NIGERIA IN REVIEW

Nigeria - The Making of a Banana Republic

2010-10-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

By Harrison Chidiogo Diala

The signs are getting clearer that Nigeria's fragile democracy may soon crumble due to the increasing tension between various segments that form the loose federation of over 300 distinct ethnic groups that gained independence from Britain 50 years ago. At its independence there was justifiable optimism that with its enormous human and material resources that Nigeria was destined to be one of the emergent global economic centres at the turn of the century, comparable perhaps to Malaysia, Singapore, India and Brazil. Indeed such a comparison was made recently by Peter Cunliffe-Jones in his new book, My Nigeria: Five Decades of Independence in which he drew a comparison between Nigeria and Indonesia, another vast, diverse and oil-rich country. The author emphasised two key differences: in Indonesia the generals and their friends did not steal 100 percent of the oil money, and they invested it in productive industries. Nigeria’s billions, he stated, lie in foreign tax havens. Those who rule Nigeria, he concludes, do not believe in the country.

The country in its 50 years chequered history has survived prolonged periods of military dictatorship, a thirty-month brutal civil war and highly divided society to launch an ambitious plan to transform the country into a modern economy that will rank among the top 20 in the world by the year 2020.

Towards this lofty goal, the then President, Olusegun Obasanjo brought stability to the Nigerian economy with the annual growth in the real sector of the economy at an average of more than 8.5%. He assembled a team of highly talented men and women to drive the nation's economy. With relatively free hand to operate, Obasanjo's economic team revolutionized the economy and by the time the ex-army general left office the country had cleared all of its international debt estimated at over $36bn and left behind a foreign reserve of nearly $50bn. The leaders of the economic team have since moved to the top leadership positions in the World Bank and IMF in recognition of their unusual feat of turning a backward economy around in less than 4 years. Obasanjo's regime also managed to stabilize the political landscape of Nigeria by bringing much needed discipline into the ruling party and superintended the first ever handing over power from one democratically elected government to another. Obasanjo has also the singular honour of being the only military leader in the history of Nigeria to voluntarily hand-over power to a civilian president. Perhaps, the retired general's biggest mistake was the selection of the late Umaru Yar'Adua as his successor. Many have accused Obasanjo of deliberately selecting the weak and sick Yar’Adua in order to manipulate him and remain in power by proxy. The election that brought Yar'Adua to office has been unfairly criticized as not credible even when the ruling party PDP was by far the dominant party in the country and was not subjected to any meaningful opposition in the 2007 poll.

For most countries, sustenance of the progress or limited success made by the Obasanjo regime would have been the most feasible strategic option to move the country forward. Instead, the Yar’Adua Administration sort to distance itself from nearly all the policy directions of the previous government. Buoyed by the Lagos media and political action associations masquerading as civil society groups, the government 'reviewed' all the initiatives started by Obasanjo. The immediate causalities were the partnership with China to build a new modern rail system that will ease transportation between the North and South, and West to East, the independent power project that would have solved the problem of Nigeria's epileptic power problem by 2011, a national security initiative that nipped coup-plotting in the bud, and a foreign policy programme that was intended to remove Nigeria from the suffocating grip of Whitehouse and Downing street by forging closer ties with China and non-EU member European countries. The Yar'Adua administration subsequently embarked on a witch hunt of people who were associated with President Obasanjo. The very same people who brought him to office were harassed by countless probes. Even Obasanjo himself was invited several times by the House of Representative Committees probing various aspects of his period in office. What happened 2007 - 2010 was a classical lesson of the outcome of a nation that based its policy on the views of those who shout the loudest and as would be expected, the resultant cacophony become unbearable and destructive.

As often the case with political power games, those who were displaced by the new Yaradua boys began to plan their revenge and come-back. Mr El Rufai, a fomer Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and Nuhu Ribadu, the Chairman of EFFC who were declared wanted and charged to court to answer to various allegations of improper conduct while in office fled the country. They had willing partners in the vocal Nigerian opposition groups and some international organizations who had genuine fears that Yar’Adua was becoming uncontrollable. This new coalition of the aggrieved had receptive ears in the then Vice President and now president Goodluck Jonathan. It was the group that founded and financed the Save Nigeria Group, the Good Governance Group (3G), CODER and seven other pro-democracy groups. With the near monopolistic control of the Nigeria media by Bola Tinubu of ACN, the views of this group became the voice of Nigerians. Demonstrations were organized against Yar'Adua, the then INEC chair and the National Assembly. Before Yar'Adua's death in May the group had succeeded in hoodwinking the country to accept clear violations of the Nigerian Constitution by blackmailing the National Assembly to invoke the ‘Doctrine of Necessity' to install Mr. Jonathan as Acting President (a title not even provided by law), interfering in the removal of the INEC Chairman six weeks before he was due to end his tenure as a trade-off to the NLC to abort a fathom strike planned for May 1, 2010, and compelling the Courts to drop charges against key members of the group. The group's appeal for reform and anti-corruption resonated with many Nigerians but like most reformers, they have good knowledge of what may be wrong with the country but wrong on what is right for the country.
With these remarkable successes, the anti-Yar’Adua campaign took a whirl of its own. Opinion page editors were hired and unleashed on the unsuspecting and trusting public. Editorial pages were procured from almost all the newspapers. The members of the National Assembly were easy commodities paid for with the proceeds from inflated contracts and grant from a 'friendly country'.

The initial plan was to raise a dissident group within PDP and to engineer a breakaway faction of the party which will join ACN and General Buhari's faction of ANPP to form a 'Mega Party'. Two unrelated events conspired to force a change of plan. The first was the relative ease with which the PDP leadership headed by Chief Vincent Ogbulafor was dismantled and the second was the impatience on the part of Alhaji Abubakar and Buhari to stick with Tinubu until the break-up of PDP was achieved. There was therefore no need to go through the tortuous route of breaking up PDP and to assemble a new Coalition. The release of an electoral timetable in March 2010 by Iwu's INEC for the 2011 elections added a further impetus for the Coalition to go ahead with the new plan.

Now the group has to bend all the rules in order to install Goodluck Jonathan as the President after the 2011 election. This is where the concept of a banana republic seems most appropriate. According to Wikipedia, banana republic is a term that refers to a politically unstable country dependent upon limited resources (e.g. bananas), and ruled by a small, self-elected, wealthy, and corrupt politico-economic clique. The original concept of banana republic as outlined by Wikipedia was a direct reference to a "servile dictatorship" that abetted (or supported for kickbacks) the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation, originated with the introduction of the banana fruit to Europe in 1870, by Captain Lorenzo D. Baker, of the ship The Telegraph, who initially bought bananas in Central America and sold them in Boston at a 1,000 per cent profit. If you substitute banana for petrol then the characterization becomes obvious.

Democracy and good governance in any nation require more than just the conduct of elections as the group seems to believe by their successful nomination of one of their confidants as the INEC Chair and vigorously marketing him as having integrity. The presence of strong laws, respect for human rights and institutions are in fact more important than mere conduct of elections. Even for the elections, the environment in which the elections are conducted often determine the credibility of the process. As former Governor Donald Duke revealed recently. Rigging of elections are often a local affair that involves field operatives and the corrupt politicians who have no intention of playing by the rules. Governor Duke maintains that, contrary to widely held view, the INEC Chairman has minimal influence in the conduct of elections in the states and supervised by Electoral Commissioners appointed directly by the President. As Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society, noted recently, "election vote rigging was not only organized by government and state officials - everyone was at it. This is the way Nigeria works. It’s a system too strong for one person to change; progress will require a whole new generation committed to cleaning things up."

Now for the first time in the history of the country, laws are broken or amended to suit the strategic plan of a political clique bent on creating a new 'progressive' ruling elite. Like in a banana republic no one knows when the election will take place. The National assembly that is supposed to provide the check and balance of a modern democratic state is too compromised to play its Constitutional role. Nigeria’s elected politicians warded themselves some of the highest salaries in the world and they openly indulge in stupendous exhibition of power and wealth. In May this year, the legislators shamelessly approved a pay rise that would have given them each $$120,000 per month.

On the specific issue which I have been asked to address regarding the possibility of post election violence in Nigeria, I must admit that the analysis provided by Ambassador Campbell is indeed on the mark. But I do not agree with the conclusions he posited. While there could be prolonged instability in the country, not necessarily from the post election conflict, Nigerian politics is not issues or ideological based and the possibility of settling seemingly irreconcilable positions is indeed high. Things can only go wrong if Washington and London do not accept the outcome, regardless of how credible the poll is. As was recently noted by Norman Amidu in the Conscience magazine, disputations over elections in Nigeria were deliberately externalized by certain elements whose intents could not be anything but mindless and self serving. In a dispute where there are no fixed positions and no values or group interests are at stake, agreements and settlement are often easily procured. According the extant plan, the muddled election will benefit a wide spectrum of the key players and serious opposition or challenge is not envisaged.

As I indicated earlier in this presentation, the plan was for Jonathan to run under PDP rebel faction sponsored by the Presidency and included the former Senate President Ken Nnamani, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Masari and several former Ministers under the Obasanjo Administration. With the successful containment of the influence of the governors in the PDP, the new arrangement is to cause serious disorganization in the electoral system and the general polity and in the resultant installibilty and insecurity in the country a mass movement will be raised to market Jonathan as the panacea of Nigeria’s developmental problems. A new electoral support base anchored on the minorities of the political South-South, Christian North East and the various tribes of the North Central will be used to make Jonathan President. The majority tribes, Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa/ Fulani have been factored into this equation as obstacles to be contained in this political chessboard. The candidature of Mr. Ribadu, for example, was not envisaged to pose any serious challenge to PDP as a presidential candidate for the opposition party, ACN but to neutralize the votes of the more ideological South West and in return ACN will be assisted by INEC and the security agencies to retain all the states of the South West in 2011.

The spanner in the works may come by way of the various amendments that have been proposed both on the Electoral Act and the 1999/ 2010 Constitution aimed solely to diminish the stronghold of the governors have on the party and to recruite members of the National Assembly to support this new political movement. Such a move will greatly over-centralize the power on the already too-powerful presidency. For some reason one cannot discern, the group also plans to elongate the tenure of the present administration and the legislators. They have learnt from the mistake of Obasanjo who was widely believed to have tried to elongate his tenure through Constitution amendment and attempted to truncate the 2007 election by placing almost insurmountable upstacles for the election management body. For the 2011 elongation plan, the tactics this time is to use electoral logistics as acceptable excuse not to hold the election on time and extend the handover date of May 29th to October 1 in the first instance. But as widely rumored the plan is to allow the current administration including parliamentarians stay additional six months in office to enable the new power elite to consolidate.

The project has now taken a life of its own and many frustrated young people who genuinely believe that the time has come for change in Nigeria are lending their support in this massive social marketing project oiled with Nigeria's huge petroleum resources. The trajectory this will take after 2011 is difficult to predict. One thing is however certain that with the strong-arm tactics against the opposition politicians, the many changes in the electoral law and even the Constitution a few months to the scheduled date of the elections and the possible shift in handover date, Jonathan’s expected victory in 2011 presidential election may not be acceptable as free and fair.

Dr. Harrison Diala, Trevor Campbell Fellow lives in Shipley, West Yorkshire and contributed this lecture in a symposium to mark 50 years of Nigeria’s Independence

2009-05-08T00:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-05T03:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-05T01:41:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-24T12:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-24T04:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-24T02:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-14T08:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-25T04:44:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-22T04:10:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-19T18:20:00.000-08:00

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

ON GHANA & IWU: WHY WOULD ANYBODY TAKE GOWON SERIOUSLY

2008-12-11T18:46:00.000-08:00

On Ghana & Iwu: Why Would Anybody Take Gowon Seriously

By: Wale Odusote

Some Nigerian newspapers of December 9 - 10, 2008 reported widely and loudly on Yakubu Gowon’s scathing attacks on Maurice Iwu and Nigeria after he returned from ‘observing’ the presidential election in Ghana. The kernel of Gowon’s see-no-good utterances was that Nigeria (and Professor Maurice Iwu’s 2007 election) pales in comparism to the ‘free and fair’ one he witnessed in Ghana; and because of this, Gowon went on to imply that Ghana is better than Nigeria. He didn’t say from where he did the observing: stationary in Accra or booth to booth.

