ELECTION PEER REFORM INITIATIVES
Plot 1702, Ginginya Close, Maitama, Abuja - Nigeria
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EKITI RE-RUN: INEC’s REAL TEST
If there was going to be a time when the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, would be edgy in doing its business, it was the just concluded rerun of governorship election in Ekiti State.

It is one rerun exercise that had been preceded by some wholesale typecasting of the electoral body as inept, collaborative and perfidious. Of course, these claims may not have been steeped in sound logic, but in most cases done oblivious of the legal provisions on which the electoral body operated.

However, the facts of the tensions, albeit with threats and counter threats, as freely issued by the contending factors and gladiators, had, expectedly, turned the entirety of the nation’s attentions on how INEC would respond to the so many allegations of quisling with the ruling PDP.

Against that background, INEC had its challenge well stated ahead. These include the reality that it must prove to Nigerians:
that electoral officials on duty can apply (only) objective conditions, as against subjective/sentimental factors in carrying out the sacred duty as appointed unto them by the statute books;

that electoral officials on duty are well groomed to further the values of President Umaru Yar’Adua’s much chanted rule of law and would play (only) by the rules of the game;
that electoral officials on duty are attuned to the yearnings of Nigerians who hope and have worked for the emergence of leaders (if in a democracy) by their choice and not by any other means;
that in carrying out its duties as stated in the books and in the full view of all, electoral officials, by their inclination to rule of law, shall leave the other intriguing issues (as also stated in the books) to be taken up in the now virile and proactive judiciary; and,
that rather than recourse to arm-chair pontifications and name calling, Nigerians, especially the elite, shall see the need to extend the pursuit of their specific interests, albeit their preferences, in the reasoned and sober courtrooms, where judges are believed to have the grooming and depth of mind to weave through the intricacies of claims and come out with considered opinions.

Now, the Ekiti re-run election, though with so much thunder and vibration, has come and gone. As usual, it is going to be some deluge of pontifications, allegations and persistent calls for some heads to roll. This is even made more remarkable by the conduct of the Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, Mrs. Ayoka Adebayo, who, was it in unsure-footedness or prevarications, raised so much matters about the forces at play.

Of course, yes, that conduct of the REC has become an eye-opener in some ways.
Before her claims of intimidation, purported resignation and eventual turn around, many Nigerians had thought that the Chairman of INEC was the all-being and all-doing of the electoral body;
Before that show as exhibited by the REC, Nigerians barely knew that even the INEC Chairman, (Iwu or any other person in that capacity) was a REC, though first among equals;
Before her show, Nigerians had thought that it was customary in INEC for the INEC Chairman to dictate the conduct of elections in any part of the country;
Before her show, Nigerians never knew that Iwu, in all his broad-chest display, would wait, as other Nigerians, and in suspended breathe, for the result of an election under another REC; and,
Before her show, many Nigerians, other than lawyers and the law-minded, never knew that a REC can be so independent, directly appointed by the President of the Federation and is to be expected to conduct the business thus.

Indeed, this evolving scenario as the combat issues in Ekiti, the conduct of the election and the exhibits of the REC, has really raised the stake in:
understanding the conduct of elections,
evaluating the elections,
results of the elections,
practice rules for the electoral body,
process of the elections, and,
the persona of factors assigned with specific functions in elections.

As we did observe sometime in the past, it is a practice recorded in the history of Nigeria political culture to rail and claw at electoral bosses in the past. So, rather than engage in review of elections, as expected in every prevailing democracy - by tackling matters of the process instead of the persons - our pundits always resorted to personal attacks just as in tackling the foot rather than the football. In other words, where swift and intransigent factors tended to vitiate the process, the surface idea and easy attractions to Nigerian elites had been the persons of officials.

To some extent, you may not blame this elite stance. As we held in an earlier statement, it is no longer contested that:
Bosses of previous electoral bodies were seen and feared as stooges of the various heads of government who appointed them;
Bosses of electoral bodies, in the past, were seen to be hell bent in installing unpopular Nigerians as winners of elections;
Bosses of electoral bodies were understood to be in connivance with desperate politicians who were not leaving any stone unturned in their quest for power;
Some bosses of electoral bodies were, themselves, tactless, loquacious and controversial, and always dragged themselves into what would consume them eventually;
Some bosses of electoral bodies were either arrogant and acted as if it was not any business of theirs to explain to Nigerians what they were doing;
Bosses of electoral bodies showed themselves as clearly ignorant of the values of two-way communications that they assumed that their intensions, good or bad, were glaring (one good example is the fallout of the exhibits of the Ekiti REC);
For the considerate elite, bosses of electoral bodies were always helpless in the hands of members of the ruling group and had always failed in the expectations of citizens; and,
Generally, electoral bodies in Nigeria appeared to have operated two rules; one for the government or party in power but against which Nigerians build their high reservoir of incredulity; the other for those outside power but who wished to try their luck in gaining political power.

But, today, quite far from theories, the happening of Ekiti rerun has presented a good case for Nigerians to engage in meaningful exercises in election reviews. This is one rerun characterized by, among others:
good wishes of the long suffering Ekiti people for proper election;
voluble and heart-rending threats of violence from both sides of the major divide;
real indices of violence and disruption of good order right on the ground;
rough tackles of some gladiators probably far removed from Ekiti land proper;
probably a test of relevance or might among political players, most of whom are in the genre of never-say-die; and
(though not the least) the challenges for INEC to prove the desired point of umpire status.

THE DAY AFTER EKITI
If, as after the final results of the Ekiti rerun have been released and winner and losers known, Nigerians aspire to inquire into the exercise, the fashionable action, after recent practices, is to blame officials, if not Maurice Iwu, boss of INEC, in person. And against the background of the shows displayed by State REC, Mrs. Adebayo, she is the well defined culprit who had raised alarm, changed her mind and finally declared the results.

But if the desire is, as should be the case, to expend the indices of democratic development, some questions are pertinent:
If the election was wrongly conducted, what should aggrieved members of the public do?
If the election is seen to be a travesty, what should affected players do?
If the affected players are to pursue their grievances in the courts of law (may be tribunal) can they be hopeful of justice?
If wrong doing is discovered, exposed and fully articulated, are there likely to be punishment or reversals for good order? and,
whose responsibility is it to input the values for recourse to law as furtherance to national claims to rule of law, so that aggrieved persons can hope for due attention and righting of wrong doing?

As simple as these presented, the actions of tending extremities among the factors in the days before the rerun indicate that because of rigidly held views, ego and, perhaps, obduracy, it will be a bit difficult to assume that resolution of the questions above would be simple and if ascertained, assuage the frayed nerves and cause Nigerians to accept due process, including recourse to rule of law.

This is where it becomes important for us in the Election Peer Review Initiative, EPRI, to bring back some valid questions we raised sometime in the recent past:
Are Nigeria’s political elites really interested in a stable order if they continue to reject open avenues to addressing grievances?
If matters of contention are not taken to the law courts – in this case, electoral tribunals – are it on the streets of Ekiti or some shrines in grooves, that they will be resolved?
If quarrels of aftermath of elections are not allowed to be resolved in courts of law – that is degenerating to actions that will cause the hapless masses to be hacked down - where is the discipline to lead and to inspire?

WAY FORWARD
We of the Election Peer Reform Initiative, EPRI, do not accept that whatever took place in Ekiti should degenerate to name calling, and never violence;
We believe that, if for the benefit of democratic development in Nigeria, grievances should be taken to the courts of law;
We argue that rolling over to the courts should be with the mindset to accept the definition of the actions under the law, as may be pronounced by the judges;
We insist that any action, (including the familiar easy path in name-calling), other than seeking redress in the court of law, shall be tending to anarchy;
We are bold to question the integrity of any person/s or group, which shall seek to embark on actions that will not contribute to the evolution of democratic culture and consolidation of rule of law.

Mahmud Azaiki John Song Adewale Johnson Gozie Nwike Ejiro Uwe
Secretary General PRO President Head of Research Auditor

IWU WINS WITH KUKAH AND 70% OF NIGERIANS

By: Ibrahim Danlami

At a season of deep emotion over the debate of the of tenure of Iwu as Chair of INEC, Rev. Father Matthew Hassan Kukah’s words of wisdom merit what Maurice Iwu’s virulent pursuers should contemplate. Rev. Kukah is not a politician and neither is he of the partisan streak. He is an unbiased, morally upright messenger of God who speaks from a heart, not induced by political or pecuniary gains. He is a man of wisdom who has established a fine reputation on national discourses. His remarkable and intellectual contributions to the development of the nation at times of national crises have been immense and invaluable; his responsibility as secretary to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and lately, a member of the Electoral Reform Commission. When Rev Kukah spoke recently, precisely in The Guardian of Sunday, March 29, 2009 advising Iwu’s foes, that the nation “cannot progress with the harassment of Iwu”, Kukah’s candid opinion sounded as always, the reasonable and impartial arbitrator on national issues than the droning rhetoric of the “kill Iwu now” crusaders.

And nearly 70% Nigerians have given Iwu a vote of confidence. In a running poll at the Thisday website (as of April 6, 2009), more than 68% against less than 30% prefer that INEC (instead of SIECs) conduct LGA elections in states. Universally, polls are used to gauge where people stand on a particular issue based on their recent experiences; and polls don’t lie, especially this electronic sort by Thisday which returns real-time results in seconds. Therefore, what the direction of this poll tells us is that Maurice Iwu’s INEC (and the elections it conducted) is enjoying the confidence of nearly 70% percent of Nigerians. When time comes to writing history, Iwu’s place in it will be measured more by this than the collective animus of those who seem to have a personal axe to grind with the man.

Kukah pointed us to the bitter truth and reality of our electoral experiences and the need to refrain from the blame game of every successive electoral commission chairmen for our electoral miseries. His position was explicit and logical. He would not be, and cannot comprehend why “people are complaining about” the chairman of INEC and how he constitutes our electoral problems. He was emphatic when he acknowledged “the very fact that we say we are looking for a person of integrity does not mean that anybody that gets there would not become a crook”. The point arising from this which critics of successive INEC chairman should note is: The political environment, rather than the person of Chair of INEC is the primary determinant of the outcome of our elections. Thus, the problem of elections “would not be solved by who is the chairman of INEC” even if that person is the Pope, the infallible.

