy Ejimakor (of The Law Group, Washington DC); Dr. Don Uzoma; Dr. Stanley Onye and the Nigerian Defense Attaché (these last two I noticed at the evening event at the Embassy); and a host of others numbering about ninety-five, by my rough headcount. I noticed that Igbos of the South East were in slight majority both at the US National Press Club and Nigerian Embassy events but this did not surprise me because by credible US estimates, Igbos alone (including those borne in the US) may top 2 million out of the odd 3 million Nigerians living in America. So, in every official function in America open to all Nigerians, Igbos always dominate by their numbers and professional stature and they are quite a vociferous and gutsy bunch – something that intimidates some non-Igbos in the US, but not including me, maybe because of my mixed minority origins. But it appears from an article by Prof Aluko published on the Web that the majority Igbo presence at the event might have intimidated some non-Igbos to the point that blinding one or two persons to a more dispassionate view of how the events panned out.

Let me begin my account with the Guest of Honor, Professor Maurice Iwu. I must confess that I came to the event that day prepared to disbelieve him, but when I heard the man speak and read portions of his preface in the Election Report, I had sort of a baptism of fire. The man had cold facts and figures to back up his claims of an attempt by some political types to stop the election, and that made me wonder why I had not figured this out before now even when most of the information Iwu reeled out has been in plain view all along. I found further comfort with Iwu’s version of events when I noticed a telling pattern on the part of two or three folks who attempted to join issues with him. The first was the guy from out Southwestern Nigeria who did not know the name of his Electoral Commissioner, and he claimed have ran under a party most Nigerians present (including me) never even know existed. The guy reminded me of Lyndon LaRouche (the perennial presidential candidate) running for President of America every election and then claiming that the Democrats or Republicans rigged him out; the second was Mobolaji Aluko, who appeared driven by some personal passions to take Iwu on; and the third is the former senatorial candidate from Abia who did not know his constituency well enough to figure that actual polling was done manually and not electronically. I don’t remember his party platform, except that I am certain it is not one of the major four major parties we have for now in Nigeria. And for this reason, he too reminded me of LaRouche and his fringe political party.

Next is something I read on the Internet (culled from Nigerian Tribune) to the effect that Iwu had garnered the valuable endorsement of Nigerian Lawyers in Diaspora. That is true. I noticed that a lot of lawyers were in attendance both at the morning and evening events and that told me that they probably quickly organized as a group to attend and see things for themselves as a basis to form an opinion based on facts. And I have also noticed from previous press clippings that these lawyers have lately taken up the matter of rising to the defense of Nigeria’s image abroad. So, rather than questioning their integrity as Professor Aluko alone tried to do in his article, I think anybody that loves our country and wishes her well should praise the Lawyers’ efforts or simply let them be for merely exercising their right of airing their opinion on a public policy matter that concerns them as Nigerians. Any number of Nigerians – professionals or artisans alike can convene as a group to take a position on any issue of public discourse concerning Nigeria without having to deal with some misguided mean-spirited personal attacks. It is called the right to peaceable assembly and free speech, and thankfully both the US and Nigerian Constitutions guarantee those rights as fundamental. I also gathered that other Nigerians in Diaspora, apart from the lawyers have organized as a group to endorse the INEC report and may have already come out with a position in support of the growing notion that Iwu bears no ‘personal’ culpability for any problems that might have been encountered during the elections.

In fact, I admired Iwu the more for giving those that he knew will always attack him the opportunity to even get close to an environment that was completely under his control. If he wanted, he could have used his contacts in the US to filter out opposition elements and redline them from attending the events so that he gets to look good. So, it says a lot about the fine and steely character of a man who strives to find some accommodation for those he very well knew to openly hostile to his person and office. Thus, I considered it an honor when Iwu made the point that everyone should be allowed to speak even when it was clear that one or two persons might seize on the opportunity to challenge him needlessly. I say this because other Nigerian officials are known to be averse to such generous access when they come to America and a frustrated Nigerian Diaspora have had to be content with less than an eye contact from afar. Suffice it to say therefore that after observing the two events and perusing the Election Report, I reached certain conclusions, which are:

One - Professor Maurice Iwu’s press briefings should continue because through them Nigerians both at home and in the Diaspora are becoming more informed about what happened before, during and after the elections from someone in authority with firsthand information. Two – the report by the EU observer Group (or whatever) is not credible because it is plausible that Iwu annoyed them by refusing their money, denying them presence at INEC’s meeting, and above all rejecting their illegal request for the biometrics (including fingerprints) of over 60 million Nigerians, apart from the glaring fact that their report on the 2007 elections seemed to be a self-plagiarism of the same thing they had said in 2003 both in terms of choice of words and general assessments.