Before going into whether Ghana has suddenly become more advanced than Nigeria just because someone did not like the outcome of Nigeria’s 2007 elections (or Maurice Iwu), let us examine the antecedents of the man – Gowon - to see whether we should even take his public utterances seriously. First was in 1966, during the second and bloodiest coup Nigeria ever witnessed. When Nigerians feared for what may have happened to their Head of State, General Aguiyi Ironsi, Gowon told the nation that the ‘whereabouts of the Head of State is unknown’ when he knew the General was already murdered in cold blood on his own plot. Then, a few hours later, he said that the Head of State was ‘arrested’ by rebellious soldiers in Ibadan. Since when did it become norm for ‘rebels’ to ‘arrest’ a de facto Head of State? Ask Gowon, not me. When the nation discovered that the Head of State has been brutally murdered, Gowon refused to officially and publicly acknowledge that. And when all his flip flops finally caught up with him, he then denied that he had any hand in the coup that brought him to power. And till this day, he has never even fully acknowledged it as a coup. Puzzling and bizarre.

As the nation was about to burn in the wake of an unrelenting ethnic cleansing of his fellow Nigerians, Gowon was gain at his best (or worst) elements. The only thing he could say as ‘Head of State’ sworn to protect the lives of his fellow citizens was to tell the Northerners to ‘calm down’ because power has returned back to the North. No arrests, no law enforcement; just some heady talk about ‘power returning back’. Then when it appeared that the nation was about to come around to some calm, it was vintage Gowon again that stated emphatically that: “There was no basis for Nigerian unity”. It was on the strength of this statement and others like it that Ojukwu went to Aburi and demanded confederation and got it, only for Gowon to return to Nigeria and repudiate the pact. That was not surprising because that was Gowon - wishy-washy, half-believing in Nigeria, half-fighting for Nigeria. In one breathe, there was ‘no basis for unity’. In another breathe, he translated his name to “get on with one Nigeria’. Today, Ghana is better than Nigeria. Yesterday, ‘Ghana Must Go’. Tomorrow, let us defame Nigeria. Count me out. Call in your Gowons.

Then the war came – the mother of all civil wars, an act of tremendous violence and aggression, but which Gowon called ‘police action’. The whole world called it war because there was real war raging on the trenches but Gowon denied it all and still called it ‘police action’. Police action indeed, with all the starvation of children, economic blockade, Russian Migs and pilots, jailing of Wole Soyinka and the Asaba Massacres. That’s Gowon for you, prevarications personified.

After the civil war, Gowon declared: ‘no victor, no vanquished’. As if that was not enough Gowonism already, he stated again that he would pursue his three famed Rs – reconciliation, reconstruction, rehabilitation. In reality, Gowon appointed a civilian, Upkabi Asika as administrator of East Central State, meaning that it was a territory ‘vanquished’ in war. He vigorously pursued abandoned property policy against his fellow Nigerians, down on their luck. Where is the ‘reconciliation’ in that. He gave every Igbo-Nigerian who had deposits in Nigerian banks Twenty Nigerian pounds, regardless of whether you had millions in deposits, ante bellum. That, again, was clearly in opposite to ‘rehabilitation’. Then he began his massive highway constructions and white elephants, and saw fit to exclude the East Central State that needed the ‘reconstruction’ most.

Gowon was at it again when he promised to return the nation to civil rule three times, and three times, he reneged until his fellow 1966 coupists got tired of his flip-fops and gave him a taste of the same medicine he gave to Ironsi in 1966, only this time he was lucky to be out of the country. But before then, it was a Yakubu Gowon who had said that Nigeria had so much money that it didn’t know what to do with it. Then he began to give the money away in the millions and in hard currency, including to Jamaicans when he took on the enormous responsibility of paying their entire civil service salaries. Why didn’t Gowon conduct his own elections when he had all the chance and then compare? Obasanjo conducted three elections to Gowon’s zero. That’s statesmanlike. And the Maurice Iwu Gowon wishes to vilify conducted one that produced a landmark transition without being a ‘General’ which Gowon was while he was in-charge.

And now we have a Gowon who said nothing when Jos was burning just days ago. His own Jos, his own Plateau state was burning because of an election, and all he could do as a former ‘Head of State’ was to travel to Ghana to observe another election. Jos burned because of a local election and one that should have been more important to Gowon because it was being held in his own State, in his own country, and most importantly, in his own immediate neighborhood – Jos. Gowon kept silent while over 400 of his fellow citizens were butchered for something they had nothing to do with. He kept silent while Muslims killed Christians and Christians retaliated, and this is while he still prances around the country claiming to be heading an organization that calls itself ‘Nigeria Prays’. Haba Gowon: What went wrong with you in 1966 that you still can’t get over today in 2008? Is it Banquo’s ghost or Aguiyi’s ghost? What is so special about Ghana that would have driven you to ignore the problems of your homeland to go elsewhere and wax statesmanlike?

Now this: Any reasonable person in Gowon’s position should be comparing Maurice Iwu’s 2007 election with what went down in Jos, circa 2008. That is apt; that is comparing oranges with oranges because it is the same Nigeria, to be judged by the same standards. Comparing Ghana and Nigeria is like comparing apples and oranges because the conditions are not the same. First, Nigeria is large and federalist; Ghana is small and unitary. Second, Rawlings killed all the military politicians to pave way for a better Ghana; Gowon spared them all in 1966 and they are still lurking around causing troubles especially of the Lantang, Jos and Zaki Biam genres. Third, Ghana has fewer and well organized parties primed to fight and win elections; Nigeria has over fifty political parties dwarfed by one giant one called the PDP. Fourth, Ghana has principled opposition party leaders that cross no carpets; Nigeria has opposition folks like Atiku who is rumored to be angling to return to PDP; and now an ANPP Governor in the far North who just recently decamped to PDP. Fifth, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence; and a few Nigerians like Gowon always felt inferior before Ghanaians just because Ghana gained independence before Nigeria did and that is part of the reason Nigerian military followed suit with several coups after Ghana.

Most importantly, the issue of endorsing or censuring elections in emerging democracies has since become a matter of national security, foreign investments and diplomatic stature. Let me explain this to Gowon and others that are continuing to defame Nigeria. First, a lot of nations feared that Nigeria will garner all the foreign investments from the West unless someone discredits her electoral democracy. So, somewhere in some smoky rooms of the counterintelligence hideouts in the West, some guys, versed in strategic public information management, got retained to discredit Nigeria’s make-or-break 2007 elections. They are not mere spin doctors, not propagandists; they are worse. They figured that the most effective means to begin to chip away at Nigeria was to first discredit the umpire, Maurice Iwu. So, Iwu’s hithertofore unchallenged works in neo-pharmacology began to be questioned for the first time; and then they began to intimidate him to turn over the biometrics of Nigerian citizens to Western nations. Iwu waxed patriotic and fought back. That was when the battle line was drawn in the sand to totally diminish Nigeria, her umpire and electoral regime at such an important moment in our transitional democracy that also held the key to how our growing foreign reserves would be spent (or unspent). Under settled public international law, your foreign reserves escheats to the Western nations that held them in their vaults once you become a failed state – like Somalia or even post-Shah Iran, even not failed but nearly failed. Gowon missed that totally, and he still doesn’t get it, ‘statesman’, ex-this, ex-that, warts and all.

Second, Nigeria is in competition with the rest of the powers in Africa for a greater space in the world diplomatic community. With our oil, we attract a lot of envy and fear but with our elections and pesky politicians with a bad attitude, we remain vulnerable. So, something gotta give; someone gotta find a way to discredit Nigerian elections. Someone, well-honed in the cannons of counterintelligence by public (mis)information, went for the jugular, and that jugular is Professor Maurice Iwu, the gutsy umpire for Africa’s most populous and complicated electorate. You couldn’t do that to Ghana, not with people like Rawlings that have understudied these techniques and work from behind the scenes to keep their country insulated. Post-Rawlings Ghana knows too well how to keep its military at bay; and they know how to compete for FDI. Check out their fine statistics.

Therefore, it is a matter of national security for Ghana to get the word out in real time that her elections were credible, her umpires saints. The military would then have no reason to strike. It does not matter that they got some busy-body ‘foreign’ (read: white and assumedly counterintelligence) election monitors or some naïve Yakubu Gowon to do ‘counterintelligence information management’ for them. All in all and in ‘comparism’, Nigeria suffers for it because a helluva of foreign investors get scared away, our diplomatic stature suffers setbacks, and our President keeps looking behind his back for some military opportunists (of the Gowon genre) that are wont to capitalize on discredited elections to seize power. That explains some harried deployments of security brass that happen like a thief in the night, if not stoking the notion of institutional gridlock in government. Discredited elections encourage frivolous legal challenges that constitute a drag on an emerging nation’s quest for stability. That’s Nigeria’s present lot. Sad.

Considering all these, why would anybody then take Gowon and his ilk seriously on this boring ‘Ghana’s election is better than Nigeria’s Maurice Iwu 2007 election’. Blah blah blah. My mum’s soup is better than your mum’s soup. Boring old tales by the moonlight. Please let us get serious and patriotic for once and talk about Jos (or even Kano) and how that compares to the near-zero violence Nigeria experienced in her 2007 general elections. Poser: In 2007, was it that Nigeria just got lucky or was it because of a smart and gifted professor of world renown named: Maurice Maduakolam Iwu - the Gutsy Umpire?

Wale contributes from USA waleodusote@yahoo.com

MAURICE IWU NATIONAL RECEPTION: AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT

2008-12-08T03:04:00.000-08:00

Maurice Iwu National Reception: An Eyewitness Account

By: Ibrahim Danlami

When Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States of America wrote that ‘the qualities of a great man are "vision, integrity, courage, understanding, the power of articulation, and profundity of character”. He did not have Professor Maurice Maduakolam Iwu in mind. But the saying aptly captures the essence of Iwu, the gutsy professor and umpire extraordinaire of our generation.

There is no arguing even amongst his most ardent critics that Prof. Iwu, during the period leading to the 2007 elections and after, has demonstrated vision of what to do to take Nigeria a notch up the democratic ladder. He put his integrity to bear; exhibited sheer courage in the face of obvious risks of the grander kind and danger to his person and family to deliver on a crucial national assignment. All these combined marked Iwu out as someone who possessed a deep understanding of the peculiarity of the Nigerian situation when it mattered most, besides his power of articulation and profundity of character.

Iwu’s place in the annals of Nigeria’s history is assured given that in the Nigeria’s near 48 years existence as an independent nation, it is the first time that the country has witnessed a successful transition from one civilian government to the other. A fact even his critics cannot deny. As Americans would say: Like him or not, you gotta respect the man. Back in the United States where I live, the man Iwu is seen as a rare phenomenon in America’s desires to see to the success of electoral democracies in Africa and there is yet a whispering campaign to have Iwu honoured by democracy watchdogs in North America.

As a man of vision and understanding of the times, Iwu had strenuously canvassed for an electronics voting system in tandem with modern electoral practices. His argument was and remains that the system would reduce electoral fraud especially in the areas of ballot snatching and stuffing and multiple voting, but it was apparent that the country or rather those who had profited from the manual procedure would have nothing to do with this and they rather preferred business as usual. Two years down the line, those who had repudiated the introduction of modern voter system are now seeking to introduce the same system they had previously opposed.

While it cannot be taken away that the 2007 elections had some lapses, attributable mostly to logistics and entrenched perception by politicians that elections are to be won at all cost, credit should be given to Iwu and his team at INEC, for their courage to deliver on that crucial election and proceed to declare a result that gave Nigeria a transition. One cannot but agree with Vice President Goodluck Jonathan when he observed that, "Nigerians should not expect 100 percent in the conduct of elections in the country, but to support the electoral processes in order to achieve a maximum level of success”.

The Vice president was speaking at a reception in honour of the INEC Chairman, Professor Maurice Iwu. I was there from my location in the United States and I saw it all first hand and I felt proud of my country, Nigeria. The Vice President urged Nigerians to support the Justice Mohammed Uwais-led Electoral Reform panel, saying that it is the only way to appreciate Professor Iwu's good work in the 2007 elections. He added, "Nigerians must appreciate Maurice Iwu, the National and State Commissioners, and other staff of INEC for what they have done. They would say, well, I am a PDP Vice President, I must commend INEC. "Let people go and examine elections that are being conducted by the various state electoral bodies (SIECs), the states that are controlled by PDP, ANPP, and other parties, most of them have conducted elections, if you now compare the elections and that conducted by INEC, I believe you will still put INEC over any other electoral commission."