So, whoever the chairman of INEC or whatever electoral reforms is put in place will not make any difference in the electoral process except the politicians first “decide by themselves to live above board…and subordinate themselves to the principles of decency”, per Kukah. The politician, the chief stakeholder in the electoral process is the one that urgently needs a reformation of character and a reorientation to elections. Electoral malpractices, maiming and killing of political opponents are the makings of the politicians, not the chairman of INEC. This should challenge Iwu’s critics to rationalize their thought processes and the need to judge the outcome of elections not in isolation but the disposition of the contestants for whom such election was conducted.

Rev. Kukah has called Iwu’s critics to this objective self-assessment. This must first start with a just appraisal of INEC’s performances under Iwu in the 2007 and subsequent re-run elections. Kukah has taken the lead in this and his honest judgment in the said interview was unequivocal. According to him, “as intellectuals, we need to ask, what is it that happened in 2007 that had not happened in 2008? Why is it that the elections had gone relatively speaking, without serious controversies? Because it is the same INEC that has been conducting the elections. Has he (Iwu) gone to Damascus? Why is it that things have changed?” With an enabling environment and right preparations, INEC has demonstrated with the bye-elections that it has the character and experience to meet with the challenges of election management. This is an apparent contrast with the “state of emergency” elections of 2007.

Though Iwu’s sworn adversaries tend to close their minds on the predicaments his electoral commission faces in every election, they will never deny the man his courage of convictions. The scenario painted of the April 25th Ekiti governorship re-election in the back page of Nigerian Compass Newspaper of Saturday, March 21, 2009 was too scary for angels to dare to thread in the state until after the elections; yet Iwu is intent on forging ahead. The artistic impression of parties holding all manners of cudgels with the umpire standing between the divides, holding a symbol of the coveted governorship crown told the complete story of electioneering process in Nigeria and the vulnerability of the electoral umpire. The Gabriel Akinadewo article “K’olomo kilo fomo re, Ekiti a ro” (Parents, warn your wards, Ekiti will be bloody) indeed, summarized electioneering time in Nigeria as the “era of destruction, demolition devastation, dismantling smashing, vandalism, violence, killings, elimination, extermination, liquidation, abduction, propaganda and all the vices”; the decisive factors for winning public office in Nigeria. So far, on March 9, 2009, Ahmed Saddiq, an Ekiti indigene was viciously murdered in a clash between PDP and AC supporters at Oye Ekiti. How many more will be killed? So, where is Iwu’s fault in all these? None. This is the crux of Kukah’s thesis.

On March 22, 2009, Simon Kolawole, a die-hard critic of Iwu wrote (in Thisday) that “the conventional wisdom is that if you control the motor parks, you control the thugs; if you control the thugs, you control the polling booth; if you control the polling booth, you control the votes! That is why associations such as National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) are very strategic to politicians and there is always a fierce battle to control them”. I don’t think Kolawole meant to, but this very remark of his completely exonerates Iwu from all the previous blames he had heaped on the man in his previous essays; and it also makes Kukah’s point. The other day, in a press conference to disparage Iwu and INEC, Peter Obi, the governor of Anambra state involuntarily let the world into how ungovernable his state has become. The governor cannot conduct local government election in his state even at the expiration of the tenure of the present officials. Conducting the election, the governor declared, “would likely precipitate mayhem”. “If you put ballot boxes anywhere in the state, they will carry it and run away”. However, INEC (under the much under-appreciated Iwu) will have to conduct the governorship elections in the Anambra and Ekiti states.

Ibrahim Danlami ibrahimdanlami@yahoo.com

PETER OBI AND HIS FEAR OF TWO UMPIRES

By Ipole Amajama

Indeed we live in interesting times as the Chinese would say. We live in a time when men of little convictions, lovers of idle talk, and revelers in the absurd hold sway. So, it was not surprising when in the Daily Sun of Friday, March 27, 2009, at page 9, the wispy-sounding Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi fouled the political atmosphere with his sterile argument of why he has failed to hold local council elections despite nearing the end of his controversial court-inspired rule.

Obi spoke when he played host to the Civil Liberties Organisation in Awka, Anambra State. In his typical manner, the governor in responding to a question as to why he has not held local government poll in his near four year tenure canvassed a rather ridiculous and untenable excuse that because the chairman of the State Independent Electoral Commission, Chief Cornel Umeh is related to former Governor Chris Ngige that is why he choose to deny millions of Anambra people the opportunity to consolidate on democracy at the local government level.

There is little doubt that the Mrs. Halima Ibrahim-led delegation would have been scandalized by the governor’s poorly articulated reason. For those of us who have watched Obi for the almost four years now, we could easily discern his little mind and his many misstatements on important policy issues. First it was that Ghanaians should conduct our elections; second was that the Umunna system in Igbo land is better than local government elections; now it is one Cornel Umeh who must go before he conducts the elections.

The squeaky-sounding governor described the composition of the state electoral commission as “family business.” Obi queried “Who is the chairman of Anambra State Electoral Commission? Chief Cornel Umeh, he is Ngige’s uncle. Who is his deputy? Ngige’s cousin. So you see it has become family business. “No, I will not conduct election; we will conduct election when their tenure expires. I will call Anambra people; they will make a choice on who will be the chairman of the electoral body. Peter Obi will not be part of it, the people of Anambra will do that, then we will fix the election and the people will elect those they want.” One may ask: Is Obi going to ‘conduct election’ to choose who becomes Chair of his LGA electoral Commission? Confusion and smoking mirrors - vintage Peter Obi.

Governor Obi who would want Nigerians to believe that he is a democrat and the perpetual victim in electoral contest has shown after all that he is at best a man of little, if any, conviction. Does his rationale hold in the face of empirical evidence that because one single individual is related to a former governor of the state, then the system should suffer for thousands perhaps millions of others? Has he not failed to deepen the democratic process not only in Anambra State but also in the country by refusing to give the people the opportunity to exercise their franchise by deciding on who should preside over their affairs at the local government level? Or more significantly, did he withhold the elections so as to have total control of local government funds, steal as much as he can in the bid to shore up his war-chest for his governorship bid the second time? Further, is he planning to install his own brother or lackey so as to guarantee his waning chance in next year’s election?

A few months back, Obi was all over the place crying wolf when there was not on the unsuitability of the INEC chairman, Prof. Maurice Iwu to conduct next year’s election in the state. He based his warped and jaundiced argument that the 2007 election, which he (Obi) was no participant as “seriously flawed” because it was Iwu that conducted it. Obi expressed the fear that the INEC chairman would work against his interest. For this reason, Obi was all over the place calling for Iwu’s sack in the hope that Iwu will be succeeded by an umpire of Obi’s own choosing. So, what we now have in Peter Obi is a situation where he will rather elections not be conducted until he has gotten his pet umpires to do it. Talk of umpire-shopping or fear of two umpires (Iwu and Umeh) and I will show you a Peter Obi that personifies one. It is sheer poppycock!

Here is Obi who has failed to guarantee grassroots participation at the base of democracy. Here is Obi who has shown how infantile and childish his mind works. Simply because Umeh is related to Ngige, he is not qualified to conduct local council poll owing to the whim and caprices of the governor. Perhaps, since Obi seems to be so much in love with the Ghanaians since he had suggested not too long ago that we should invite them to hold our elections for us; he would go and bring them when Umeh and his deputy’s tenure end in June to conduct local government election for Anambra.

It is expedient that the Minister of Information and Communications, Prof. Dora Akunyili who incidentally is from the same state with Obi should enroll the governor as her pupil numero uno in the rebranding campaign. Obi has demonstrated a penchant for the treasonable by suggesting that we are incapable of governing ourselves as he has typified by failing to hold such a small thing as local council election.

Before we are further hoodwinked by his monkey business of saying Anambra people would decide on who becomes the next ANSIEC boss, we should ask him who will appoint those that would make the shortlist. Or is he trying to play to the popular by saying the people would decide while all along he has tele-guiding the process, maneuvering the conduct so as to install the individual that would ensure that his loyalists win the poll to guarantee his safe passage to a second term? The governor should by now know that he is only clever by half. He should rather forget about the Anambra people in the selection process of the state SIEC boss. He should simply go to Ghana, pick whoever catches his fancy and bring him to hold elections for the state. So much for patriotism!

This advice is important in view of the constitutional provisions in appointing a chairman for government boards and commissions. He cannot pretend he loves the people when he does not. By denying the Anambra people a chance at having their own grassroots leaders, he has stifle democratic flourish, economic growth and all the attendant dividends of popular participation in governance.

Anambra deserves better, not pseudo-intellectuals and democrats; not individuals with primitive thoughts and little minds, not persons that have no sense of global happenings except when it has to do with buying and selling. Anambra is in need of persons that can transcend the bounds of pettiness, individuals that are truly democrat, tolerant and not rabid and struts and jesters.

Amajama writes from Abuja.
amajamaip@gmail.com

HOW FALANA AND THISDAY DEFAMED IWU AND NIGERIA

By: Aloy Ejimakor

This essay is intended as an opposite view to any notion that Professor Maurice Iwu’s tenure as Chair of INEC has expired, as the duo of Femi Falana and Thisday have been purveying since the past few days. The basis for their submissions is that Maurice Iwu was appointed to the Commission as a member in 2003 and that his tenure as Chair of INEC must count from that date instead of from 2005 when he was appointed (not promoted) as Chair of INEC. To be sure, Femi Falana and the Thisday that is being used for cheap publicity are wrong, on points of law and fact. That they are wrong is so self-evident and trite, yet it is sadly the basis upon which Mr. Falana was priming himself to go to court to seek removal Iwu.