Three – Iwu should be praised for his courage for standing up to the several interests and institutional difficulties hostile to the conduct of the presidential elections, and it was this singular act of courage that assured Nigeria her first civilian to civilian transition in history. Four – Nigeria should never take any grants from any foreign government to conduct our elections because those grants come with conditionalities that breach our national security and make us seem like a self-disrespecting ‘banana republic’ (to borrow Iwu’s words) and Nigeria is not too poor to provide the relatively low funding required for her national elections.

Five – as the local government elections (NOT being conducted by Iwu) demonstrate, the problem of elections in Nigeria and amongst Nigerians is a cultural thing with Nigerians everywhere (including us in the United States). Prof Aluko himself confirmed this when he said in his article that Robert Ngwu and Ola Kassim were fighting over headship of NIDO – in America. Even amongst Nigerian town unions in America, Nigerians take each other to court over who becomes Chairman of something as civic and little as a branch of a town union. Iwu has shown the way out because he seems to possess the strong character and fitness Nigeria needs in a federal electoral umpire. It follows therefore that Nigeria needs to adopt a new system of permanent tenure for Chairmanship of INEC - like Ghana and other countries which have done so with much success. This is the only fair way to retain the skills of those like Iwu who represents the best chance at giving Nigeria an election that leads to something (not one that gets annulled or stopped midstream – like in 1993, which was acknowledged as free and fair but it produced no transition). Six – Iwu is right that most parties and candidates lost because they didn’t have the requisite numbers to win elections, and those that won did so for the opposite reason. Contrary to submissions in opposite, this is an issue appropriate for comments by Professor Iwu because he meant to serve a note of warning to parties to be better prepared next time around or merge with other parties that have proved stronger.

Seven – a lot of folks are attacking Iwu because of their personal frustrations with his tenure as INEC Chair - it is either they could not compromise him or prevent the elections from holding or that they had some personal spats with him. Eight – why did the first aircraft dispatched to convey our ballots suddenly develop no-wings and failed to fly back our presidential ballots from South Africa five days to the presidential election? Who instigated such a stunt that threatened Nigeria’s national security and nearly scuttled our nascent democracy? Who would have benefited from a forced and sudden postponement of the presidential election had Iwu not surmounted this hurdle by quickly engaging another aircraft to fly back the ballots? Who knew what, and when did they know it? These are pertinent questions that I have never seen asked by this isolated bunch of Iwu-bashers. Nine – Orji Kalu of PPA deserves respect and honor from all Nigerians for helping stabilize Nigeria at a critical time by joining President Yar’Adua’s government of national unity, and that should be a reference point that should encourage others still in the trenches to call a truce.

And finally, Iwu’s tenure as INEC Chair expires in 2010. People should refrain from pressuring President Yar’Adua to court danger to his fragile tenure and that of all elected state and federal officials by forcing Iwu’s resignation; and Yar’Adua needs Iwu as the third anchor to Nigeria’s tripod balance, and the man is competent to boot. In terms of access to the levers of federal power, Maurice Iwu is the most powerful Igboman in Nigeria today. It could have been Orji Kalu but the guy is not in government, and that alone made the difference. So, I advise Igbos not to fall ‘mugu’ to any suggestions to join in ousting Iwu because once Iwu goes, his replacement is least likely to be Igbo and that will create an official vacuum. Needless to say that Igbos should by now be well aware of the gloating that trailed the rapid fall of three Igbo senate presidents and the damage it did to their psyche as major players in the contest for federal power. Yorubas say: “Yoruba Ronu” (Yorubas Think). I say “Igbo Ronu” (Igbos Think). And peace to Nigeria.

Jimmy Osifo wrote in from Virginia Beach, USA. josifo@yahoo.com

2007 NIGERIAN GENERAL ELECTIONS: THE EU OBERVER REPORT IS NOT GOSPEL

By: Ibrahim Danlami, College Park, USA ibrahimdanlami@yahoo.com

This piece is intended as a sequel to the many essays on Professor Maurice Iwu’s conduct of Nigeria’s 2007 general election and the condemnations that trailed the wake of the damning assessment turned in by the EU Observer Mission. There are now new twists and turns following Maurice Iwu’s formal presentation of the official Election Report to the Nigerian Diaspora in London and Washington. And silence is no longer golden because Nigeria is hurting from an unrelenting barrage of vigorous attacks from all manners of people nearly nine months after the elections. So, as a native Nigerian, I will be damned if I should just continue to remain silent about what happens to my native country, her institutions and public officials, and the drag it imposes on Nigeria’s quest for a befitting diplomatic stature, good order and foreign investments