The Vice president could not have been more poignant in his observation given that long before Iwu, there have been no less than eight past chairmen of the commission and it can not be said that they all did any better than what Iwu has done for the country. The problem of understanding the Iwu matrix perhaps stems from the fact that after over a decade of military dictatorship, Nigerians are in dire need of the redeemer without blemish or wrinkles. They expect that things, elections inclusive, should be like that obtainable in the mythic Eldorado, forgetting that perfection belongs to the heavenly.

So, despite some lapses here and there, Nigerians should still be thankful that the 2007 election, against the expectation of some skeptics and no-do-gooders, did not lead to serious political crisis that would have derailed the entire process of nation building. It is in this light that the December 1, 2008 National Reception and Thanksgiving in Honour of Prof. Maurice Iwu is instructive. The ceremony which held at the Immaculate Conception Dioceses in Okigwe is a testimony of the gratitude Nigerians should have shown for a man who defied personal family tragedy and danger to his personal safety to give service to fatherland.

Considering the obstacles placed before Prof. Iwu, men of lesser courage would have chickened out and resorted to either postponing the election or even resigning from office. Either of these options would have denied Nigeria a golden opportunity to make history. But Maurice Iwu would have none of that. Thus, with a profound sense of history and character, he put aside his personal worries and tragedy to undertake an assignment he knew held the key to Nigeria’s place in the comity of nations.

Today we are all beneficiaries of that epochal transition. Therefore, when eminent and other well-meaning Nigerians from all ethnic groups joined with his home diocese to gather and say ‘thank you’, it was hailed by many as something long overdue. A few months ago, what Iwu gave to Nigeria in 2007 was called a ‘landmark transition’ by Bruce Fein, former assistant attorney general of United States, writing for the famed Washington Times.

By the sheer crowd of people that gathered-big and small; the great and the not-so great; the governed and the governors; clergy and traditional institutions; the influential and the commoner; home-based and Diasporan, there was no mistaking that at last the nation was beginning to realize the enormous contributions Maurice Iwu has made to a country he loves no less than those who find all fault and no good in what INEC achieved in 2007.

Therefore, considering everything else and Maurice Iwu’s never-say-die attitude in the face of the difficulties he and INEC overcame, it is time for other Nigerians to join those who honoured him in celebrating the man’s contributions to our democracy (and to society as a whole). And we can even go beyond that to take the public discourse to the man’s long history of stellar achievements. From a humble background, Maurice Iwu dared many odds to become a world-acclaimed scientist, with many patents to his name. This and the many other achievements he attained should form the next discourse. It is only when we do this that we can also begin to see the true Maurice Iwu, a man who, at his age, still has a lot to offer Nigeria at a higher calling. My Nigeria, our Nigeria needs to reap from this man’s great talents.

Danlami writes from the United States ibrahimdanlami@yahoo.com

MAURICE IWU AND THE GAMES IGBOS PLAY WITH THEIR MOST FAMOUS SONS

2008-10-15T06:54:00.000-07:00

By: Dr. Yakubu Tsav

Before Nigeria gained freedom from the British, the Igbos of Nigeria were known to be the most dominant and united tribe in comparism to the Yoruba and Hausa/Fulani. The Igbos were so united that the party they led, the NCNC, was deemed to be the only one with some national spread. It came to pass that when the British left, the Igbos were still the most united and prepared group to dominate national affairs in Nigeria. Their unity of purpose helped them a great deal in controlling the pre-1967 Nigerian armed forces, national commerce, and even the federal civil service. I don’t believe that it is the same great Igbo, one of whom I am happily married to, that have lately turned upon one another in an ending frenzy of political self-cannibalism. They did it to Zik (NPN sell-out); did it to Ojukwu (by getting one Onwudiwe to ‘defeat’ him); they betrayed Ekwueme in Jos; produced too many Senate Presidents; and now they have turned their self-destructive gunsights to Professor Maurice Iwu, a man who much of Nigeria sees as Igbos’ most powerful son of the moment, like or not.

It is troubling that the Igbo bask in scattering into smaller groups that quarreled amongst themselves while other Nigerians are pulling together. They forget that the Yorubas faired better because they always stuck to Awolowo and the Hausa/Fulani stuck to Sardauna, even in death. Instead of banding behind Ojukwu when he returned, the Igbo conspired to procure one unknown Onwudiwe to ‘defeat’ the charismatic Ikemba in the Nnewi senatorial election. Since then, Nigerians have never heard of that Onwudiwe again, not to talk of while he was in the Senate. A disunited Igbo forgot that they would have gained a lot more if they had united to send Ojukwu to the senate at a time when other Nigerians either respected or feared him. It therefore goes without saying that the Yorubas would have never imagined rubbishing Awolowo in any contest that held national implications and the Hausa/Fulani would have done likewise for the still-revered Sardauna.

This whole sad drama knows no bounds, as it is now being extended to Professor Maurice Iwu, Igbo’s highest political office holder in Nigeria. If you doubt the vast reach of Professor Iwu’s power and influence, remember that he continues to retain a privileged access to the President and commander-in-chief. His access to the highest levers of federal power is guaranteed by his constitutional position as head of INEC. That means that he gets to see the President anytime he wishes. And under the constitution and the Electoral Act, the office Iwu occupies is imbued with a lot of authority. This is besides the intimidating international stature and access to the highest levels of power in the United States Iwu had attained before he accepted to serve in INEC.

Recall also that Professor Iwu was appointed by Obasanjo and being that Obasanjo was our last President, Iwu can still indirectly wield lots of power and influence through him. I don’t believe the self-delusional hype that Obasanjo is suddenly no longer in reckoning in political decisions of the present day when a vast number of powerful federal officials owe their emergence to his political patronage. Except for overthrown, deceased or impeached ex-presidents, a nation’s politics continues to be influenced awhile by its ex-president, especially one like OBJ whose political machine produced much of Nigeria’s current leaders, top to down. So, whether you like or not, Obasanjo is still a force to be reckoned with, and through him, Professor Iwu can, whenever he chooses, flex lots of political muscles of a national scale.

Other ways Professor Iwu can exert his influence and power is to turn to members of the National Assembly, all of whom owe their tenure to the transition Iwu midwifed (or eked out) in 2007. Same is true of the Governors and members of the Houses of Assembly in all the states of the federation. If you think about it, you will agree that this explains why those who sought removal of Iwu relented because they got feelers from the Senate that it would have been impossible to muster the majority the constitution required for removing the Professor.

It is as if the Igbo don’t know what other Nigerians have since known and that is: Professor Iwu is their supremo of the moment, possessing plenty of goodwill and national stature the Igbos can deploy to some political advantage. It therefore beats me why Igbos have chosen to continue to be blind to Iwu’s high potentials in favor of this bewildering pre-occupation with Iwu-rubbishing. You can see this from the so many anti-Iwu media reports sponsored by the Igbos themselves, especially some Igbos of Imo State where Iwu hails from. They seem not to have read the handwriting in the wall that Professor Iwu alone can muster the most power and leverage to reach across Nigeria to ensure that the additional state they crave so much will be created.

Take the constituency delineation exercise for instance. Last month, some group (from Ideato in Imo State) said to be comprised of mostly retirees, awaiting for their pension in the village and with no clue of current trends in national affairs were procured by a bitter, a non-Ideato ex-governor to sponsor anti-Iwu articles and paid advertorials. Their write-up was devoid of any concrete facts to support their position but was instead laden with rambling personal attacks on the person and office of Maurice Iwu. Many Nigerians I spoke with didn’t see any justification for blaming Iwu for a delineation plan that was long endorsed by Ideato’s elected representative in the federal house and its two members in the state house of assembly, besides other civic groups from Ideato which have since published their own more credible reasons in support of the new delineation plan.

Under the constitution, INEC (which Iwu heads) is empowered to carry out this exercise after every ten years. Professor Iwu is doing it almost two years late because, as I gathered, he did not want to overheat the polity so close to before or after the 2007 elections. The delineation exercise is a serious national affair that is not limited to the said Ideato constituency or even Imo state alone. But any uninformed observer reading the newspapers recently will believe erroneously that Professor Iwu singled out Imo State alone and its Ideato for delineation. So, it is puzzling that a small portion of Imo State is getting personal with Iwu on a matter upon which he has the constitutional duty to act and over which other sections of Nigeria have accepted his authority.

The technical committee Iwu set up on delineation made recommendations that affected the entire federation in terms of which federal constituency gains or loses LGAs. This comports with the constitutional requirement that federal constituencies be as equal as possible in population and number of LGAs. The rest of Nigeria similarly affected has since come to terms with this. Why is Imo State alone roiling and hauling unnecessary insults on Professor Iwu? Why is Ohaneze silent when Igbo’s most famous son of the moment is being harangued by all sorts of unknowns? Why the Imo Governor, a product of Iwu’s courageous umpiring of the Imo elections, is silent while his citizens are unleashing vituperations on Imo’s most highly placed federal official? Why is the Imo House of Assembly too cowed to pass a simple resolution to condemn this perfidy? Why are Igbos continuing to embarrass themselves in front of their fellow Nigerian compatriots? Why?

Dr. Tsav is a public affairs analyst ytsav@yahoo.com

IGBOEZUO STATE BEST REPRESENTS THE PARITY NIGERIANS INTENDED FOR SOUTHEAST

2008-10-13T12:11:00.001-07:00

IGBOEZUO STATE BEST REPRESENTS THE PARITY NIGERIANS INTENDED FOR SOUTHEAST

BY: ALOY EJIMAKOR

Creation of a new state has always been a hot-button issue since the inception of Nigeria. The very first – the creation of two protectorates of North and South was by sheer colonial fiat and it was easier because the British did not care to have any local input. They figured it was not necessary anyway since they did it mainly for their own administrative convenience and to drive the colonial agenda of ‘divide and rule’.

The second, which split Nigeria into three large regions of East, West and North was done in some recognition that Nigeria comprised of three major nationalities (Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani). The British reckoned that the smaller nationalities will have to make do with co-existing with their larger neighbors. What emerged was a mixed federal-unitary system that mimicked the Union of England, Scotland and Ireland in the British homeland. That stuck for awhile despite the agitations by the various minority groups for their own separate regions.

The third, which led to the birth of the Midwest region (after independence) was largely driven by the then dominant NCNC which wanted to contain the Action Group through the creation of a region out of the Western Region. Some called it the Welsh of Nigeria – a fourth dimension of sorts to complete the mimicry of the ‘three-plus-one’ arrangement of the British homeland that included the Welsh as a fourth region.

The fourth creation of states (not regions anymore) was by Gowon in 1966 and it was targeted against the monolithic (read: separatist and feared) Eastern Region and their allies in the Midwest. Simply put, it was just meant to defeat the gathering secessionist drumbeats. To Gowon’s credit, the balance of power between the North and South was maintained in a 12-state structure.

The fifth by Murtala was meant to correct the imbalances and inequities (rightly or wrongly) of the harried creation done by Gowon and also to break up the regional power hegemons. Thus, greater considerations were given to balance between the large tribes and neo-minority enclaves; yet, somehow, the Igbo were left marginalized. That concluded the first wave of state creations by military fiat. The coming of Shagari brought a lull due to the constitutional restrictions on creation of more states. When Buhari came, he did not care, but Babangida and Abacha succumbed to political expediency by creating additional states. In both exercises, an attempt was made to reward the Igbos for past injustices, yet both regimes did not go far enough, thus resulting in the present persisting imbalance where the South East has the least states out of all the geopolitical zones in the country. Suffice it say that state creation, even when done on the basis of administrative convenience or political expediency, still tried to capture some common elements, mostly bordering on considerations of large populations and linguistic/ethnic homogeneity (South East, South West, and Far Northern States); minority self-determination (The Middle Belt States and the South-South); and parity of regions (North-South divide, tripod theories, and now ‘geopolitical parity’ or balance). Intra-cultural affinity/identity and some fuzzy considerations of contiguity are merely ancillary.