When I read Thisday’s back-to-back publications of this fallacy in the past days, I immediately had a sudden sense that Falana was poised to yet again embarrass himself and the legal silk he wears so proudly and loudly. Recall that it was the same Falana who also was the first to loudly proclaim a while back that Maurice Iwu’s appointment as INEC Chair breached a certain section of the Nigerian constitution on dual citizenship. Falana was so cocksure and loud that the AC was goaded by his theories to sue Iwu to court, seeking his removal as INEC Chair. At the time, I had written and published an opposite view which ultimately prevailed in court. Femi Falana and AC were embarrassed but neither of them apologized, not did the NBA see fit to reprimand Falana for breaching cannons of legal ethics on false and malicious interpretation of the law.

This time around, Falana used Thisday to yet again embarrass himself, and in the same breath, through a subsequent edition of Thisday, they rebutted themselves by their own words. Here is how: The first publication on March 22, 2009 was ‘absolutely’ sure that Iwu’s tenure has since expired in August last year. Falana and Thisday were riding high, National Assembly and the Presidency were embarrassed, and the whole nation was in panic that what Nigeria has had all along in Professor Iwu was an imposter umpire-in-chief. But Falana and Thisday, driven mad by hatred of Iwu, were not yet done.

The next day on March 23, Falana and Thisday gloated that the Presidency (and the rest of the Federation) has been suckered by their expose and is in quandary. Here is how they put it: “The realization that the tenure of the national Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Prof. Maurice, may have expired last year is causing ripples at the National Assembly and the Presidency, THISDAY has learnt”. Really? How did these people learn of these ripples? Are we to believe that part of their intention was to publish falsehoods and then run to the Three Arms Zone to look for ripples? Talk about making things up and shouting fire in crowded movie theatres and I will show you a Falana and Thisday lurking in the shadows. Falana never reckoned that both the Presidency and the National Assembly have fine lawyers not given to emotional outbursts and false reading of the plain terms of the law.

So, it came to pass that, most probably, after Falana and Thisday were tutored that they were wrong, they ate their own words on the front page of Thisday of March 24, in the following words: “But it emerged yesterday that Iwu who joined after the 2003 elections as a national commissioner was actually screened by the Senate for the chairmanship position on June 1st, 2005 and sworn in by former President Olusegun Obasanjo on June 13, 2005 for a five-year tenure”. Common, why don’t you guys just say that you are sorry or that you goofed?

So, Thisday and Mr. Falana, are you going to now apologize to Maurice Iwu, the National Assembly you called ‘ignorant’, a President you lied was having ‘ripples’ and an innocent Nigerian nation you sought to mislead and send into panic? Or is it the polity you both sought to destabilize so nakedly and wickedly?

I will not, in this piece (like Falana loves to do), begin to rehash the Nigerian constitutional provisions on Maurice Iwu’s tenure, except for the following remarks: Mr. Falana stood the basic cannons of interpretation of plain legal provisions on its head in a deliberate (and malicious) attempt to mislead the public and to cause confusion. The provisions he cited are clearly in contradiction to his postulations and wild theories and both he and Thisday knew it, yet they still chose to travel the path of perfidy and self-embarrassment, their famous self-rebuttal notwithstanding. They knew that being a member of INEC and Chairman of INEC are two different appointments unless Iwu was also appointed Chairman the same day he was appointed a member of the Commission.

That Iwu was (later in time) appointed Chair of INEC in which he also served as a member is a mere coincidence. In public administration parlance (relating to political appointments), it is called ‘intra-departmental appointment’, meaning that the subsequent appointment triggers a new tenure. It is not a promotion because Iwu was not on civil service track or secondment. Iwu could have been appointed Chair of any of the other Federal Commissions enumerated in the said section of the constitution without some ignorant Falana trying not to see the single incident that meant that the two appointments are unrelated and separate in time. That single incident is the Senate confirmation of Professor Iwu as Chair of INEC in June 2005, which triggered a new term of office that survived his initial appointment in 2003. The related provision in the constitution, bearing the reference to Chairmen having the same tenure as members is just for the sake of avoiding a repetition of the conditions for serving in all the federal Commissions named therein. That is a basic rule of drafting that Mr. Falana, as a lawyer of silk, sadly failed to understand.

Now this: ‘The model rule of professional conduct and ethics for lawyers in the Commonwealth requires that a lawyer must not wilfully (with intent to deceive or with malicious intent) mislead the public or the courts on a point of law or fact and with such reckless abandon as to bring the legal profession or any other person into disrepute’.

Mr. Falana, the above rule is a paraphrase of the general rule that has been long adopted as a code of ethics for lawyers by the American Bar Association, all the Inns of Court in Great Britain (and the Commonwealth), and of course, the Nigerian Bar Association, of which Falana is a ‘ranking’ member. I will be surprised if the NBA fails to reprimand Falana over this. Or is the NBA going to pass this over and give Falana a free pass like it did when he also led the way to the conspiracy to mislead Nigerians with his deliberate misinterpretation of Nigerian constitution on dual citizenship – over Maurice Iwu. Without more, Falana’s reckless and serial falsifications of our supreme law on the matter of Iwu’s appointment and tenure is malicious and therefore a sanctionable professional misconduct.

Now to Thisday: ‘A newspaper is bound by law not to publish falsehood or publish anything in reckless disregard of the truth. It is no defence that the subject of the falsehood is a public official or a government unit if there is evidence that such newspaper knew its publication to be false or should have known that it is false’.

Above is roughly the provision in our tort law concerning false and malicious publications, otherwise generally known as libel or defamation. On March 22 and 23, Thisday published falsehoods with malice aforethought. On 24th March, Thisday, at paragraph 6 of its banner front page headline, admitted explicitly that its publications on Iwu’s tenure expiration were false. In evidence law, that is called admission of party opponent or admission against self-interest. In other words, it is an open and shut case, as Perry Mason used to say.

Therefore, Professor Maurice Iwu, the National Assembly (that Falana called ignorant) and the Nigerian nation Falana and Thisday sent into a panic have cause to take some action against these two despicable parties (Falana and his Thisday). If Nigerians let them off, it is likely that they will again go prancing around looking for the next opportunity to panic the nation and cause instability. Yet, I will not be surprised if Thisday, following previous traditions established in the Okonjo Iweala case, eats the humble pie by apologizing to Maurice Iwu and the nation. On the contrary, I will be surprised if Falana apologizes to anybody because the man has gone berserk and appears irredeemable.

Ejimakor is an attorney and analyst alloylaw@yahoo.com

SIMON KOLAWOLE AND HIS MANY TERMINAL DISEASES

By Aloy Ejimakor

On the back page of THISDAY of March 15, 2009, one Simon Kolawole impliedly claimed to have been privy to a grand Nigerian conspiracy of an Imo variety where Professor Maurice Iwu, INEC and Ohakim got together someplace and ‘awarded’ the governorship of Imo State to Ohakim on a platter. After reading the sadly rambling contents, I became more bewildered than informed because the allegations spewed by Kolawole could not check out with events in Imo (or even rest of Nigeria) during the time-line leading up to the 2007 transition. And worse still, Kolawole strained the cannons of civility and free speech by going as far as calling Professor Iwu a ‘terminal disease’ – a strong language and fighting words I am troubled that an enlightened THISDAY allowed in print. As a Nigerian who also observed the 2007 elections and read accounts turned in by numerous realistic observers, I feel it is my duty to the Nigerian public to write this rejoinder (or right of reply) and send it to Kolawole’s email address listed in his column. I hope he and Thisday will publish it as such. My submissions now follow:

Regarding the conduct of the elections in all of Nigeria, the ‘Observer Group of Organizations of Nigerians in Diaspora’ (OGONID), in its official report had concluded as follows: “We praise Maurice Iwu and INEC for their courage; and we agree that the result of the election is a true reflection of the popular will of Nigerians. Parties prevailed where they were predicted by the strength of their numbers and structures to hold better chances than their opponents. Parties condemned the election wherever they lost and praised it wherever they won – thus corroborating the notion that the election was acceptably free and fair for the most part, even if it failed to meet the highest standards seen only in countries that have operated uninterrupted democracies for more than two centuries. While Nigeria should strive to attain the same standard, we should not be enslaved or destabilized by the pursuit of it”. To date, I still stand by this assessment as the most accurate and realistic characterization of what happened in 2007; and it is on this notion that most Nigerian Diaspora came to closure on the 2007 elections, which if I may add, is also viewed by our vast majorities as an ‘historic and difficult transition’.

Better yet, the following week (on March 22, 2007), the same Simon Kolawole in his Thisday column, under the caption ‘Understanding the Fashola Phenomenon’, sadly contradicted himself by stating that “The conventional wisdom is that if you control the motor parks, you control the thugs; if you control the thugs, you control the polling booth; if you control the polling booth, you control the votes! That is why associations such as National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) are very strategic to politicians and there is always a fierce battle to control them”.

Well said Mr. Kolawole. By your own hand, you embarrassed yourself and Thisday by your self-rebuttal of the invectives you penned against Maurice Iwu the previous week. Second, you implied that in Lagos State, it is the duo of Tinubu and Fashola that control the mass of hardworking Nigerians you called “thugs” and “touts” and that it was these people that helped them to rig elections in Lagos State; though, in the same piece, you also implied that this phenomenon applies throughout Nigeria. Now, I ask you the following questions: Are you now going to write another piece where you will also call Tinubu, Fashola, NURTW and RTEAN ‘terminal diseases’ like you called Maurice Iwu? And can you explain where Professor Iwu fits into this your new theory that whoever controls the thugs controls the polling booth? Does Maurice Iwu control the thugs in all of the states of the Federation of Nigeria? While Mr. Kolawole ponders these questions, let’s turn to Imo State, which he used as the test case (or evidence of Iwu’s ‘terminal disease’).

To be sure, the situation in Imo was entirely different from the rest of the federation. There, PDP, OBJ and Udenwa publicly (at the stadium in Owerri) disowned a judicially reinstated Ararume and directed PDP’s bewildered ranks to vote another party’s candidate; and this was after INEC had already printed ballots that bore Charles Ugwu’s name and picture. But thanks to Maurice Iwu’s sense of fairness and quick reaction to unfolding events, INEC still redoubled to add Ararume’s name to the ballot in record time. But with the airwaves, newspapers and grapevine awash with Ararume’s total rejection by his own party, prospects of victory for him plummeted dangerously. I am from Imo and I am personally aware of the potent rumors that, concerning the first ballot on April 14th, PDP could not make up its mind between PPA’s Ohakim and APGA’s Agbaso. This wishy-washy attitude on the part of the PDP created a lot of tensions around the Governorship elections (as contrasted with the concurrent Assembly elections); and explained why it was possible for the contest to be marred while the Assembly elections (held on the same day), but which had no similar uncertainties, could have proceeded without incident.