While Maurice Iwu was making his presentations at the Press Club and the Chancery, my mind wandered off to the greater irregularities present in Nigeria’s ongoing local government elections (being conducted locally, and not by Maurice Iwu and INEC). And I am not alone in this line of thought because following release of the Report, the vast majority of Nigerian Diaspora has now rallied to the defense of Maurice Iwu and INEC. This can be seen from the many essays/reports written by those who were present at the two separate events in Washington DC where Professor Iwu made his presentations, if not the endorsements coming from some Diaspora professional groups. I was at both events but I deliberately preferred to keep quiet and remain as low-key as possible so I can better concentrate on the important task of either confirming or recanting what I already gleaned from prior research. I wanted my take to be swayed by hard facts and realism, and not by idealisms or other passions that have no place in what the 2007 elections meant for my native country. The Nigerian Diaspora position on this matter is important because it represents a critical gateway to a better measuring of what Nigerians everywhere think of the conduct of the election. In other words, if Nigerians themselves accept the election outcome, warts and all, that alone may be grounds for the international community to look less to the grim report turned in by the EU Observer Mission, bearing in mind two twin sets of facts: One - Nigeria’s teething pains with her elections are less of the making of Maurice Iwu or one man alone but more of an institutional immaturity on the part of Nigeria as a young, and an inexperienced democracy. Two - The cultural tendency to never-say-die on the part of Nigerians in contest for any office (political or civic, home-based or Diasporan) which often drives the loser to exaggerate any irregularities occurring in the ordinary course of subjecting elections to human discretion.

Now consider Maurice Iwu’s allegations that the EU observers turned monitors or worse by demanding a free pass to attend INEC meetings (as if Nigeria is already a failed state); and even had the alacrity to demand for their keeps the entire body of sensitive data containing the biometrics of Nigeria’s registered voters including, as Maurice Iwu put it, “the fingerprints of the President of my country”, apparently because they offered 40 million Euros as grants-in-aid to INEC. Now, I don’t know about my fellow Nigerian Diaspora in the West but one thing I know for certain is that in America where I have lived for years, a whole army of irate citizens will go to any length to reject any plan by the government (not to talk of a quasi-government unit like election observers) to compile and archive their biometrics without a compelling public interest such as part of a narrowly-tailored national security strategy to overcome a portent threat like terrorism. Even so, we in America are witnesses (and participants) to the robust challenge by citizens against somewhat similarly intrusive portions of the US Patriotic Act – an idea that was blamed on Attorney-General Ashcroft and which might have contributed to his fall. This instinctive citizen resistance to such intrusions stems from the recent dramatic rise in identity thefts, if not the suspicion that the government or other custodian thereof will someday misuse the data to the detriment of innocent citizens. But to me, the more troubling question is whether Americans or Europeans will turn over the biometrics of their citizens (including President Bush’s fingerprints) to a bunch of snoopy Nigerians or Africans running around US and Europe in the name of being observers at elections that don’t impact them directly. So, are Nigerians being told by the EU (or observers who claimed to be fronting for EU) to turn over their biometrics because Nigeria is Third-World or is it because the 40 million Euros in grants-in-aid constitute sufficient inducement and consideration for a nation possessing nearly 50 billion dollars (and counting) in reserves? Or has Nigeria suddenly lost her sovereign rights to a national security interest in guarding the private and sensitive information of her citizens, including the nation’s leaders? So, Maurice Iwu was right to have feared that the 40 million Euros was not mere freebies but carried the prospects of strings and diplomatic disrespect that a modern, strong and prosperous Nigeria does not need any longer. And he had good cause to worry that more unconscionable demands could have come had he not drawn the line. Therefore, it goes without saying that it was for this reason alone that a hostile environment existed throughout the election period between the EU Observers and Maurice Iwu/INEC. Recall that the EU called Iwu arrogant first before some Nigerians began to do the same.

And then enter the damning EU Observer Report, and to my utter surprise, I discovered that their 2007 report is almost a verbatim repetition of their 2003 report and I wondered why. I also noticed that the EU report is replete with dodgy disclaimers – meaning that the Observers are sort of eating their own words and generally appeared wishy-washy on an assessment they intended the whole world to believe as gospel. Well, if the Observers who wrote the report appear to be evasive or reluctant to own up to it, why should anybody, including Nigerians ground their assessment of the 2007 elections on the tenors of a report that is so notoriously self-disclaiming? I wager that it is plausible that since Maurice Iwu pissed them off, they were more likely to get back at him by turning in a report that is less of an objective assessment but more of a fall-out of a bitter personal disagreement they had with him. Additionally, the EU observers were too few in number to traverse the huge land mass of Nigeria and tens of thousands of polling precincts and wards, most of where the conduct of the election was widely acknowledged by Nigerians to have been free and fair. Had the observers covered all the polling centres, they would have confirmed that most political parties and their candidates lost primarily because they lacked in any of the factors or elements necessary for succeeding in national elections, and prevailed in their traditional strongholds.