But most tellingly, there is no clear evidence that previous creation of states occurring within and amongst a homogeneous Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa/Fulani was based on any notion of intra-cultural affinity or separateness from the whole (as argued by promoters of Adada, Orashi, Aba and Orlu/Njaba). The reason is because these three major ethnic groups are assumed to be possessed of a single (undifferentiated) cultural identity. Any opposite postulation is a fallacy and bound to be divisive, if not unconvincing to the larger Nigerian community that must approve the request for a new state. The only two groups that had advanced such arguments in the past, with some marginal success, were the Okun Yoruba and the Ika Igbo; and even then, both have not succeeded in selling it as a compelling reason to be created as separate states. The Okuns are still in Kwara and Kogi States with others; ditto for the Ikas in Delta State. To now accept that Adada, Aba, Orashi or Orlu/Njaba deserve a separate state because they are suddenly culturally different from the rest of the Igbos will inflame the Okuns and Ikas to competition. And if they renew their demands, they will do so with reasons more compelling than the best arguments advanced yet by promoters of Adada, Aba, Orashi and Orlu/Njaba. In the end, ‘geopolitical parity’, which was the sole reason that swayed other Nigerians to agree for the Southeast to get one more state will be submerged under a plethora of many new demands from other sections of Nigeria, all to the point of gridlock and the certitude that in the denial of all, the Southeast will again be denied.

Therefore, the creation of an additional state in the South East will succeed only if it set aside considerations of ‘intra-cultural affinity’, flimsy stretches of differences from the whole or other sectarian arguments in favor of the more persuasive and sensible ‘geopolitical parity’ theory, best represented by the compelling case that the new state will comprise of swats of territories from all the existing states of the South East. Reason: This is (again) the only agitation in the history of state creation that is propelled by the collective desire of Igbos as a whole for an additional state and it was endorsed by the rest of Nigeria for that reason alone. That means that it is the only one that fits the current national temperament on state creation and thus stands ready to pass the difficult legislative muster of all the State Houses of Assembly in the federation.

To be sure, the demand was for one more state in the Southeast and it was never propelled by any of the ‘cultural affinity/contiguity’ arguments now advanced to justify the sectarian demand for Orashi, Adada, Orlu/Njaba or Aba state. What was presented was a pan-Igbo collective request for an additional state to bring South East to some par with the other geopolitical zones. And that was the single rationale that persuaded other Nigerians to sign on. Thus, to now allow some sectarian group to take the bacon home and keep it only for themselves will be tantamount to some sort of political fraud on the larger Igbo, if not the larger Nigeria that had contemplated otherwise.

The polarizing demands dusted up from closed history by patchy groups of Igbos, so desperate to be now recognized as culturally distinct from the rest of the Igbos, has long been deemed inferior to the greater force and merits of the ‘geopolitical parity’ theory. Reason: All well-meaning Igbos everywhere fear (with some historical justification) that if allowed to proliferate, the purveyors of this ‘we are separate’ arguments will again frustrate what was initially a ‘one-Igbo’ effort, split Igbos into bitter groups against one another and eventually create the scary situation where other Nigerians may withdraw their universal support and deny the Igbo while pointing to their famous (or infamous) disunity as the sole reason. Thus, the only viable option is to push for a new state that will be neutral and not one that will appear to be recognizing and rewarding the selfishness found in the demand for the creation of Adada, Aba, and Orlu/Njaba or Orashi states.

Ejimakor writes out of Washington DC alloylaw@yahoo.com

2008-08-31T11:33:00.000-07:00

BEYOND 2007 ELECTIONS: FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINING DEMOCRACY IN NIGERIA

Presentation by Honourable Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Maurice M. Iwu at the Department of Political Sciences, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. August 28, 2008.

The University of Nigeria, Nsukka has a proud record of contributions, both of ideas and human resources, in the development of the Nigerian state through the years. It was this University that successfully pioneered the concept of liberal studies as a component of scholarship and training in the Nigerian higher education system. The Institution has remained faithful to its founders’ vision that Universities must have an intellectual and social purpose by fostering creativity and responsiveness to change. The Department of Political science of the University, in particular, has given enviably of its intellectual and administrative capacity to the nation in the specific realm of nurturing electoral democracy as well as in the general sphere of building up the principles and practice of political development.

An invitation to me from the Department of Political Science of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka to speak at its 2008 annual lecture is indeed an honour. I am very appreciative of the invitation. {May I also thank the Vice Chancellor and the leadership of the University for the warm and fraternal welcome accorded me and my team on our arrival to the campus.}

For me, of course, an invitation from this University presents an opportunity to return once more to a community that I will always be a part of. I am happy to be back here. I should always be happy to be here in the fold of academia and intellectuals within the university environment, for this very community, in every wholesome and memorable sense of the word is and will always remain a home for me.

This very fact comes with an inherent implication; a home is not only where the heart is, it is where candour reigns. Home is where one speaks from the heart and harbours no fears of meanings being read into comments. Even for the quintessential diplomat home is usually not the place for the practice of diplomacy. Home is where we speak with kindred spirits, with the family. Home is where we confront reality and the truth. And this, my friends and colleagues is what I have come back home today for us to do; to face reality and speak to ourselves with candour.

In the last three years I have intermittently returned to the universities to raise critical issues about our state of being as a society. I have done so consciously, not only because I feel naturally free and at home within the academic community, but also because I appreciate the depth of the fountain and repository of multi-disciplinary knowledge that can be found in the campuses, knowledge and ingenuity that our society is yet to tap fully from; brilliant faculties and minds that have over time being pushed by neglect and relegation into developing doubts about their very potency.

I return home to the universities to discuss because of my abiding belief that the academia must, as of necessity, be drawn into the full dissection of our national problems and the quest for meaningful solutions to these problems if we are to post any real progress.

The need for the academia and the intellectual guarding lights of the Nigerian society to face the reality of the contemporary society and undertake a profound review of the state of the nation with a view to altering and rechanneling the ethos, the energy and the popular tendencies in the society has become urgent and imperative. We can no longer afford the luxury of waiting for the usual knowledge spill-over from academia to the larger Nigerian society if the universities must continue to play its part in contributing to the vision of a cultured and competitive Nigeria in the post-modern era. My dear colleagues, I have ventured out there in the wilderness of Nigerian politics, the hydra-headed monster does indeed exist and could consume us all.

This need is not informed by any record of diminution in the varied talents and vibrant spirit of enterprise in the Nigerian. Indeed, in terms of enterprise and creativity, the Nigerian spirit remains aloft. The prospects of the Nigerian state rising in due course to attain its full potentials as a political and economic giant remain substantially bright. As a matter of fact, in the last decade, with the return to the path of democratic governance, Nigeria has recorded monumental strides and incremental progress in various spheres of its national life. With more policy stability and avoidance of the temptation to perennially pull down what is already in existence only to commence similar new projects, there is no doubt that the nation will be on a firmer foundation for systemic development.

However, even with this recognition of the resilience of the Nigerian spirit and enterprise which has resulted in some growth in some sectors of our national affairs, the reality on the other hand is that the predominant values and thrust of social relationship and conduct within the Nigerian society are at the moment too wayward for the common good.

Our society is presently being sucked into a maelstrom of social and political disorientation and worse still, there does not seem to be any appropriate concern or response for stemming the grave tide. If we cannot have an underlining political ideology, we should at least strive to nurture and ensure a body of social principles through which the society can have order and regenerate itself.

The declaration that “today, we must choose what aspect of our way of life we will defend, modify or jettison”[1] seems very apt for the Nigerian situation against the backdrop of the value disorder and excesses which adversely affect our politics and every other aspect of our social relationship. The need to build a new framework for sustainable social growth in our nation is indeed apparent.

Pulling a society away from destructive existential tendencies and pointing the way to enduring values and philosophies of human enhancement have always being the forte of the academia and the intellectuals - “mind managers” in such focused and sober settings as the universities and research institutes.

Alas, the present within the Nigerian society seems progressively disengaged from the past and all that which used to offer hope for a future worth looking forward to. Thus has it become that in place of studied supply of new ideas and solutions to problems that retard the advancement of the society, even the community of academics and intellectuals have found themselves succumbing to the easy penchant for finger pointing and name calling, tendencies which hardly ever elevate, either the individual or the society. Meanwhile, the problems we perennially bemoan remain unaddressed.

It is very doubtful that any modern society can post real progress in a setting in which thinkers and the academia have been consigned to neglect and despondency, with their place hijacked by sundry charlatans and poseurs who reduce everything to gratification of material desire?
Unfortunately, many in the rank of the academia have resigned to a fate of dormancy and repudiated as it were, the inclination to rigour in appraising issues which is second nature to their calling. In place of the profundity that used to be the hallmark of the academic in interpreting issues, quite a number from this class have jumped strangely into the same wagon with the tribe of the base and the uninformed, known more for parroting unsubstantiated stories and recycling banalities more than looking at issues beyond the surface.

Such a setting leaves the society poorer in the general appreciation of real meaning and undercurrent of crucial issues in the public domain. How far can a society go in an environment in which the line between the intellectual and the mundane is getting increasingly blurred?
In returning home today for this discussion, I come for us to reflect and appreciate the challenge of the moment for the academia in Nigeria and for the larger Nigerian society.

The academia and the community of thinkers in our society presently stand at a juncture where they must have to ask themselves a basic question, not about any esoteric subject but about their very essence in the scheme of Nigeria’s struggle to find meaning and order in its national existence.

The notion that the reign of ideas is in the past and that the present belongs to crass mercantilism, to speculators and to carpetbaggers speak not of the tragedy of the moment but of a most worrisome future for our society. Such a notion must be countered most vigorously. But to do that requires commitment and a return to rigour of analysis, to critically looking at issues and event beyond their facade, and to having the strength and honesty to stand even alone if need be, to counter falsehood and propaganda often foisted on the society by individuals with selfish motive.

The 2007 General Elections lifted Nigeria to a pedestal it had never attained – that of a stable democracy, even if to a degree. Having for the first time achieved a successful transition from one democratically elected government to another – something that had eluded the country for so long, but is now easily dismissed by some as nothing - the nation can now move with confidence to address the crucial matter of developing a framework for sustainable democracy.
Almost a decade now after the nation returned to a system of democratic governance with the freedom and space that offers, the academia and the intellectuals must regain the confidence to play the lead role of articulating and enunciating the principles and values standards on which the wheels of social conducts must revolve. The academia must hasten to overcome the hangover of decades of dictatorship imposed on the land by military regimes.[2]

It goes without saying of course, that such a discourse on how to build an enduring framework for sustaining democracy would not have arisen in the first place if the nation had stumbled once more and failed to meet the crucial test of viability of its democracy which the 2007 elections presented.

Now that it can be said with a measure of confidence and assurance that democracy has returned to stay in Nigeria, the critical question is; where do we go from here? What should be the character and underlying structure of democracy in Nigeria? What social values does it articulate at large? How should it function organizationally, legally and behaviourally? How can it be an effective social process? As Professor Lumumba-Kasonga puts it[3]: ‘What kind of democracy can be socially and economically progressive, philosophically and ideologically relevant, and technologically appropriate in Africa? And, how can such a democracy be produced?

The most worrisome feature of the contemporary Nigerian society is not so much the shortcomings in policies and lapses of institutional operations, but a rather strange incapacitating inability of the society to take meaningful steps to address perceived problems and subsequently erect better foundation for a different and better future.
Nations as living organisms must experience problems, what defines a nation in the face of difficulties is what it does and how it responds to problems.

A resort to finger pointing and name calling such as has become common in Nigeria when confronted with a problem often speaks of lack of imagination and will to tackle problems.
At the beginning of the second quarter of 2007, Nigeria went to the polls in a scheduled General Election that presented a major test to the country’s capacity and readiness to sustain a democratic system.

The 2007 elections as is well documented were confronted with serious problems that were at once political, legal, environmental, structural and logistics.[4] But the nation met the challenge of the elections and pulled through in spite of monumental odds.
Among the problems that confronted the 2007 elections, there were;
(a) The question of the right of the Electoral Commission to vet the documents of candidates for the various elections and determine who did not meet the Constitutional requirement for standing for an election in Nigeria. The Constitution is very clear on the criteria under which a citizen will not qualify to contest for an office. The Electoral Commission which administers the elections of course has the responsibility to verify the claims of the candidates to determine who met the standard or not.