Those of us physically present in Imo State on April 14th, 2007, including the INEC Imo REC, elements of Police and SSS, Ohakim, Agbaso and Ararume (but excluding a certain Simon Kolawole of Thisday) were eye-witnesses to the violence (and legion irregularities) in their worst manifestations, all perpetrated by the bitter contestants, not INEC. We also saw that whereas the Assembly balloting was proceeding smoothly on the clarity of party lines, the confusion surrounding the Governorship segment presented monumental temptations to voters and party ranks to engage in all manners of malpractices. Because of this and the other evident irregularities, all the governorship contestants and their political parties (including Agbaso and Ararume) sat down with INEC and agreed that the aspect of the balloting relating exclusively to the Governorship contest was inconclusive and therefore should be rescheduled for another date. Again, for avoidance of doubt, it is easy to see why that aspect of the poll regarding the Governorship election presented weighty issues that warranted cancellation or the conclusion by the consent of all participants that the election was stillbirth. It was purely a matter of contrast between an Assembly election in which the contestants did not go into the race with their party telling the whole nation that it did not have any candidates and a Governorship election (even though being held simultaneously) in which the PDP not only did not disown its own candidate but was, as of April 14th, also clearly undecided on whom next to support.

On April 28, 2007 when the election that produced Ohakim was held, PDP’s rejection of Ararume was not only still total, open and subsisting, it became clear that the PDP has finally found its voice when it pointedly directed its ranks to vote Ohakim at the polls. I was there and I heard it on the radio; I read it in the papers; I witnessed it all, the choice was absolute. The only thing I didn’t see or hear was about a certain Simon Kolawole of Thisday prancing around in Imo State (looking for ‘terminal diseases’ to write about almost two years later?). Well, the truth is that I knew for sure that Simon was not in Imo State either on the 14th or 28th April, 2007 as he even admitted same in his article under reference here (recall that Kolawole claimed that he got much of his information by calling people on the cell phone and listening to hearsay and crass political gossip, with all the election-day poor cell network, mischief, warts and all). As for me, being an eye-witness to this very strange political development in my native Imo, I knew that a hithertofore token candidate like Ikedi Ohakim and his young PPA were poised to score an upset of a lifetime. An upset which surprised no one, not a consenting PDP, not Imo citizens (of mostly PDP ilk) and certainly not a lone-ranger Ararume - which explains why Ararume did the unusual by joining Ohakim and INEC to object to Agbaso’s later-day attempts to ride on an April 14th that never happened.

That was the situation in Imo – an unusual act of political self-immolation by a dominant (and favored-to-win) PDP in the midst of an important election. Then, enter Professor Maurice Iwu - the maestro, ever so gutsy in the line of fire, who defied all odds (like he did on a grander scale throughout the Federation) to see the elections through and ensure timely emergence of a new government for his native Imo despite all the bedlam. That was leadership and vintage umpiring that delivers - ramrod and focused (contrast with the 1993 election that was touted as the fairest but never delivered any result or transition). I say so because it was Iwu’s quick reaction, competence and independence that gave Imo (and even Nigeria) an end game and brought closure to a tortured transition. The plain truth is that there was a vacuum in Imo and nature abhors a vacuum. Thus, other than Ohakim, any other candidate, howsoever fledgling could have capitalized on the extant vacuum to prevail in the ultimate contest on April 28th. What made the difference for Ohakim (above Agbaso and others) was that PDP was absolute in adopting him publicly as its own and sole candidate on April 28th. So Iwu and INEC didn’t have any business helping an Ohakim that was already riding on the coattails of a PDP that had the Imo electoral environment - lock, stock and barrel. And as against Agbaso’s Owerri zone, Ohakim’s Okigwe zone was favored from the get-go, which explains why Charles Ugwu and Ararume (both from Okigwe zone) were also heavily favored but for the Supreme Court verdict against Ugwu and PDP disavowal of Ararume, respectively.

It therefore follows at basic logic that Ohakim did not have to feel indebted to Maurice Iwu for a victory he garnered on the goodwill of the PDP plus the political capital brought by his hailing from Okigwe zone. On the contrary, Ohakim’s appointment of Iwu’s sibling – Cosmos, as the SSG, is unarguably because of only two reasons. The first reason is that Cosmos Iwu, aside from being Iwu’s sibling, is also a valuable PDP top facilitator to any political rewards the PDP extracted from Ohakim as a pre-condition of deploying its better structures to assist him to victory. So, Mr. Kolawole, if you must point fingers to where Ohakim might have all the reasons in the world to show some (deserved) gratitude, you should point to an Imo PDP that openly adopted him in full view of all Nigerians who listened to radio and read newspapers at that time. I am assuming that you did neither, otherwise you would not have succumbed to the temptation of risking a libel action by maliciously calling another fellow Nigerian a ‘terminal disease’, just because he is an Igbo from Imo State, who also happens to have umpired an election you did not like the result. That Professor Iwu is a public figure hardly justified the unabashed malice you purveyed against his person.

And there is more. SSG Cosmos Iwu has the cognate experience and personal political clout (PDP Deputy State Chair) required for the job and thus qualified on that score alone – in a government that was bound to be bipartisan and which he helped to power. In other words, there are other weighty considerations totally unrelated to his being Maurice Iwu’s sibling that qualified him for the job. Do you expect Chief Cosmos Iwu, an upstanding Imo citizen by any standards to suddenly grow cold from cashing in on his stellar qualifications and political capital simply because his brother happens to be the INEC Chair? Please, give me a break.

In the United States (a democracy of higher rank, ideals and experience), President Kennedy appointed his younger brother Attorney-General because he was a Democratic Party apparatchik as well as one of America’s finest lawyers; and that even paved the way for the younger Kennedy to nearly win the American presidency but for the assassin’s bullet. Mr. Kolawole, I am sure you would have also called the senior Kennedy (loved so much by the rest of the world) a ‘terminal disease’ and run the risk of Americans sending in their Marines after you. While you ponder that, let me ask you this question: Are you going to object to Thisday employing a relative of yours who is otherwise qualified for the job, simply because you are an editor at Thisday? Or do you want me to reel out the names of all those you assisted to some plum job at the Thisday? Don’t bother.


Ejimakor is an attorney and analyst alloylaw@yahoo.com

FEMI FALANA versus THE PROGRESSIVES

Femi FALANA Versus The Progressives

By: Garba Mustapha

Femi Falana’s (the Lagos lawyer, activist and politician) recent comment on the silence of National Association of Nigerian Students’ NANS on what is obviously a coordinated campaign of the camp of the so-called Progressives against Professor Maurice Iwu caught my attention. My first reaction on reading Falana’s expression of despair with the disposition of NANS to the Iwu matter was surprise. I have always known it to be the culture of the likes of Falana to intimidate and abuse those who do not share their perspective on certain national issues or act in their very predictable ways. Even if a member of their gang dares to differ, contrary to their espoused position, he is surely going to be tagged and blackmailed as a “sellout”. You need to understand this background to comprehend how Femi Falana’s mind works and why he berated NANS, whose voice he said “had not been heard against the fraudulent elections since INEC allegedly began to fund the association”. If Falana alleges that NANS is now under the undue influence of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, questions the former Ekiti state governorship aspirant must be asked are: when, in the history of NANS did INEC attain such paymaster status to NANS? If NANS is now suddenly for sale, then who was the previous paymaster before INEC took over? What went wrong in the relationship between NANS and the Falana’s ‘Progressives’? And finally, why would Femi Falana now direct his “friendly fire” at NANS just for the sake of Professor Iwu?

I should know the Progressives’ modus operandi and thought process. I came to this knowledge as an undergraduate on campus, their breeding ground. I knew them as stirrers and eternally antagonistic group with stock-phrase speaking and routine words memorized from Marxist literatures and mainly Walter Rodney and Frantz Fanon books. These books were obligatory ritual for aspiring members and the ability to quote them by rote would have made you “conscientized” (their term for brainwashing) - a qualifying membership prerequisite. To do otherwise, you are maligned as a bourgeoisie or one possessing such tendencies. There is this experience I had with one we would regard those days as a “Femi Falana boy”. I recall that run-in with amusement to this day. A certain guy (name withheld), who today is a national voice in the Progressive camp, denounced me vehemently for eating a piece of cooked egg. Coming from an abject financial background, to eat an egg was a luxury to his queer understanding. As typical and by his definition, I was tagged a ‘bourgeoisie’. However, some months later, when his lot became a little better economically, that is, only when he became a member of the students union government, I met my Progressive friend with a tin of Milo, milk and the same egg I was accused. That is the lot of the Progressive’s hypocrisy; that was my experience; that was my first awakening to the underbelly of Falana and Co.

I am very familiar with the protest politics of Nigerian Progressives or activists to be deceived by their ploys. The statement credited to NANS PRO, Agbabiaka Ahmed on the position of NANS on the Iwu–must-go campaign laid credence to my earlier experience and should be a lesson to those who do not know how the Progressives work. According to the NANS PRO on the anti Iwu crusade, “some of us are discussing with a Lagos based lawyer and human right activist but NANS as a body has no position on the Iwu must go campaign”. As impeccable in character and popular as Progressives always want to portray themselves and their views on national issues, they are often times goaded by pecuniary interest, no matter how highly placed. It was not a surprise when it was revealed that the resurgent campaign against Iwu has been paid for up to the sum of N100m by a certain Governor to be shared to groups who participate in the exercise. The vilification of NANS is therefore as a direct result of NANS’ refusal to accept the bribery–for-protest campaign by the same people that have always used the organization in the past. In other words, this is a new NANS that Femi Falana suddenly realized he can no longer use at will. That explains why he is mixing things up by taking on Professor Iwu and NANS all at once as if NANS also umpired the 2007 elections at issue.