For most of the West, especially the European Union, there is this rampant tendency to rush to conclusions that elections held in countries that the West fears, loathes or does not understand are never free and fair. The West does not loathe or fear Nigeria but it is well-known that it does not yet fully understand Nigeria and the unique cultural burdens that continue to stalk her fledgling Western-style democracy. The high standard set by the West for elections to be credible is fine and laudable, but pressuring young democracies and a people who have endured decades of autocracy to embrace them overnight is unrealistic and unfair to boot. It gets to a point that creates the appearance of pandering to opposition elements and a disregard for the nation’s sovereignty. This brings me to the recent elections held in Russia which saw Putin’s party winning with super majorities. But guess what? The same EU observers also saw red and irregularities in that election. But I suspect that the real truth lies somewhere in between the West’s traditional distrust of a nuclear-powered Russia led by a non-aligned Putin and a persisting misunderstanding of a post-Soviet Russia that is still learning the ropes of representative democracy, if not some petulance over the failed Western capitalist quest to be the major player in exploiting Russia’s huge deposits of natural gas and other hydro-carbons, which has been blamed on Putin. As for Nigeria, if you don’t know by now that the West considers candidate Abubakar Atiku pro-West and President Yar’Adua a closet anti-West or too Islamist (and frugal, meaning - a radical socialist that may prefer China), then you have not been reading everything out there. And more to the point, Yar’Adua’s fiscal conservatism in Katsina when he was Governor was mis-characterized as neo-socialist by a West that looked forward to an Atiku they believed through his PR spin in the US to be anti-socialist and thus more representative of any capitalist desire for a President likely to draw down Nigeria’s hard currency reserves to finance high technology acquisitions from the West. This is plain fact that must detract from the overall credibility of the EU Observer Report of an election in which a not-well-liked ‘radical/socialist’ Yar’Adua emerged victorious. Buhari is not really in the West’s serious reckoning because of his poor human rights record when he was military ruler, and Orji Kalu was seen to be too sophisticated and pan-Nigerian to be trusted to deliver on a strictly pro-Western capitalist agenda. And so it came to pass that in giving primacy to these calculations, the EU sadly ignored how dicey and arduous it was for Maurice Iwu and INEC to transit Nigeria from one civilian regime to another for the first time in the history of the country amidst all the duplicity and grand intrigues that were in plain view.

Finally, I disagree with those opposed to Maurice Iwu’s release of the INEC Report and his aggressive engagement of his tormentors. By making the report public, Nigerians and the world are now better informed about the nation’s electoral difficulties than ever before. That makes for better reforms and less tendency to lay blames at the wrong places. And while the issue is still hot, it will be nice to see some fireworks from the Presidency. In Washington, Professor Iwu declared, and I quote “You cannot keep the baby and throw away his mother” (translation: ‘The President cannot expect his presidency to still remain legitimate by not defending the process that brought it into being’ or ‘President Yar’Adua will call his mandate into question once he succumbs to calls for Maurice Iwu’s ouster’). I agree.

Therefore, President Yar’Adua should go heads-up now and show some verve in deflecting some of the darts being hauled at Maurice Iwu, INEC and Nigeria – coming mostly from fringe angles and interests that either don’t wish Nigeria well or don’t know any better. For the President to suggest that he will go back to his native Katsina if he loses at the election tribunal hardly helps; and if it is some sort of political rope-a-dope, it is not working at all, as it gives the appearance of disinterest or timidity and stokes the notion of a temporary presidency and possible anarchy. It also emboldens those challenging his election and complicates every diplomatic effort to bring matters to some closure. Others who can step up to the plate are the hundreds of National/State Assembly members and all the Governors who are enjoying mandates made possible by a complex transition eked out primarily on the resilience of majority of Nigerian masses that have proved more willing to accept the election outcome, if not a gutsy Maurice Iwu who accomplished what the Nigerian army - with all their coercive force and autocratic control of federal power could not do in 1993 when they failed to deliver a transition Nigerians so much desired at that time.

Ibrahim Danlami, College Park USA. ibrahimdanlami@yahoo.com.