In the 2007 elections, the right of the Commission to perform this line of duty was challenged in the court. The Court of Appeal upheld the right and responsibility of the Commission to continue along the line of duty. On April 16, 2007, four days to the Presidential election, the Supreme Court countered the ruling of the Appeal Court and declared that the Commission did not have the right to determine who was qualified to contest in an election.

As at the time of the Supreme Court ruling, state elections comprising governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections had been conducted and it was barely four days to the presidential election. With the Supreme Court ruling, if a foreigner submits papers to contest an election in the country in the future and no one goes to court to challenge the candidature, the Commission will be in no position to do anything even if it knows that the aspirant is a foreigner.This, however, should be left for the future to tackle.

The immediate implication of the April 16 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court was for the Commission to embark on the printing of a new set of 64 million ballot papers for the presidential election in four days. The Commission had intended accommodate the image of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and the logo of his party by pasting them on the already printed ballot papers, but in the heated and suspicion-infested atmosphere leading to the election the Commission had learnt, including from some of the so-called foreign observer groups that such adjustment will be considered an uneven playing ground. Thus did the Commission embark upon and succeed in printing 64million brand new ballot papers in four days.

(b) Successfully printing 64million ballot papers is of course, one thing. Distributing them across the over 200,000 polling units across the country is another matter entirely. Here, arose another major challenge for the election. But thanks to the various services of the Nigerian Armed Forces, with the kind approval of the Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, President Olusegun Obasanjo, the ballot papers were distributed. The enormity of this task can better be appreciated perhaps in the fact that some patriotic service men perished in an air crash in the early morning of the election day while setting out on the assignment to distribute the election materials.

(c) There is, of course, the matter of the political parties and the internal democracy or lack of it within them. The process through the parties select their candidates as the law provides it, are outside the control of the Commission. These processes constitute what is referred to as internal affairs of the parties.

Within the ambience of these internal affairs as it turned out, not few undemocratic things were done. The primaries through which the candidates were picked were in many instances subverted and replaced with rather hazy and contentious parameters which relieved those who ought to have won of their prospect and hoisted some who could not have won.

In an effort to avoid the chaos which had marked the substitution of candidates by political parties in previous elections, the Commission had succeeded through the new 2006 Electoral Act in having a clear and definite time line for such substitution. Even at this, many of the party leaderships could not bring themselves to comply with the law without seeking even surreptitious means to substitute candidates after the expiration of the deadline.

In a nutshell, party administration in the country in the period leading to the 2007 elections constituted a no mean problem for the management of the election. In many of the parties also, there were serious internal divisions and wrangling which boiled over from internal affairs to potential threats to the smooth flow of the electoral process.

Although the political space had been amply expanded, with fifty political parties being in existence as at the time of the election, many of the parties still had leadership tussles .These tussles often stemmed from personality conflict and struggle for control of party machinery and resources rather than disagreement over issues or ideology.

As is apparent, ideology and underpinning philosophy have little or no place in the politics and political parties of the present era. The parties are either personality tied or interest-based, no more no less. This situation presents its own problem for the political system and the electoral process, as no party could claim before the electorate that it was offering any manifesto distinct from the next party.

It is not difficult therefore to see why and how the politicians kept floating from one party to another without qualms. It is, afterall, a matter of where a politician is able to negotiate a better patronage for himself and “his people” – a euphemism for a politician and himself.

(d) Because the parties did not have distinct beliefs and ideologies, they found it difficult to have selling points before the electorate. This affected voter education – a duty assigned by the Electoral Act to political parties and the Commission. Now, if the electorate did not have any clear idea of what one party represented as distinct from the other, it is obvious that the parties did not expect to win by convincing the people.

This situation presents a clue to the foundation of the subversion of elections through either material inducement or deceit which many of the parties and candidates can be accused of. A framework for a new and sustainable democratic order simply has to repudiate this old order and replace it with a more wholesome system that will place premium on what a party is offering and that which makes it different from the rest. Fifty political parties just cannot believe in the same thing. If they do, then there is no logic for the multiplication of one into fifty, our belief in liberalizing the political space notwithstanding.

(e) As crisis within political parties go, that in the fold of the ruling People Democratic Party (PDP) presented the biggest threat for the nation and the preparations for the 2007 elections. The split between an incumbent President and his Vice had never been experienced in Nigeria’s eventful political history.

The irreconcilable difference in the Presidency which saw the exit of Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar from the government and the ruling party was bound to present additional burden to the management of the 2007 elections. Although Alhaji Abubakar had earlier been indicted by a government White paper, a development which automatically excluded him from contesting for president, his determination to contest all the same raised further challenge in managing the election. Could the Commission have ignored the Government White Paper and the reminder from the relevant law enforcement offices in the land concerning the provisions of the Constitution on those who were barred by law from contesting for public offices?

Was the Commission also in a position to pick and choose which Government White paper it should comply with and which one it should ignore? Put in another way, when is a Government White paper not qualified to be what it is meant to be? It was, of course, up to the judiciary to decide on the issue and the Supreme Court eventually gave Alhaji Abubakar the leave to contest which he did.

(f) The externalization of the 2007 general Elections for reasons that were more selfish than patriotic presented another major challenge for the management of the process. Even before the actual election commenced, a legion of foreign groups parading themselves as observer teams had been procured and arrayed, breathing down the Commission and seeking literally to point the way they prefer for the elections. One group had the temerity to ask for a copy of the national register which in its new format contain the finger print and biometrics of all registered voters in the country.

Yet another offered a heavy sum to the Commission to assist it in conducting the election. When this kind offer was not accepted, because we insisted that Nigeria has the resources to pay for the conduct of its elections, the good Samaritans took offence and never forgave the Commission.
Side by side with the army of so-called foreign observers were their local equivalents, a motley crowd of emergency civil society groups and programmed non governmental organizations whose primary mandate was to tackle the Electoral Commission and present the electoral process as flawed even as it was still fine-tuning the process for the elections.

How far can citizens go in undermining their own country for the sake of wining power? Where should the quest for personal gratification end and the consideration for national interest take over? Who was paying for the hordes of so-called election observers that thronged to Nigeria for the 2007 elections and what was the motive? The dynamics of the 2007 elections and the peculiar problems that confronted the conduct of the elections present clear outline for the foundation of a new framework for sustaining democracy in Nigeria. There were various other structural and environment problems which managing the 2007 elections contended with.

There was, for instance, the issue of timely release of already appropriated funds for the elections. For a long time in the course of preparing for the elections, the Commission was engaged in an awkward battle with the agency in the Ministry of Finance which in the name of ensuring due process was determined as it were, to delay every procurement schedule for the election. The larger society did not seem to care while the wrangling went on about the import of such delay in meeting the logistics plan of the exercise.

Then there is the far reaching structural issue of the relationship between the Commission and the Resident Electoral Commissioners. These key officials in the management of the electoral process in the country are appointed by the President to whom they owe their allegiance.
The Resident Electoral Commissioners operate within the Commission, but strictly speaking they are independent of the Chairman and the Commission. They are at the helm of affairs in the offices of the Commission in the states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory. They conduct elections in the states and an election result announced by them cannot be altered by the Commission or its leadership. Only an Election Tribunal can tamper with an already declared election result. But these officers who represent the Commission in a most critical dimension cannot be sanctioned or relieved of their office by the Commission.

The worst that can be done to a Resident Electoral Commissioner is that he will be moved from one state to another. However, the Commission and its leadership are held responsible for whatever the performances of Resident Electoral Commissioners are in the conduct of election across the states. Such is the curious structure. In the months leading to the elections in 2007, the Commission had repeatedly called attention to issues it identified as problems in the environment of elections in the country. These issues were categorized under four broad heading;
(i) Excessive use of money in politics. This phenomenon has continued to subvert both the will of the people and efforts to establish a level playing field in electoral contests.
(ii) Threat and actual presence of violence in elections
(iii) Gender inequity in effective political participation and
(iv) Badly skewed mindset of Nigerians about elections.

Did these factors both collectively and individually exert adverse impact on the 2007 elections? The answer is of course, yes. Indeed, much of the problems which dog elections in Nigeria whether in 2007 or prior to that are hinged on these identified environment problems.
But how have the society and its various social observatory groups and institutions such as the media, the civil society groups and the academia perceived and responded to the existence of these negative factors in the political environment?

There is very little evidence that there is yet any concerted concern for these issues, not even from the larger society that is often bearing the brunt of the problems. When the situation exerts adverse impact on elections as they are bound to do, however, the society tends to express surprise and disapproval. Sooner or later as it often turns out, the Electoral Commission is held responsible for not ensuring a flawless election. How far can a society go with such insensitivity to core problems confronting its aspiration for development?
The Declaration on criteria for free and Fair Elections as articulated and adopted by the Inter-Parliamentary Council at its 154 Session in Paris in 1994[5] is quite clear and was not in any material sense breached by the conduct of the 2007 elections.

One year and four months after the 2007 elections, contentions and counterclaims pertaining to the elections still constitute major subject of public discourse in the country. Viewed from a positive perspective, it is well that the citizenry is interested enough and engaged in the system to keep alive an election of almost one and a half year ago. Viewed critically however, much of the discussions till going on about the 2007 elections are as shallow and bereft of analytical depth as they are unhelpful to a better future for the country and its electoral democracy. It is not a matter of keeping a matter in public focus; it should be a matter of what is being discussed and how these address the core issues and problems that have consistently impaired the progress of the nation in the scheme of development.

The temptation for democracy to be seen as a seasonal event and for elections to be viewed as periodic opera staged intermittently to enthral the society till the next round of public performance seems to inhabit much of the present discussion on the 2007 election.
Nothing can be more unhelpful if not dangerous for the long term sustainability of democracy in the country than the present proclivity to deny glaring problems and resort instead to finger pointing and bandying of propaganda lines thrown up by partisan groups.

Now that Nigeria has broken the jinx of democratic transition from one elected government to another, the challenge of developing a grounded framework for sustaining democracy in the country should commence with candour and sincerity of purpose. This is a national undertaking that will be as embracive as it should be thorough and gradual. It is not a task for one session of law making or for one workshop. Today it can be said with renewed confidence that democracy has recorded remarkable progress with the success of the 2007 elections. To appreciate the basic challenges that must be met to set democracy on a solid and sustainable foundation in Nigeria and to move thereafter to evolve a new set of values and norms on which the wholesome new order will rest should now be the focus.

One of the good features of liberal democracy as the scholar Antonoio Codeville postulated is that “it depends on the character of the people” and “the people’s character depends so substantially on how they freely choose to mold it”[6].That is to say, the character of Nigeria’s democracy depends essentially on what Nigerians want it to be. The pretension by some that the character of the present democracy in Nigeria is different from the character of the society or that a select few super humans have the capacity to twist the character of the Nigerian democracy is at best an attempt to avoid the reality.

The total absence of ideology and principle in contemporary Nigerian politics; the abdication by the citizenry of their primary responsibility of choosing the best candidates and sticking with them even when they are not handy enough to distribute money and material inducements during campaigns; the awkward institutional arrangement that still finds the Electoral Commission arguing and pleading for its funding to be released for its operations; the unrestricted ceiling of expenditure during campaigns; the ready willingness of individuals and groups to be recruited by foreign interest for the purpose of undermining public institutions; the mindset of an average Nigerian politician and even voter that election cannot be won unless it is bought; the corrosive corrupt tendency that manifests in ad-hoc electoral officers seeing elections as opportunity to rake in money from unconscionable politicians; the practice of public officers in government using the resources and might of the public station to advance their political interest; the apparent willingness and readiness of a broad section of the media to be bought over during election by the highest bidder, whatever the source of the money may be, the continued perception and indeed actual interpretation of political offices as easy source of wealth – these are still prevailing expressions of the character of democracy and elections in Nigeria. These represent the character and dominant tendencies within the Nigerian society of the day. These are the factors that informed the description of the Nigerian situation as ‘Voting without choosing’[7].