In the event of the Orkar coup of 1990, NANS was promised membership of the highest decision-making body if the coup succeeded. In the frenzy of the elevation of the student body and the overthrow of a dictatorial IBB regime, students on campus trooped to the room of the then NANS president, who is now a second term commissioner in Lagos state for policy direction. NANS position, as the president pronounced in his address was very disappointing to almost all the teeming students. NANS would not be part of any military regime no matter the position it was offered. I have always held in high esteem this former NANS president for his wisdom. However, a recent encounter with an ‘insider’ revealed that the laudable decision was actually taken by the ‘senior NANS executives’ in Lagos. The revelations this insider made about the character of certain Lagos-based lawyer and activist were too damning to be printed here.

People like us should understand Falana’s frustration with his inability to recruit NANS to his campaign of animus against the person of Maurice Iwu. Again, I ask, what went wrong between NANS and the Progressives and at what time? I knew the Progressives would lose out from a rift that led to a crack in their camp in 1993. I stumbled on the story on this rift in the Progressive Youth Movement (PYM), an undercover political movement known only to initiates and the birth of Labour Movement (LM) as was reported in a University of Benin campus magazine at the time. The existence of PYM was a highly guided secret. You can therefore understand the monetary overtures made to the editor (the editor revealed later) by some human rights activists and PYM members through their undergraduate surrogates to buy all copies of the magazines to prevent Nigerians knowing its existence and activities. Thank God, the editor did not capitulate. The PYM comprised mainly of known human rights activists, graduate and undergraduates who operated openly as Youth Solidarity for South Africa and Nigeria (YUSSAN). The cause of the rift between the Movements was over sharing ratio of “activism dividends” and poor judgments on certain issues like the decision to accept the IBB largesse in the administration’s parley with student leaders at the Jos conference of 1993. The parley was necessitated by constant student restiveness then.

It is therefore not a coincidence that Nigerian students, over these years, have not been diametrically opposed to anything Government or resort to burning down properties of government and innocent people in the name of protests. For the first time in Nigerian students’ history, NANS is reacting to national issues based on their own perspective and judgment. Falana’s frustration with this is quite understandable; so is his aspersion on NANS as having been bought over by INEC. It is not necessarily the way of true Progressives like NANS, but as Falana’s personal frustrations with Professor Iwu grows, those in the know are not surprised that this is vintage Femi Falana – a control freak of the highest order and a turncoat Progressive who loves to confront strong men in authority. What bothers me is that Professor Iwu might just to be a test-run for more sinister designs Femi Falana has on President Yar’Adua that he continues to see as unfit to govern.

Mustapha is a public commentator garbanaija@yahoo.com

REASONS WHY MAURICE IWU MUST STAY

REASONS WHY MAURICE IWU MUST STAY

By: Aloy Ejimakor

It is becoming clear that for some of our politicians, contest for power in Nigeria is driven most by the unbridled desire to control the resources of the country. By contrast, if a politician is truly driven by the desire for public service, he will follow the path of honor, like Al Gore did when he waived his right of petition (or attrition - as applied in Nigeria) and conceded the presidency of the United States to Gorge Bush, even when he (Al Gore) was leading on the manual recount. It is therefore a truism that the spate of litigations that trailed the 2007 elections in Nigeria was fed more by a rising level of desperation on the part of some politicians and less by any institutional flaws in the conduct of the elections. Add the fact that, for the first time in Nigeria, we saw a quantum leap in the number of political parties and contestants for power. More parties and contestants meant many more sour losers who headed to court with the singsong that it was Professor Iwu that robbed them of victory. And I dare say that there is also a new level of misplaced judicial activism that is largely targeted at a PDP that has been successfully portrayed in the media as the sole party that rigs elections in Nigeria. A few of the verdicts too, like that of Amaechi and Ngige appear to be retaliatory rulings against an Obasanjo the judiciary is intent on settling scores with. Unluckily (and unfairly) for Maurice Iwu, he has come to represent the poster-boy for all manners of people who have an axe to grind with Obasanjo and the system he left behind.

Talking of sour losers, there are some who now pass off as activists, pretending to be fighting INEC (read: Iwu) on behalf of Nigerians. Femi Falana has gone to court to secure a mandamus against Iwu yet he downplays the fact that his animus is largely driven by the fact that he contested for and lost the governorship of his state under the nomination of a party (NCP) that did not even win a seat in the House of Assembly. That party has never been heard of since after the election. And then you have Alhaji Balarabe Musa, who is joining up with Femi Falana to fight Iwu because his party failed to win any elections even in his home state of Kaduna. There, the PDP and ANPP won them all. So, it appears that Musa is miffed that Iwu and INEC entered into some sort of tripartite conspiracy to deliver Kaduna State to a hue of joint co-conspirators from the ranks of PDP and ANPP. How do you reconcile this with the mantra that the Iwu is beholden to PDP only?

This whole over-concentration of attacks on Maurice Iwu ignores the glaring truths that also count for him and INEC. Begin with the near zero violence in the federal elections Iwu conducted which clearly and unarguably contrasted with the carnage of Kano and Jos LGA elections. Iwu did not conduct those elections that sadly brought such mayhem. Then we have vast numbers of Governors throughout the federation who are too cowed to conduct their LGA elections almost two years into their term, including a Peter Obi who someone found the false guts to take on an Iwu who delivered on a greater national burden and on schedule too. Now the federal government has vindicated Iwu by proposing to abolish SIECs and have LGA elections conducted by the same national INEC that some people love to belittle. Professor Iwu was the very first to complain about the manner of INEC funding. The Electoral Reform Committee concurred by proposing a first-line charge to fund INEC. That also counts for the Professor.

Additionally, I have come to believe that the problem of organizing elections in Nigeria goes beyond INEC as a single institution amongst the many others like the police and the SSS that are also deployed to critical functions on election-day. The citizenry also carries some of the blame. So, if we decide that nobody is going to interdict our ballot boxes; that election-day law enforcement will rise to deal with instant electoral offenses; that our politicians will refrain from engaging thugs to cause electoral mayhem; and that everybody else comes together to say: for once we are going to have the most credible elections of all time, it will happen and all the ‘omnipresent’ Iwus and INECs of this world cannot frustrate that desire. But if we decide that we are going to be mired in election malpractices just like exam malpractices and other sharp practices that are rife in this country, the most pious assemblage of umpires headed by the Pope himself will not succeed in giving us an election anywhere near being credible. In other words, it is our dubious ways as a people and the mindset that we must win by hook or crook that give us marred elections. Professor Iwu (and those that will succeed him) and our current and future INECs are just the fall guys for what I like to call “embedded societal proclivity to beating the system”. And like the mendacious woman in Solomon’s famous judgment, if some people cannot beat the system, they resort to decimating it. Falana’s frivolous lawsuit to force EFCC’s hand on Iwu appears to be directed at sowing some instability in the polity in the run-up to preparations for 2011. So, in effect, his actions are also targeted against a President Yar’Adua they have reckoned to be the soft underbelly to prevailing on their designs to cause political disorders in the system – to achieve the same ends they sought by calling for no elections in 2007.

And lest we forget, Maurice Iwu did not just fall from the sky and conducted the elections within the best of political and legal climates, such as obtained in Ghana and the United States, both of which have been (unfairly) compared to Nigeria. There were flurries of indictments, ill-prepared opposition politicians, inadequate legal order and the specter of Third Term that nearly sailed through the parliament. The aggressive pursuit of Third Term and the forces arrayed against it wrought untold distractions on Iwu, INEC and the larger Nigerian society in terms of concentrating on the transition. Keep in mind that the ‘transition’ election that brought Yar’Adua required a different mindset from one in which Obasanjo was universally expected to succeed himself. Consider also that entire pluralities of the national and state Assemblies joined in supporting third term, not to talk of the aid and comfort coming from cash-flush corporate Nigeria, the blessing received from various Nigerian religious/traditional leaders for third term to prevail and the easy acquiescence of a conniving citizenry.

When third term failed, grand Nigerian conspiracies were unleashed on INEC to intimidate it away from carrying through with the elections. Recall that vast numbers of prominent Nigerian politicians were calling for interim national government, meaning that they did not want the elections to hold, mostly because they figured they were sure to lose. Some analysts have charged that the call for interim national government was also clever cover for the secret desire for the military to come back, in the hope that it will recruit its appointees from opposition ranks. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the same clique of politicians who never wanted the elections to hold back in 2007 will continue to harass a Maurice Iwu they blame for losing a contest they would not have won anyway. Now, their actions have come to be a double strike of sorts – first, as retaliation against Iwu for daring to hold the 2007 elections; and second, as a strategy to scuttle the 2011 elections they have figured that they are again poised to lose to the more disciplined, better organized PDP.

Ejimakor is an attorney and analyst. alloylaw@yahoo.com

BEFORE MAURICE IWU GOES, HEAR THIS

BEFORE MAURICE IWU GOES, HEAR THIS.

By: Aloy Ejimakor

Now that elements of opposition politicians led by Barrister Femi Falana (SAN) of the NCP have taken the anti-Iwu (and anti-system) battle to the judiciary, let us pause a moment to hear some enduring home truths. It is only when this whole renewed anti-Iwu vigor is glanced off recent history that we can begin to understand why such anti-Iwu aggression persists; and also why it is surely going to continue to roil long after Iwu has gone.

First, rewind back to pre-2007. You will see that throughout the time-line to 2007, entire segments of the media were deployed to the purpose of discrediting the outcome of the elections. Elements of local and foreign intermeddlers who passed off as either monitors or observers were engaged in a well-coordinated, well-financed campaign to discredit the elections even before the first ballots were cast, culminating in the failed incendiary truck and the desperate legal action commenced to compel Iwu to annul the results. Like now, Iwu was also then the poster-boy for everything they claimed was wrong with elections that never even held. Those arrayed against the elections figured that they will succeed by personalizing their attacks around the person of Maurice Iwu, mostly because their sponsors reckoned that Iwu was intent on carrying through with an election they were ill-prepared to win. Evidence of this is legion and can be found in the malicious publications that were sponsored on Iwu's long-settled professional standing; and for the first time, these people began to question Iwu’s internationally acclaimed contributions to the complex sciences and the stature Nigerian gained on account of that. They even went as far as questioning Iwu's basic academic qualifications several years after such have been accepted by renowned institutions where Iwu had made tenure, including University of Nigeria where he became a Professor at the young age of 34.

The same campaign has once again started and the clear intention is to discredit the 2011 two years ahead of its schedule. You don’t have to look far to see that these people have one thing in common, and that is: they are all politicians who have no structural base to win elections. Quite frankly, I don’t see any electoral preparations on the part of Femi Falana’s NCP and Balarabe Musa’s PRP that will give them any fighting chance (against the PDP) in 2011. So, they figured that they might as well begin early to create credibility problems as a launching pad for the post 2011 litigations and media attacks they are again poised to unleash on the system. They forget easily that INEC will survive Professor Iwu and the attacks they are levying on one man and the institution he heads contribute to great lengths in making Nigeria unstable and hurting the country's standing in sub-regional and global affairs.

As regards President Yar’Adua and the PDP, they need to know that there is a helluva of a political liability that abounds if the President is seen to be too eager to placate an unserious opposition by even considering replacing an experienced INEC leadership too close to final calls for the next election. I call the opposition unserious because it is unlike in Ghana and the United States, which have been compared with Nigeria, where the opposition is large, organized and steadfast. In both countries, their elected and electable members don't jump ship to the ruling party, and not in droves like they do in Nigeria. Pray, how can the opposition supplant a ruling party that is fast swallowing entire ranks of opposition politicians? The other day it was two ANPP governors from the North; recently, we hear of Atiku decamping from AC to the PDP. So, you can see that at the geometric rate the Nigerian opposition is decamping to the PDP and the fractured parties they leave behind, there will be no opposition party of substance left in 2011 to have a fighting chance of winning against PDP. The only opposition party that has remained steadfast is Orji Kalu’s PPA, which explains why Orji was disappointed with Atiku’s recent moves to eat crow with the PDP.

To be sure, even if Maurice Iwu's tenure is left to sunset in 2010, these politicians will still latch on to his replacement to explain why they had to lose 2011 - a sort of a sad replay of why they had to lose 2007. Considering this emerging scenario, it will not make any sense in replacing Iwu with a new Chairman, especially since replacing him might give the unwitting impression that the President has finally capitulated to those who love to taunt him as lacking political mettle, besides the more important point that such eleventh hour replacement will further complicate the same issues we are trying to overcome. Therefore, whether Iwu goes or not, we must bear in mind that INEC does not function in a vacuum of institutions but rather in the midst of many institutions. INEC does not have the powers to arrest electoral offenders, the police does. INEC does not have the national intelligence mandate to detect early conspiracies portending threats to our elections, the SSS and to some extent, the NIA does. That means that anybody pointing fingers for electoral offenses need to point them elsewhere, and not at an INEC leadership that has no legal and coercive mandate to prevent election-day violence and other machinations deployed by politicians who would rather spoil it all for the rest of us by hiding under a Maurice Iwu that has become an easy target for venting opposition impotence in the midst of a virile PDP.

Ejimakor is an attorney and analyst alloylaw@yahoo.com

Aloy Ejimakor Speaks on National Issues

Aloy Ejimakor is a Nigerian jurist based in the United States. He is the President of Nigerian Patriots in Diaspora (NPID) and also of Organisation of Nigerian Lawyers in Diaspora (ONLID). He traveled to Nigeria recently and granted an interview to members of the Press. Below is the text of the interview

As a lawyer and President of the Organization of Nigerian Lawyers in Diaspora (ONLID), what are your views on the recent call by the NBA, following the Ekiti case, for removal of Professor Maurice Iwu of INEC?

I don’t think it is appropriate for a hardcore, federally-chartered professional association to involve itself in passing the buck over the much overplayed shortcomings of the 2007 election. If such were the case, the Nigerian Medical Association, the Nigerian Society of Engineers, Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria and all other professional associations might as well jettison all decorum and jump into taking sides in what has become an object of vicious power play between duplicitous politicians. Appointing or firing of INEC Chair is also a political (not judicial) item, clearly reserved for the pleasure of the President and consent of the Senate. And INEC is not a judicial body with some nexus to the NBA. So, what’s the beef with the NBA? That Maurice Iwu will continue as INEC Chair for now and even beyond his tenure after June 2010 is strictly a ‘political question’, not a juridical one and must thus be determined by whether the President decides to capitulate to the designs of the opposition or remain firm in exercising his sound political discretions in not wagging the dog. That is besides the Senate which is, by the constitution, required to find serious cause before confirming such removal. Where is the immediate cause or misconduct the constitution required? For starters, the NBA must advance proof that Professor Iwu pre-meditated some change in ink color in Ekiti for the sole purpose of disadvantaging the AC. If nullification of a result declared by INEC is a misconduct for which an INEC Chair shall be fired, the framers of our constitution would have said so. I suppose the same thing said for the NBA is also applicable to the NLC, in addition to the fact that NLC should be taken even less seriously because of its open romance with the Labour Party and the AC.

And there is more: The NBA ought to have known that the color of ink to be used is expressly within the sole discretion of INEC; and that it was by an INEC internal procedure that a certain color was brought in ordinary use. In other words, it was neither required by statute, nor by other mandatory federal regulation having the force of law. But since the Court of Appeals is the final authority on the Ekiti matter, it is now left to society to wonder whether a higher court would have upheld or remanded the Ekiti case on further appeal. We must not pretend that our courts are suddenly infallible when it comes to nullifying election results declared by INEC. Now let us consider this question: Is it reasonable for NBA to hold Maurice Iwu strictly liable for a spontaneous and innocent decision of INEC ad-hoc field officers to switch to another ink color? And to the point of calling for Iwu’s sack over this petty matter? Is the NBA saying that Professor Iwu, by some telepathy from his Abuja office, divined the change of ink color in order to advantage the prevailing candidate? And since the Court of Appeals did not explain how the in-field change of ink color constituted ‘substantial non-compliance’, can NBA now explain it to Nigerians and also demonstrate the fraudulent intent attributable to Iwu that may justify his removal. This is not to say that Iwu can be removed on grounds of failing to use the right ink color or even for any finding of ‘substantial non-compliance’. The constitution clearly provides that the INEC Chair can only be removed for ‘misconduct’, not for getting ink colors wrong. Pray, if every result INEC declared is supposed to stand or upheld for peace to reign, why did the founding fathers of our constitution create election tribunals? Why didn’t the founding fathers simply provide that: “We hereby enact that for every election nullified, ‘Iwu Must Go’”? Why is the NBA not calling for the firing of every judge or justice whose decision is overturned by a higher court? This is bait and switch, smoking mirrors, warts and all.

Further, this thing about NBA always taking on the government of the day and institutions that determine the rules of devolution of political power in Nigeria is assuming such a dimension that is fast rising to the level of overawing government and intimidating its high officials. I suspect that the real target of the NBA is not Professor Iwu but a President Yar’Adua that continues to be seen by fringe ranks of the NBA as a sitting duck and a disagreeable Obasanjo imposition. This is part of the reason some credible Nigerians have charged that the NBA, as presently led, appears to be fronting for the opposition and disaffected politicians within the ruling party. Despite Ekiti and others like it, it appears that NBA was suckered in by elements of the opposition and scheming PDP apparatchiks looking to make hay and supplant Yar’Adua in 2011, including an Atiku who continues to see Professor Iwu as the sole obstacle to his evident ambitions to becoming President in 2011, perhaps on the indecent assumption that the President might be too ill to run or worse. True or not, I would rather NBA curtail this unwise politicking and concentrate more on those fine, apolitical ideals that underpinned its founding, including law reforms; constitutional amendment, awaiting trials; discipline of lawyers; professional ethics; continuing legal education; and like lawyer-related pre-occupations.

How do you reconcile your views on INEC/Iwu with what the Supreme Court held in the case of Governor Amaechi of Rivers States?

In Amaechi versus Omehia, the issue before the court was a plain legal question, not the collateral equitable question that ultimately carried the day; and that has nothing to do with any irregularities attributable to INEC or Maurice Iwu. If at all, Amaechi’s issues had more to do with PDP’s struggles with internal party democracy and the inequities arising therefrom. As Chair of INEC, Professor Iwu is charged with abiding by the law, not over-reaching himself to act as a court of equity that must right every electoral injustice. INEC’s first instinct is to recognize only a candidate sponsored by a political party. The stretched equitable considerations that led to Omehia’s fall are strictly within the purview of superior courts, not an INEC that is a mere non-adjudicatory agency with the limited mandate of umpiring elections. So, to most legal analysts, Amaechi was poised to more likely prevail on the clear legal questions raised by his substitution and that any companion ruling was supposed to be restricted to an order for a fresh ballot that would now have Amaechi’s name on the ballot as the PDP candidate. The other issue, wholly equitable and unaddressed by the briefs before the court, was whether the votes cast for Omehia in the election could be held in equity to have been cast for Amaechi? That was the point where the Supreme Court turned activist and ‘equity-prone’ by departing from a pure court of law and looked to its equitable jurisdiction to issue that part of the ruling that awarded the governorship to Amaechi. The rationale offered by the court is so far unknown to Nigerian black letter law as presently enacted, but may be consistent with equitable principles underpinning our inherited tradition of common law. Let me explain. There is nothing in the Nigerian constitution or the Electoral Act – the two substantive laws by which electoral disputes are resolved - that expressly mandated that ‘where a substitution fails by court order, the victory garnered by the ‘interloper’ candidate shall be awarded to the candidate so wrongfully substituted’. The only situation where such victory could be legally awarded in accordance with some stretch of the law is one in which the wrong candidate was declared elected, such as in the case of Obi versus Ngige - in an inter-party contest, not intra-party. To be sure, what the law contemplated both in its express provisions and spirit was for a failed intra-party substitution to lead to new elections where the offended candidate will have the opportunity of standing as the candidate of the offending political party. The legislative history of our electoral laws and settled judicial precedents amply support this proposition. And the reason is simple. Nigeria has a political party system and our laws do not yet recognize independent candidates (like America) nor elections without vested candidates (like Britain). It therefore follows at universal logic that any vote cast in our elections is assumed at law to have been cast not only for the political party but also for the candidate. This means that the votes cast in the gubernatorial elections in Rivers State were not just for PDP standing alone but also for Omehia, as a natural person, who assumedly contributed to the victory at issue. Conversely, if Amaechi was never substituted, he could have lost the election, not as a consequence of any voter disdain for the PDP, but as a rejection of Amaechi – the natural person, not the candidate. Therefore, our electoral statute demands two broad requirements for validation of votes in an election. One is that there is a candidate (identifiable in his physical characteristics as an intelligent being, as opposed to a chicken or cow or even a tree); and the second, is that such candidate must be sponsored by a political party. In the case at bar, the intelligent being who met both requirements was Omehia, not Amaechi. In other words, the votes cast in the governorship elections can never be divisible (at law) or separated from Omehia, the physical person just as the same votes cannot be separated from PDP, the sponsoring party. Both of them – candidate and party, are joint owners of the votes or entitled to them by the entireties, analogous to being tenants by the entireties in real property law, in which case each tenancy or entitlement is inseparable in their entireties from one tenant or the other. Keep in mind that, as far as those votes are concerned, PDP and Omehia are more like Siamese twins. Therefore, without more, the judgment would have been unassailable had it simply ordered new elections with Amaechi as the new PDP candidate. The judgment courted controversy by going as far as declaring Amaechi the duly elected governor in an election that did not have his name on the ballot. So, the objections raised by those criticizing the judgment can be sustained on the plain construction of the black letter law. That some people still point to Amaechi’s case as another malpractice that counts against Professor Iwu goes to illustrate the gathering demerits of such postulations.