A new framework for sustaining democracy in the Nigerian society must methodically tackle these tendencies that adversely affect the process and system of electing leaders and governments. For the society to accommodate and often promote glaringly unwholesome values and inclinations in its citizens and social conducts and turn round to expect that its democracy will have a different texture is the worst form of delusion. The legal framework for the conduct of elections must as of necessity change. The rules guiding elections; who should contest and who is not qualified to contest must be clear and firm. While the outcome of an election must not be certain before the polls, the rules for the contest must be clear and well known ahead of time.

With the benefit of the experience of re-run elections in the wake of the 2007 General Election, the time may have come for Nigeria to adopt the system of staggered elections. Such an arrangement not only ensures better focus and optimal application of standard in the conduct of elections, it reduces the logistics challenge attendant to the conduct of a general election at fell swoop in a country as vast as Nigeria.

Above all, a new value system and sense of civic responsibility must consciously to nurture to propel the framework that will sustain democracy in Nigeria. This is not a matter of establishing new and parallel structures of state. It is a matter of sincerity of purpose that will take a combination of forces and initiatives; of government, the academia, the media and sundry institutions of change, acting on an accepted plank of re-orientation and genuine determination to make sacrifice and build a new order.

Creativity has no boundary. If Nigeria is blessed with the spirit of enterprise and determination, it can turn this to positive end. It is my belief that deconstructing and restructuring electoral democracy in Nigeria must not stop at the paradigmatic and policy assumptions and analysis, and even of their implications but should lay the framework of inventing alternatives. It is for this reason that INEC established The Electoral Institute to underscore the need to train professional election administrators; this is what has informed our introduction of technology in our electoral process, and it is the same reason that has encouraged the Commission to embark on a project that will lead to a fair and equitable delimitation of constituencies. The achievement of the 2007 General Elections has released a fresh verve and opportunity that must not be lost. This is the time to raise a new framework for the better future we yearn for. There is no segment of our society that is better equipped than the universities to reconstruct the road map for the new Nigeria. That is why I am here.

Thank you.

Nsukka, August 28, 2008.

[1] Codevilla Angelo M. (1977); The Character of Nations. Basic Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers
[2] Iwu Maurice(2006);Democracy and Constitutional Governance in Nigeria: Paradox of the excluded Middle. 5th distinguished faculty of Social Science Public Lecture, University of Benin

[3] Lumumba-Kasonga Tukumbi (2005) The problematics of liberal democracy and democratic process: lessons for deconstructing and building African democracies. In: Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasonga (Ed.) Liberal Democracy and Its Critics in Africa. Dakar, CODESRIA Press. P.1-25.
[4] The Official Report of the 2007 General Elections. INEC,Abuja.Page 10
[5] Goodwin-Gill (2006);Free and Fair Elections.Inter-Parliamentary Union, Geneva
[6] Codevilla Angelo M. (1977); The Character of Nations. Basic Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers
[7] Alade Fawole, W. (2005), Voting without choosing: interrogating the crisis of ‘electoral democracy’ in Nigeria In: Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasonga (Ed.) Liberal Democracy and Its Critics in Africa. Dakar, CODESRIA Press. P.149-171.

MONITORING THE ELECTORAL REFORM DEBATE FROM WASHINGTON

2008-07-29T02:51:00.000-07:00

By: Ibrahim Danlami

Contrary to the misconception held by some of our home-based compatriots, it is not true that the Nigerian Diaspora is clueless on events unfolding back home in Nigeria. Some of us have had to argue to the contrary each time this popular (or is it notorious) misconception is offered as reason to shut the Nigerian Diaspora out of the Nigerian public discourse, especially of the political kind. Notwithstanding the quantum evidence to the contrary, however, the misconception persists and is wont to succeed sometimes in actually caging some Diasporans from daring to make any public contributions to many of Nigeria’s public debates. But if you go to the Blogs or other internet media, you will see a robust interplay of ideas spewing from many Diasporans of fine intellect and depth. Lately, one of the many issues that seemed to have attracted much talk amongst many in the United States where I live is the one dealing with electoral reforms in Nigeria.

Yes, electoral reforms and their garden varieties came to the fore recently in Atlanta USA in mid-July when Maurice Iwu was there to address a symposium of Diasporans of differing political hues. I was there to listen, observe and gauge the Diasporan pulse. I am aware that others present have written on it, including accurate and objective accounts by a Wale Odusote, Seyi Oduyela and a live presentation by Professor Okafor, all of whom have covered topical issues like the vexed matters of ‘Diaspora voting rights’ and ‘Diaspora set-asides’. But the two subject areas that continue to predominate have to do with ways and means of getting our politicians to play fair – for once; and making the current crop of electoral commissioners (or the INEC leadership) a valuable and practical part of the reform process. In plain terms, it means that anyone still hounding Maurice Iwu and INEC as if they are the problems Nigeria has with her electoral blues is missing the point. And what’s the point? The point is that Nigerian elections will surely become better when politicians decide that it is time to truly respect the rules of civilized political contest; and for Nigeria to reduce the overriding influence of money in our politics – as Maurice Iwu has been recommending.

For most of us who continue to observe how this whole drama is playing out, there is no escaping the plain truth that the singular corrupting influence on elections comes from politicians (especially the overambitious moneybags), not the hapless umpire, who unfortunately becomes the fall guy for all manners of trumped-up ills with the electoral process. Blaming the umpire is analogous to purveying the fallacy that River Niger now flows from the direction of the South to the North instead of the settled scientific truth of the otherwise. On the electoral pedestal, the place of the Nigerian politician is, metaphorically speaking, northerly while that of the umpire is southerly. Simple as that. Electoral umpires everywhere (not just Nigeria) are simply not empowered by any means, whether by any lapses in the current law or any vaunted capacity for mischief, to just decide who prevails or fails by sheer fiat. Though in plain view, Maurice Iwu took pains to make this point in Atlanta when he charged that prominent politicians made aggressive moves to buy the elections before the first ballots were cast but that they were rebuffed. One newspaper had untruthfully reported that Iwu had said that the elections were bought - lock, stock and barrel. I was present in Atlanta and I never heard any such thing coming out of Iwu’s mouth. He added though that he had warned the nation about it at the time. After the symposium, I took time to research back issues of Nigerian newspapers and I found that Iwu was rock solid credible on all fours. Now, when a nation’s top electoral umpire says such things, all well-meaning Nigerians (not just the fabled ‘stakeholders’) are supposed to take a pause and do a re-think. He wore the shoe and he sure knew where it pinched.

Therefore, I find it illogical to believe that our national umpires might have gone round the country plotting with some politicians to cook the results. To believe that they did, then you have to also believe that Maurice Iwu and INEC (as a whole) ‘conspired differently’ with PDP, ANPP, AC, PPA, etc and ‘delivered’ their candidates piecemeal in the different precincts where each party had prevailed, including some isolated anti-PDP ‘conspiracy’ to deliver Senator Osakwe against the all-powerful PDP Chairman Ahmadu Ali for whom Maurice Iwu and INEC were alleged to be working for. Incredible. If any such moves were made, it is plausible that it was the politicians themselves (who had so much at stake) that might have gone wild jockeying to corrupt the umpires. It must have been so because it comports with the natural order of (warped) human political behavior – the sort that compels men to try to win at all costs. Think of all the revelations of match fixing, whether in the sphere of Nigerian or any international sports. What we know as true wherever some fixing was alleged is that some team or its manager went around at night trying to corrupt the umpire or referee; or that some rapacious bookmaker peddled some undue influence in order to make a buck or two through some corrupt means of distorting the natural odds. I have not heard of the other kind where some soccer referee was the one looking for takers for his grand designs to sell a game. Again, think of the direction we all know River Niger to be flowing.

It is time we Nigerians began to tell each other some home and unpleasant truths. One truth is that it is becoming harder to believe that Maurice Iwu alone sat down and ‘rigged’ all the winning politicians (of different parties) into power. If he did, surely one of his commissioners would have by now become rattled enough to turn whistleblower, all with the quaint prospects that such a person will certainly become an instant Nigerian (and international) celebrity. I believe Nigeria currently has twelve national electoral commissioners and thirty-six Resident Electoral Commissioners (at the executive level); and several hundreds of top civil service grade electoral staff (permanent and ad-hoc). It strains credulity, therefore, that all these fine folks will continue to remain silent and protect what is not supposed to be a secret anymore had such a plan been hatched for real. Come on, give me a break. How can anyone hatch an iron-clad secret amongst thousands of fidgety and harried electoral officials and expect that it will forever remain a secret even when a small group of soldiers (trained to keep secrets) cannot even maintain the secrecy of a coup plan. Unbelievable.

The Nigerian Diasporan that I know continues to have confidence in the Uwais-led effort to reform the electoral process. But I must hasten to state our disappointment with the bizarre contributions coming from some of the members of the committee who continue to miss the point of the whole exercise by abusing the hallowed halls of the Committee to be witch-hunting INEC and Maurice Iwu. As a nation, Nigeria is a continuum and so are her institutions and systems. To illustrate, you cannot reform the Nigerian judiciary by throwing out the entire judicial leadership. You can only do that in a revolution, though the military didn’t even try. The same is true for the many other national institutions of cohesion and continuity such as the armed forces. Why are we not calling for the firing of the service chiefs because of some perception that the militancy in the Niger Delta persists; or why are we not also accusing them of even procuring the militancy? We are not - simply because it is not reasonable to do so; yet in the realm of elections, we can count on disgruntled and duplicitous politicians to point us to the wrong direction – smoking mirrors and River Niger suddenly changing course to flow from the South to North. Don’t believe the hype.

So, for many of us in the Diaspora, it comes down to these. INEC is an institution of national cohesion, continuity, and stability. Thus, it should be one of the few institutions that deserve some stability in its leadership cadres and urgently so. Nigeria has experimented with this ad-hoc chairmanship arrangement for far too long and it is not working. That is one of the reforms we need. Experience counts for something and whether anyone of us likes Maurice Iwu or not, three more things you can never take away from the lanky professor are guts, patriotism and the most credit for keeping Nigeria on an even keel when it mattered most. Further, we need to be mindful of the ignoble place of Nigerian politicians in the whole scheme of things and tell them to get their act together; or better still, tell them off. Maybe, it is time for our politicians to start talking of fielding fewer parties that will be big (and serious) enough to take on a dominant party like the PDP. Or, Nigeria may have to change the laws to statutorily sunset any political party that fails to return a victory at the polls.

Bruce Fein, a former assistant Attorney General of United States, writing in the Washington Times of July 15, 2008, called the 2007 elections ‘landmark’; and he ably contradicted the crass celebration of tribunal nullifications as some indictment of Iwu/INEC by referring to the bizarre verdict in the Abia governorship case. I agree with Attorney Fein and also with the proposition that Nigeria gained lots of mileage in 2007. Therefore, those that made it happen must be made part of any process designed to make it better the next time around.

Ibrahim Danlami wrote in from the US ibrahimdanlami@yahoo.com

IN ATLANTA, IWU CARRIED THE DAY WITH HIS CONSTITUENCY DELIMITATION

2008-07-16T17:47:00.000-07:00

By: WALE ODUSOTE

I have had cause to write about Maurice Iwu of INEC but I have never met him in person. Normally, I would not write about a subject or a person with whom I have never had a personal contact of some sort. But in Maurice Iwu’s case, I broke custom and wrote about him anyway because the issue at the time concerned me as much it concerned any other Nigerian out here in the Diaspora. The issue had to do with the legal challenge to Iwu’s tenure based on the notion that he lost his rights to hold high office in Nigeria because of his status as a naturalized US citizen. My main theme of my essay, which was (generously) published in the nigeriavillagesquare.com and other Blogs/Newspapers, was that the suit against Iwu held serious negative legal implications for the entire Nigerian Diaspora. If Iwu had lost, all Diasporans would have been collectively imperiled. But the man fought back and hard; and just about a few weeks ago, the verdict came down in favor and I breathed a sigh of relief – for myself, my fellow Diasporans and for our children.

Now I have cause to write about Maurice Iwu again and this time I am doing so after actually meeting him in person for the very first time. Meeting the man was not by happenstance but by design. This is how it happened. Just a few days ago, I got a mail from one Nigerian group out in Atlanta bearing the missive that Maurice Iwu is in town – in Atlanta, and would be a guest at a Symposium to discuss Diasporan input in the ongoing electoral reforms (including issues relating to constituency delimitation and Diasporan voting rights). To cut a long story short, I contacted some airlines and was able to get a re-eye booking that took me to Atlanta in time enough for me to attend the event at the Grand Hyatt in Buckhead, suburbs of Atlanta on July 15, 2008. The event started around noon and several Nigerians were present, including the Consul-General of Nigeria in Atlanta, members of NIDO-A, US-based Nigerian Journalists, etc. Presentations were made by several folks, including ones by Professor Okafor and Professor Maurice Iwu himself. There was talk that a certain Femi Ajayi was billed to be present to make a presentation but he never showed up.

Professor Okafor did talk of the pressing need for general reforms in Nigeria’s electoral regime but, by and large, he seemed to have a special passion for Diaspora voting rights. On this, he suggested many novel means and I had a feeling that he researched his subject well and the audience came out better informed on the finer points of the topic. After him, Professor Iwu proceeded with the keynote presentation of the day – mostly speaking without prepared notes which made him appear very credible and conversant with all the issues he touched on, ranging from the challenges INEC had to face, the misunderstood role of tribunals in the electoral process, constituency delimitation, affirmative action for women in politics, the need for journalistic balance in reporting Nigerian issues in international media (Blogs especially), Diaspora voting rights, etc. Professor Iwu was very clear on many things he said but one issue upon which he appeared to be most passionate was the one dealing with constituency delimitation or redistricting. His unambiguous postulate that the constituencies in the Federation of Nigeria must, as far as possible, reflect equal or proportional representation captured the imagination of all present. And it is not abstract because other democracies like the United States are known to do the same. Distinguish that from gerrymandering which carries the prospects of political disadvantage; and some people have even argued that constituency delimitation of the past was some sort of gerrymandering – in the sense that proportional representation was least considered, if at all.

After their presentations, questions and comments were allowed from us in the floor. But due to pressure of time and the sheer number of those who wanted to ask questions/make comments, not everyone was able to get a slot to make his own contribution. But those who did pretty much reflected the common and general views of those who didn’t get recognized to speak. I figured this from gauging the demeanor and expressions of many who either nodded their concurrence with points made or just vehemently shook their heads in disagreements. All in all, Nigerians were in their best elements as everyone made clear attempts to be constructive and avoid unnecessary forays into irrelevancies and personal attacks. Much to the credit of the organizers, the moderator – Udejiofor and Maurice Iwu’s engaging personality, the general atmosphere was very intellectual, serious-minded and patriotic.

The first floor speaker praised Iwu for his evident (and thankless) hard work in delivering on the 2007 transition; the second speaker marveled at the difficult conditions and inadequate institutional arrangements under which INEC had to operate and deliver on an election without which Nigeria could have lagged; the third (a young lady from Southwest Nigeria) thanked Iwu profusely but wanted to know more on what concrete steps are being taken to assure participation of women in the political process; the fourth (a US-based Nigerian journalist) who confessed that he had been critical of Iwu/INEC in the past ventured that having met Iwu for the first time and listening to him speak is now likely to get him to change his mind. He was bold and objective and he promised to expand on his thesis on electoral reforms and forward to Iwu/Reform Panel in due course. This journalist also advised Iwu to carry his message to the Nigerian people at the local levels in order to properly inform and counteract any negative stereotypes that may have been spun on Iwu/INEC.

Just like the journalist, I too was meeting Iwu for the first time and I also experienced a sort of baptism of fire – in the sense that Iwu was able to (finally) convince me of his sincerity and the hard work INEC brought to bear in Nigeria in the past year. His thesis on constituency delimitation was unassailable. Iwu is right that the last constituency delimitation by the military did not reflect the true physical distribution of population densities across Nigeria. And it seemed that minority nationalities, metropolitan areas and women may have been robbed. Some political justice and fair play beckoned – thanks to Iwu’s pioneering work in these regards. He even ventured a set aside for women – to assure that their greatest numbers possible is captured into the process. He was also right that after twelve long years, Nigeria was ripe for constituency delimitation and the Constitution even mandated as such. In this season of constitutional amendment, there couldn’t have been a better time for Iwu to bring this fundamental issue into the fore.

Finally, Maurice Iwu’s openness to suggestions and criticisms was admirable and his patriotism was ram-rod and clear. He also exuded lots of creativity and real-world smarts that Nigeria needs if we are serious about taking our democracy to the next level.

Thus, I came out of the symposium hugely enriched, better informed, and less critical of a man who has worked so hard for Nigeria but seemed to have been misunderstood by many who never took the time to go beyond the barrage of negative press that was unleashed on Nigeria’s 2007 historic transition even before the first ballots were cast. Lessons: I will rather have a Maurice Iwu running our elections for now and in the future instead of certain other umpires who either don’t declare their results or recanted on the results they declared; and I will rather now be talking of electoral reforms that make sense – like constituency redistricting and Diaspora voting rights instead of over-flogging men and women of INEC who braved odds to accomplish an all-important national assignment at a critical time in our history. And now that Iwu has vicariously overcome the burden of dual citizenship for all Diasporans, I can see a brighter future in Nigeria’s political firmament for us all – Diasporans and home-based alike.

Wale wrote in from USA waleodusote@yahoo.com

YAR’ADUA HAS SEPARATED THE REALITY FROM THE SLOGAN ON RULE OF LAW

2008-07-09T14:09:00.000-07:00

By: ALOY EJIMAKOR

Since the inception of organized constitutional democracy that brought government by dialogue and consent, nations and their leaders have tended to deploy plain old hypes, clichés or slogans as selling points aimed at igniting and sustaining the tempo of public consciousness. Repeated often enough, slogans or the like help to psyche lackadaisical citizens and prepare them to accept difficult public policy shifts necessary to making a clean break from business as usual and priming the nation to embrace new cultural paradigms that she must pass through to endure and prosper. Slogans worked, primarily because the message they bear is so hip and commonsensical that any coinage contrary to the message can only be laughable, if not downright bizarre.

Another reason is that the nation or locale must have come to such a sorry pass in that particular stage in its history that it can boast no other option than to embrace the radical message embodied in that slogan if it must thrive as a dynamic entity. The key does not lie in the slogan but in measures employed to making it a reality. In motherland Nigeria of today, President Yar’Adua is making sure that Nigerians will not as soon forget that ‘rule of law’ is not only the slogan of the moment but a real policy choice upon which Nigeria can no longer afford any further hesitation. History indicates that Yar’Adua is right and Nigeria stands to benefit to boot. And world history is on Yar’Adua’s side.

From pre-Emancipation America to Africa’s struggles against colonialism, sloganeering (of the positive kind) was the new art form that propelled societies to act and engage on a course that changed national attitudes for good. Slogans were legion, attractive, and they often worked wonders. Desegregationist newspaper proprietors in America known then as ‘pamphleteers’ screamed the libertarian catchphrase: ‘desegregation now or never’ to whip up and sustain America’s wavering interest in President Lincoln’s arduous anti-slavery or desegregationist agenda. It also carried a subliminal incitement to African-Americans in the Jim Crow South to rise against white slaveholders and resist racial supremacists.

Later, Lincoln’s war effort against the Confederates succeeded more on that slogan than on any other that may have stressed the simultaneous need to prevail against rebellion and unify the colonies. Imagine the derision that would have greeted any opposite attempt by the rebel south to coin the counter phrase: ‘segregation now and forever’. So, at the end, President Lincoln and his fellow Unionists carried the day with what most Americans had been psyched to see as the only sensible thing to do in that era.

I figure that out of the many slogans bandied around at that time in America’s history, what might have helped most to change America for good was the one that held the best prospects of a desegregated continental United States, free from slavery and crass inequality between blacks and whites. A close second was the other one emanating from the first Continental Congress that declared that all men are created equal – a sort of Yar’Adua’s ‘rule of law’ in so many words. Slogans or not, the important thing is that America did not rest on her oars on the vaunted temerity of slogans per se but actually went to war (or took other tangible measures) to prove that she meant business in taking them from mere public policy clichés or expressions of the popular will to making them a reality and a way of life for generations to come.

Back home in colonial Nigeria, the rallying slogan of the time was ‘self-government’. It was so quaint that even songs were written with it and it ultimately prevailed against any colonialist slogan that purveyed the opposite connotation. Our nationalists made it real when Enahoro made a motion on the floor of the House for Nigeria’s independence, much to the admiration of Nigerians who have been successfully psyched by a robust anti-colonial media not to accept anything less or in opposite. Today, an ordinary run-of-the mill but highly effectual slogan has been brought to bear on the mainstream polity by President Yar’Adua. Besides his many policy rollouts, mostly couched in simple slogans, the one that Yar’Adua loves most and which has taken most root is ‘Rule of Law’.

There is hardly any important public forum the President addresses without him lacing his speech with some reference to his iron-clad commitment to getting Nigerians to love ‘rule of law’ again. And he does not do so with undue levity but with much gravity and poise. If it is the President’s intention (as a scientist) to psyche Nigerians to get used to this new order, he is succeeding because it is now hip for a vast majority of Nigerians to talk about rule of law as the most fundamental path to Nigeria’s redemption and match to modernity. From the talking heads on our morning television talk shows and Nigerian Diaspora internet discussion boards and Blogs to the sidewalk parliaments or legislative chambers, one can see this admirable tendency on the part of Nigerians to be well disposed to the President’s vigorous postulates on rule of law. It is a win-win situation that is fast rising to a national groundswell, with the Supreme Court and sections of the judicature also rising to the occasion.

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.

Think Yar’Adua’s executive order that compelled immediate enforcement of the court rulings in the states where a few elections were upturned; the President’s ram-rod reluctance to intervene in, not to talk of manipulating the House ‘failed’ contracts hearings; and the many other hot-button issues of the day where the President left no one in doubt that he preferred to let matters play out within the 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. Here 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 Bush administration, and amongst congressional circles.

Those who are wont to belittle the President for his bold strides on making rule of law a reality may be doing so on a misreading of a history that demonstrates that there are precedents everywhere to support Yar’Adua’s proactive mien. Again, in America, during the civil rights struggle, President Kennedy ordered the National Guard to enforce the controversial judgment of the US Supreme Court declaring segregation inherently unequal and unconstitutional in the United States. Kennedy used the National Guard because under the 11th Amendment to the US Constitution, Kennedy had no authority over the white-led police establishments in the states, most of which were at that time pathetically resistant to the new order. A non-serious or merely sloganeering Kennedy would have done nothing and still be able to take umbrage on some stretch of the constitutional restrictions found in the said 11th Amendment. And I reckon that Kennedy’s eagerness to enforce federal court orders energized conservative US judges to begin a systematic dismantling of an entire body of laws – mostly comprised of America’s half a millennium legalization of racism. Yar’Adua’s immediate order to the Inspector-General to enforce the judgments in the governorship elections nullifications is in pari materia to Kennedy’s rapid deployment of the National Guard to enforce his desegregationist agenda.

Better yet, my guess is that Yar’Adua’s focused leadership on adherence to rule of law may be the new tunic that will as yet embolden a Nigerian judiciary that sadly stagnated under over three decades of martial rule. There is nothing that ignites a court on an irreversible path of gutsy and well-reasoned rulings on difficult questions of law than an executive branch led by a President standing at the ready to enforce those rulings even when some may be clearly detrimental to his narrow partisan or strategic interest. In other words, Yar’Adua must be praised for his courage and patriotism in following a path that is known to be strewn with prospects of self-endangerment.

When Trent Lott, the powerful Republican Speaker of US House of Representatives strained the boundaries of free speech by using racial epithets, the nation was in uproar and demands for his resignation crossed party and racial lines. Resisting the tempting prospects of reaping a political capital, the President of the United States spurned every pressure to be drawn into the matter much like Yar’Adua risked alienating PDP apparatchiks by refusing to intercede on Etteh’s behalf. The more extreme example was when Kennedy courted danger to his personal safety by ordering his younger brother - Robert, the Attorney-General to crack down on the Mafia despite America’s duplicitous and bewildering romance of sorts with the Mafia. Kennedy took such bold step because he believed that, until then, America had merely paid lip service to riding itself of organized crime and he found that laxity to be inconsistent with the country’s avowed commitment to rule of law.