Coming from America, which adheres to rule of law, do you believe that President Yar’Adua is sincere with his policy of adherence to rule of law?

Yes, the President is sincere on all counts; and here is why: This is not the first time Nigerian leaders have expressed some commitment to rule of law. But this is the first time Nigerians have seen a credible and noticeable presidential effort geared to converting the doctrine from a mere populist slogan to a cultural revolution of sorts. The difference lies in the fact that previous attempts failed to take hold because they remained mere slogans, sadly lacking in any bonafide and concrete measures on the party of the government of the time to make it a way of life for Nigerians and our institutions. Today, President Yar’Adua seems to have departed from that tradition as amply demonstrated by some of his actions to date. Consider the President’s ram-rod reluctance to intermeddle in matters reserved to the judicature and the many other hot-button judicial issues of the day where the President left no one in doubt that he preferred to let matters play out within the settled procedural framework. In all of these situations, the President never pussy-footed and you don’t have to look far to notice the gathering diplomatic windfalls for Nigeria, coming from even the most cynical and hostile of nations. In America, Yar’Adua’s sincerity on rule of law has sunk in and is credited with an extraordinary degree of respect Nigeria is known to now enjoy at the highest levels of the US administration; and it is credited with the upsurge in direct foreign investments that are bound for Nigeria in recent times.

Ejimakor can be reached at alloylaw@yahoo.com

Aloy Ejimakor's Interview, February 2009

Aloy Ejimakor is a Nigerian jurist based in America. He is the President of Organisation of Nigerian Lawyers in Diaspora (ONLID) and also of Nigerian Patriots in Diaspora (NPID). He traveled to Nigeria recently and granted an interview to members of the Press. Below is the text of the interview.

As a Nigerian in the Diaspora and having witnessed elections as it is done there, how would you rate the performance of the INEC in the conduct of elections?

Well, INEC may be called names by some people who have a stake in continually waxing negative on Nigeria and her finest institutions. But for me, I would say that back in 2007, INEC did a great job with the difficult task of conducting elections in a very complex nation of over 140 million people. Throughout the time-line to 2007, the pressures on INEC were just too much. Elements of local and foreign intermeddlers who passed off as either monitors or observers were engaged in a well-coordinated, well-financed campaign to discredit the elections even before the first ballots were cast. And to succeed, they resorted to personalizing their attacks around the person of Professor Maurice Iwu, mostly because Iwu’s brand of stubborn patriotism did not sit well with them and the forces they represented. This is besides the other distractions collateral to the war of attrition between the former president and his vice, the hidden ambitions of the then senate president and so on. That Iwu and INEC overcame all these and gave Nigeria her first truly democratic transition since Independence is something that Nigerian patriots like me celebrated in the Diaspora with foreign friends of Nigeria who all together acknowledged Iwu’s single-minded resilience as a gutsy umpire for the most populous black nation on earth. As for the flaws that the naysayers have tried to so much overplay, I will say these: I believe that the problem of organizing elections in Nigeria goes beyond INEC as a single institution amongst the many others like the police and the SSS that are also deployed to critical functions on election day. And if we decide as citizens that nobody is going to interdict our ballot boxes; that election-day law enforcement will rise to deal with instant electoral offenses; that our politicians will refrain from engaging thugs to cause electoral mayhem; and that everybody else comes together to say: for once we are going to have the most credible elections of all time, it will happen and all the Iwus and INECs of this world cannot frustrate that desire. But if we decide that, as voters and politicians, we are going to be mired in election malpractices just like exam malpractices and other sharp practices that are rife in this country, the most pious assemblage of umpires headed by the Pope himself will not succeed in giving us an election anywhere near being credible. In other words, it is our dubious ways as a people and the mindset that we must win by hook or crook that give us marred elections. Professor Iwu (and those that will succeed him) and our current and future INECs are just the fall guys for what I like to call “embedded societal proclivity to beating the system”.

So what are your suggestions on curbing electoral malpractices in Nigeria?

First of all, we need to strengthen the institutions that support INEC and that includes having some continuity in the leadership of INEC beyond June 2010 (when the term of the current leadership is billed to sunset). Continuity becomes more compelling because the next election in 2011 would have to be held much earlier than before. Continuity is also supported by the following factors: recommendations of the Electoral Reform Panel that elections be held early enough; the clear wishes of vast majority of Nigerians; and the political liability that comes if the President is seen to be too eager to placate the opposition by replacing an experienced INEC leadership too close to the next election. The Presidency has shown political courage by tending towards re-appointing former INEC Commissioner, Igbani and I don’t see why Chairman Iwu will not be re-appointed on the same theory. In other words, if it is true that Professor Iwu’s tenure will expire in June 2010, it will not make any sense in replacing him with a new Chairman, especially since replacing him might give the unwitting impression that the President capitulated to those who saw his mandate as illegitimate, besides the more important point that such eleventh hour replacement will further complicate the same issues we are trying to overcome. The President has the prerogative to re-appoint Professor Iwu, even so on an interim basis, and it is the position of vast majorities of the Nigerian Diasporan organizations that the President will not kowtow to those who wished otherwise just because they lost an election an Iwu happened to have conducted. Coming to the other institutional factors, we must bear in mind that INEC does not function in a vacuum of institutions but rather in the midst of many institutions. INEC does not have the powers to arrest electoral offenders, the police does. INEC does not have the national intelligence mandate to detect early conspiracies portending threats to our elections, the SSS and to some extent, the NIA does. INEC is not well-funded and that must stop forthwith because its functions are ever so central to our very survival as a democracy. In the immediate future, we might have to consider the efficacies of giving INEC some ad-hoc coercive powers on election day in order to enable it to, on its own, immediately take electoral offenders into custody and bring them to book without any let or hindrance.
Additionally, we need a permanent regime of voter education and I understand INEC is doing something right now about it by bringing Electoral Institutes into the realm, thanks to reforms brought by the same Professor Iwu. Further, the media needs to get beyond negative reporting on Iwu and INEC and turn to educating Nigerians on the many reforms undertaken by INEC in recent times. A more informed voter would be more vigilant in guarding his vote against ballot snatchers. Further, Iwu’s determination to reduce the use of ad-hoc staff is part of the larger reforms in the general direction of making our line and staff umpires more responsible for what happens on election day in terms of discharging the statutory functions reserved to INEC. These reforms make it imperative that we urgently look anew at the methods and magnitudes in which INEC is presently funded. As regards methods, I will suggest that INEC, like the judiciary, be funded on a first-line charge basis, meaning that it gets to draw from the Federation Account directly as a mater of law. That is bound to make it more independent. As regards magnitudes, the funding must be generous, untangled and devoid of political considerations. I give Professor Iwu the credit for long suggesting these reforms along with his fine thesis on electronic voting. But for now that INEC cannot draw directly due to constitutional constraints, the National Assembly can resort to its appropriation powers to ensure that no expense is spared in the funding of the next elections until such a time we get around to amending the constitution to make matters clearer. And finally, Nigeria has come full circle to the point that we don’t have any business with asking foreign nations to help fund our elections. If foreigners are not allowed to fund our political parties, why would we accept their strings-laden freebies to fund our elections? This is a national security matter which came to the fore when these foreigners demanded access to the biometrics of Nigeria’s registered voters. And they nearly succeeded but for Professor Iwu’s uncanny intellectual grasp of matters of national security and statecraft.

As President of the Organisation of Nigerian Lawyers in the Diaspora (ONLID), what is your take on the recent judgment on the voting rights of Nigerians in the Diaspora?

This question comes under the general purview of what is often referred to as the ‘Diaspora Voting Rights’. This idea developed out of the ‘Absentee Ballot’ system which is prevalent in America, whereby Americans living overseas can cast their ballots at any of the American diplomatic missions closest to them. So, based on this premise, we in the Diaspora felt that our universal suffrage suffers as a consequence of our sojourn abroad and absence of a clear legal path to whether we can cast our ballots at our locations overseas or not. And because INEC was also not clearly statutorily empowered to take extra-territorial ballots, a crack team of Nigerian Diaspora proceeded to bring legal action in this regard. Now that a competent court has given verdict in recognition of Diaspora Voting Rights, I see no reason why anybody would want to be opposed to the idea. I only see a new opportunity for the National Assembly to either enact a law to define the procedural angles; and when time comes for constitutional amendment, to consider whether it is even better to give it the force of constitutional protection.

As a lawyer of many years standing, what is your take on the conferment of Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN? Would you say it has deepened the country’s judicial system?

No, it has not deepened Nigeria’s judicial system, not even any where near doing that. First of all, it is not and never will deepen the judicial system because that was never the purpose. The original intent (in Nigeria, not in Britain where it originated from the doctrine of ‘Queens Counsel) was to recognize comparative excellence in the practice of law but as applied, it has instead created privileges in the practice of law, and that is in opposite to any deepening of the judicial system. Further, it is a vestige of our colonial past and a rather sad mimicry of the ‘Queens Counsel’ royal honours conferred by the Queen in Britain and in which case you even don't have to be lawyer to earn it. Recall that Nnamdi Azikiwe, a non-lawyer and other non-lawyer Nigerians were also conferred with the same title of Queens Counsel, equivalent to Nigeria’s SAN. That means that it was more of a residual national honour the British royalty employed throughout the Commonwealth to confer some privilege (or drive a wedge, if you will), not for recognition of any identifiable, objectively measured legal scholarship but most probably for other reasons that included advancement of affinity with the British Empire and its Crown. So, the historical origins of 'SANship', if you will, can be found and justified only on the notion of Lordship (or overlordship) of a unitarily Royal Britain – of Privileges, of Peerage, of Earls, of Lords, of Commons, of Nabobs, warts and all. Nigeria is a republic, not a unitary royal kingdom, and thus must be seen to be a society averse to anything that might confer undue advantages, especially within our adversarial framework where everybody is expected to have a fair shake when matters are in court. The practice whereby the SANs are given special privileges in court detracts from the ‘fair shake’ concept by creating the impression that certain legal or procedural advantages come to litigants once they have a SAN in their kitty. That never deepens the judicial process. That never helps matters with our quest to have equality before the law. The pure jurisprudence of America, where I have practiced for over a decade, will never allow it; and if Nigerian judiciary wishes to progress on the path of pure adherence to rule of law, it may be time to consider abolition of this practice. The number of appeals you filed in the Supreme Court, being one of the major qualifications for becoming a SAN, is far from being the best parameter for measuring legal scholarship or superior trial advocacy, especially considering the well-known fact that a lot of frivolous appeals are filed in the Supreme Court all the time. The only fair way is to allow litigants or the society to use their own judgment to decide which lawyers are better than the others when time comes for cases and controversies. We, as lawyers with vested interests, should not be the ones indirectly or unwittingly telling litigants that some lawyers are better than others.

The recent visit of Former Vice-President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar to his former boss, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has generated a lot of controversy in the body polity. What is your take on this?

First of all, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is supposed be one of the major opposition leaders, not by the strength and spread of his party, but by the sheer dint of his many battles with the former regime and the war of attrition he launched on President Yar’Adua’s mandate and INEC. So, if Atiku now wishes to reconcile with Obasanjo or PDP which did most to ruin his political career, that can only be justified at the personal level because any reconciliation that rises to the level of a new political marriage is, frankly, a betrayal of the entire opposition and the forward-troopers who bore the worst brunt of the spats between Atiku and Obasanjo. What happens to Lai Mohammed? What happens to Usman Bugaje? What happens to Tinubu, the AC and its ranks? And for Obasanjo and PDP, what happens to Professor Iwu and INEC that were so much alleged by Atiku to be on Obasanjo/PDP payroll? The justification found by Atiku in the ‘reconciliation’ between De Klerk and Nelson Mandela is not in pari materia because De Klerk remained in the National Party and in stark opposition to Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress years after the sunset of apartheid. Further, any consideration by Atiku that he needed to reconcile with Obasanjo must have been, in the first place, encouraged by the stout defense INEC and Iwu raised against him while he unleashed his barrage of attacks against Yar’Adua, PDP, INEC and Professor Iwu; and as regards Professor Iwu, I would say so unfairly. Atiku talked about reaching for peace after war but neither the PDP nor any of its apparatchiks offered any evident and effective rebuttal to Atiku’s deployment of sections of the domestic and international media to array negative attacks against them. That means that the second constituency that might be left in the cold on this new path to Atiku/Obasanjo/PDP romance is INEC and Chairman Iwu and some ‘non-stakeholding’ faceless Nigerians who never meant to but were still the only ones that mustered the stout defense of the system that constituted the so-called ‘war’ that compelled Atiku to now seek reconciliation. Finally, if this reconciliation has elements to it that intends to replace Yar’Adua with Atiku as the PDP flag bearer in 2011 on the premise that Yar’Adua may be too ill to run, then it is in utter bad taste. But if it involves some arrangement whereby Atiku will refrain from attacking INEC, Professor Iwu, Yar’Adua and aspects of our national institutions ceaselessly and call his troops home, then some decent Nigerians might come to terms with it.

Attorney Ejimakor can be reached at: alloylaw@yahoo.com

Peter Obi: A Governor’s Dilemma

Peter Obi: A Governor’s Dilemma

By: Jimmy Osifo

Governor Peter Obi of Anambra state caught a pathetic picture of an individual under siege, but who desperately needs a rescue from his quandary. His statements in his recent press briefing on “the 2010 Governorship election in the state (Anambra)” exposed him as such. The Governor’s dilemma is understandable when one considers his experience with the 2003 election conducted by Dr. Abel Guobadia’s INEC, where his mandate was stolen by Dr. Chris Ngige of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Peter Obi’s saving grace was the Appeal Court judgment which restored him as the Governor of Anambra state.

In the press statement which was reported in some national newspapers of Tuesday February 17, 2009, Governor Obi stated emphatically that the only obstacle between him and the Anambra State Government house in the forthcoming 2010 gubernatorial election is presumed likely bias of Professor Maurice Iwu, chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. He called on the Federal Government to “sack Iwu now” before the election. There are pertinent questions arising from the Governor’s Awka pronouncements. Peter Obi needs to be asked if Iwu is the Resident Electoral Officer in Anambra state, whose responsibility it is to conduct the gubernatorial election in the state? Does Governor Peter Obi have it on a good authority that Iwu has instructed the state Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) to influence the outcome of the election to his detriment? Do the electoral laws vest on INEC the final authority to decide election winners without the courts? Has Peter Obi suddenly lost confidence in the judicial process that restored his 2003 mandate? Why is Peter Obi pushing the cart before the horse? Given his previous experience, one would have thought Peter Obi will be more pragmatic by ensuring the presence of vigilant polling agents and intelligence gathering in the likelihood of his election fears happening. Deep down in his heart, I think Governor Obi knows why he is adopting this panic strategy. We shall come to that in a short while.

Governor Peter Obi depicts the do-or-die character that is typical of the Nigerian politician, who will always desperately want to “serve the people”. In his apparently beleaguered state, he has unconsciously insulted the intelligence of the over 150 million Nigerians when he advocated we “ask Ghana to loan us their chief Electoral Officer for the purpose of election in Anambra state”. Is the Anambra State Governor suggesting that the Nigerian IQ is inferior to the Ghanaian? Does Peter Obi reason that there are no competent individuals to conduct credible elections in Nigeria? Is His Excellency crediting only the Electoral Commission in Ghana without also evaluating the positive contribution and cooperative attitude of the Ghanaian politician and the enabling environment provided by levels of Ghanaian government? Has he also thought that if such attitude and same environment is guaranteed our Electoral Commission by our politicians and levels of government, elections outcome will not be different? How does Governor Obi think? What has driven him to this level of inadequacy complex?

As I was saying, the Governor Obi we know should be more intelligent than the statements credited to him in his press briefing. We do know too that the Governor is really, stressed. The press briefing was simply a frantic strategic option at redeeming a waning hope to a dampened camp. His lack of coordination in his answers to questions posed by some journalists reflected his unsettled mind. The truth that must be told is that the Anambra people are holding Governor Obi to account for his four-year stewardship, but there is a difficulty on the part of the Governor in finding a correlation between his ambition to be returned for a second term and his failure to deliver political dividends to Anambra people in his first term in office. Put tersely, Peter Obi has not done well to deserve another term. He knows this. And the journalists in his press conference too, know. Hence, in desperation, he has become hysterical and un-coordinated.

Journalists in attendance at the press conference asked Governor Obi why his administration has failed to conduct Local Government election in his state since the expiration of the tenure of the last office holders. The Governor’s response to the question as reported in The Nation newspaper of Tuesday February 17, 2009 was not only awkward but undignifying. First, His Excellency declared that he knows the best “voting option”(?) that will suit Anambra political temperament, Option A4. “Local Government election without Option A4, he said, would likely precipitate mayhem…if you put ballot boxes anywhere in the state, they will carry it and run away”. What is Governor Peter Obi trying to rationalize? Is it his failure as the chief security officer, with stupendous security vote, to provide an enabling environment for the conduct of a Local Government election in his state? Is Peter Obi saying Iwu or INEC or his Ghanaian chief Electoral Officer will run away with the ballot boxes?

Amusingly, the same Governor also said that conducting Local Government election is a waste of the state’s financial resources “because there is already a process of selecting people into leadership position in Igbo land by the Umunna (kindred, community and village selection process)”. What Peter Obi did not however explain is how this Anambra peculiar brand of democracy works with the provision of the 1999 constitution on election of officials and local government administration in Nigeria.

Peter Obi’s real fear is the reality of losing the power and fortunes his office has brought him so far. He is truly embattled in all fronts. His perennially troubled APGA party’s popularity in Anambra politics has dwindled due to Obi’s misrule. There are indications that the party will not risk his candidature in the forth-coming election. The son to the Governor’s deputy is the next prospect for his position as APGA candidate. Obi’s approval rating among Anambra people is at its lowest ebb ever. His panic efforts at winning the people over by paying arrears of salaries and allowances owed workers in the state is not persuading. Several of his political appointees and top aides are deserting him in droves. Then, what was Peter Obi’s motive for his press conference? Was it an alarmist advocacy strategy to graduate his Umunna political concept in Anambra State? However, Governor Obi has unknowingly, succeeded in giving us insights to the murky terrain of Anambra politics and his leadership failure. INEC must have to grapple with this reality in its conduct of the 2010 election in the state. Nigerians must take note.

Jimmy Osifo is a public affairs analyst josifo@yahoo.com