To be sure, President Yar’Adua courts danger of alienating the establishment ranks who remain unaccustomed to the President’s consistency on rule of law. In other words, taking the doctrine of rule of law from a mere policy slogan to an everyday reality requires mettle and can sometimes be unpopular and dicey, but as above examples indicate, it also takes focus and exceptional presidential temperament to stay the course. Yar’Adua seems to possess them all. Thus, by his actions so far, there is no doubt that the President understands that separating the reality from the slogan on rule of law is the only option when you are serious about building a new and well-ordered society. He deserves a pat on the back from any one or nation that wants to see Nigeria succeed.

Aloy Ejimakor is Law Group. Washington, DC alloylaw@yahoo.com

PERMANENCY OF STATE INSTITUTIONS AND FUNCTIONARIES: LET IWU BE

2008-07-04T16:23:00.000-07:00

By: Attorney Franklin Otorofani

Mature societies are defined by the stability of governmental institutions, policies and functionaries. Conversely, immature societies are notorious for policy summersaults, institutional instability, and high personnel turnover rates at the highest levels of administration. Nigeria fits snugly into the above description. She is the epitome of impermanence and instability and therefore the concomitant absence of development. There is a direct link between political and therefore institutional instability and underdevelopment. The country Nigeria has acquired notoriety not only for abrupt policy summersaults, but also institutional and personnel changes, usually at the most destabilizing of times! High level political appointees are ousted while on official duties abroad representing Nigeria and the government that just humiliated them out of office without notice! Pray, who would die or stick out his neck for such a country? Is it any wonder that ‘patriotism’ is the last word on the lips of Nigerian political appointees, and indeed, Nigerians in general?
It’s for the foregoing reasons that the author fervently calls on all well meaning Nigerians to prevail on the Yar’Adua administration to break the pernicious cycle of policy summersaults and project abandonment in order to move the nation forward. The nation makes no progress whatsoever with what appears to have metamorphosed into a policy of ‘destroy and rebuild’ that has animated our development agenda over the decades, which more than anything else, has been responsible for the nation’s stunted growth and development. And one area to begin this cyclical break is no other than INEC and its Chairman, Professor Maurice Iwu.

In the aftermath of the results of the general elections the drumbeat of calls for Iwu’s resignation and/or removal reached its crescendo after the presidential election. Sore losers, notably Abubakar Atiku, who was the presidential candidate of his one-man party, AC, and Buhari, who contested under the platform of the ANPP, strenuously sought to make Iwu and INEC their scapegoats. Maurice Iwu, a patriotic Nigerian with an uncommon commitment to advancing our electoral processes, became the bogeyman who must be sacrificed to appease electoral failures. With raw emotions fueled by the misguided reports by foreign election monitors, reaching boiling points, Iwu was strenuously portrayed more as the PDP Chairman than that of an independent electoral commission. While the Iwu bashing lasted gullible Nigerians were easily mislead and got carried away with Atiku and AC inspired anti-Iwu rhetoric. The overturn of a couple gubernatorial elections, even though more on technicality than on substantive issues, only served to pour fuel on the raging anti-Iwu inferno. It took the decisive decision of the Federal Court of Appeal to de-oxygenate the inferno that could have engulfed the nation and reduce it to ashes.

Yet, the call for Iwu’s ouster, though somewhat now muted, has not completely ceased. Failed politicians are not banking on Yar’Adua to assuage their bruised egos with Iwu ouster in his much talked about cabinet reshuffle exercise as if Iwu is Yar’Adua’s minister. For the avoidance of doubt Iwu was appointed for a term certain with all the security of tenure that goes with it. That said, it’s fair to say that the tide of public opinion has changed somewhat, thanks to the Court of Appeal decision. If the second highest judicial authority in the land that had ruled against INEC in the past could find that the presidential election was conducted in ‘substantial compliance’ with the electoral law and the constitution, there was no basis to discredit Iwu. On the contrary the man who achieved the impossible for the nation (where all his predecessors failed) deserves nothing short of a medal.

Iwu has so far weathered the storm and I would give credit to President Yar’Adua and other patriotic Nigerians who stood by him through thick and thin, for not listening to the voices of retrogression advancing their parochial agenda in disguise. The case has been fought and won in court on the basis of facts presented and the applicable law before a panel of independent Justices, not Ahmadu Ali or OBJ-appointed panel. And there was more good news for Iwu and INEC still: Gubernatorial election re-runs ordered by tribunals generally acclaimed even by Atiku himself as free and fair and therefore credible, returned the same PDP governors whose prior elections were condemned by the opposition as PDP’s fraudulent impositions allegedly with Iwu’s connivance. These credible gubernatorial re-runs conducted by Iwu, which returned the same governors previously declared as winners proved one and only one point that was already judicially reaffirmed: that is, the general, in particular, presidential and gubernatorial elections, were conducted in ‘substantial compliance’ with the electoral laws of the land and therefore credible before the laws of the land. Nigerians must respect judicial decisions even if they disagree with them. As such those still publicly claiming that Yar’Adua was imposed on the nation or that the presidential election was stolen even in the face of the judicial pronouncement are doing great disservice to the nation in general and the judiciary in particular. They cannot therefore claim to be democrats when they so treat judicial decisions with contempt.

The same results would be returned were the elections to be conducted by God Himself or his angels from heaven and Atiku and Buhari would still complain of rigging! However, to hold that the elections were conducted in substantial compliance with the electoral law is not to say that the elections were flawless, but that whatever flaws there were did not rise to the level of gross or wholesale non-compliance with the electoral law as to render the results a nullity. The problem is not with Iwu but our politicians. We can change INEC Chairs a thousand times but if our politicians do not change, nothing will change.

The trashing of Abubakar Atiku in his own state and even local government area in the Adamawa State gubernatorial re-run has exposed Atiku’s electoral hollowness even in his own backyard. No wonder AC only did well in Lagos where ex-Governor Bola Tinubu held sway. In terms of electoral calculus Tinubu is a whole lot worth more than Atiku and therefore better suited to fly AC’s presidential flag. Atiku is now a liability to AC; not that he was ever an asset in the first place. And as he flees from the US to Dubai in the United Arab Republic (UAR) over the Jefferson case in which he has been cited, it will be well for the AC to strip Atiku of its leadership if it doesn’t want the party to be run from Dubai, which Atiku has made his first country against Nigeria.

With the tide of public opinion turning against Atiku and the AC, now is the time to give Iwu all the support and encouragement to proceed with God’s speed with his reform agenda for the agency. Now is not the time to change a winning team, and I would therefore expect Mr. President to stoutly resist any attempt by pressure groups to undermine the good works Iwu has done with INEC. The Ribadu treatment has no place for Iwu because he has a term certain and his removal can only be carried out with the concurrence of the senate on legally stipulated grounds, not on a presidential whim as happened to Ribadu and Lamorde.

The onerous task of building enduring democratic institutions entails not only democratic continuity but institutional and leadership continuity as well. Iwu has proved his mettle and has been validated and vetted by an independent Judiciary that bluntly refused to visit the sins of our ethically challenged, fraud-prone politicians, on the electoral Czar. And, as the nation awaits the Supreme Court verdict in the appeal before it, all that I’m permitted to say for now is, Mr. President: Let Iwu Be! “…for the sake of institutional growth, solidity, and cohesion.”

INEC Chairman, Prof. Maurice Iwu, must not be sacrificed to appease the gods of electoral failures before and after the Supreme Court verdict, which I humbly predict, will uphold the Appeal Court decision on grounds of law and facts alone as presented at the hearings, not necessarily on the basis of overriding national interests, as some mischief makers would want the world to believe.

And I dare say that if Mr. President will keep his job with a favorable Appeal and Supreme Court decision which in effect, is the ultimate vindication of INEC, then Iwu deserves to keep his too! How about that for equity and fair-play, Mr. President?

Let Iwu Be!!

Franklin Otorofani, Esq. is a Nigerian-Attorney based in the United States

mudiagaone@yahoo.com

ATIKU’S ‘DUAL CITIZENSHIP’ SUIT AGAINST IWU WILL IMPACT ALL NIGERIAN DIASPORA

2008-06-01T04:02:00.000-07:00

By: WALE ODUSOTE, USA

Anyone who surfs the thriving Nigerian Blogs (internet media) would have noticed these admirable and muscular debates of issues that concern Nigeria and Nigerians – both at home and abroad. One issue that may as yet take primetime in cyberspace is a little noticed suit filed by Abubakar Atiku and Action Congress seeking to have Maurice Iwu removed as Chairman of INEC on the basis of Iwu’s alleged dual citizenship. By implication, the suit also seeks to bar millions of Nigerians with dual citizenship from holding certain offices (elective and appointive) in the motherland. Prof. Iwu of INEC is the defendant for the time being but the entire Nigerian Diaspora - first generation and their off-springs are collectively the defendants-in-chief. That includes this writer, Philip Emeagwali and a certain Godwin Akinwande, who claims to live in the United States (a Diasporan for sure) but who seemed have approved of the suit in an essay he got published in some Nigerian national dailies in the month of May – Leadership, Tribune and SUN. I assume Akinwande to have sadly missed the point that he is also a defendant-at-large in the suit; otherwise he wouldn’t have ventured writing a piece in defense of the very people who are intent on watering down his Nigerian citizenship.

That said, the suit (if it succeeds, and it has real prospects) will: (a) bar Nigerian citizens of full blood/by birth who have naturalized in other countries and their children from being appointed to most federal jobs in Nigeria or even qualified to run for certain elective offices; (b) stigmatize Nigerians with dual citizenship as a people who ought to be hounded and held suspect by their compatriots; (c) partially denaturalize millions of Nigerians with dual citizenship by redlining them; (d) effectively discourage millions from seeking the citizenship of countries of their domicile, thus making them vulnerable to deportation and shutting them out of lucrative life-changing careers that require citizenship; (e) force resignation, removal or impeachment of any Nigerian Diasporan currently holding any of the offices Atiku/AC claim are constitutionally off-limits to them (they may also be forced to refund all emoluments they earned, as Atiku/AC also insist Iwu must do); (f) strip every Nigerian Diasporan of full and unfettered citizenship of Nigeria – a country of his/her birth and ancestry; and (g) create two hostile sets of citizens – Diasporan against home-based (brother against brother).

Granted that the action has Maurice Iwu as the sole defendant but that does not mean that the ruling of the court when it comes will impact on him alone. The opposite is true, and that is absolutely true – no exceptions, no man-know-man. In other words, it will impact each and every Nigerian Diasporan in Prof. Iwu’s position and those are, again: millions with dual citizenship and many more yet to acquire same. AC and Atiku filed the action as part of their strategy geared to seeking nullification of the presidential election on the legal rationale that the election was null and void as having been umpired by a ‘foreigner’ – Iwu, allegedly a US citizen by naturalization. I might add that the way the pleading hammered on Iwu having sworn allegiance to the United States and being a registered voter there makes it sound like any Diasporan who falls into the same category has committed something like treason against the Federation of Nigeria. For those who don’t know it yet, swearing allegiance and registering to vote are ordinary matters of routine in the naturalization process - never intended to replace the allegiance you have to your country of birth as of natural right. The suit also seeks a declaration that Iwu’s tenure is unconstitutional and therefore he should vacate office forthwith and refund his salaries/emoluments; and to be sent to jail if he fails to budge. Thank God, expulsion (or deportation) from Nigeria was not pleaded to boot. But who knows if someone becomes suddenly emboldened and decides to haul all Diasporans before Nigerian courts to be deported back to their adopted countries.

Much as I can understand why some people may not want to get involved in Atiku/AC’s scorched-earth battles with Prof. Iwu on the other fronts, this one about seeking to shut Diasporans out is way overly and taking matters too far. It is no longer about whether the elections were free and fair – that one has been discussed much already; it is about the future of the present generation of millions of Nigerians who naturalized in other countries (mostly Europe and the United States) and their children borne in the countries of their domicile; and then their children’s children, not to talk of the millions more in line to acquiring foreign citizenships. It is also about the disparate impact this suit portends for broad sections of the Nigerian Diaspora. Disparate in the sense that, by credible estimates, more than 80% of the odd five million Nigerians domiciled in foreign lands have origins in the southern parts of Nigeria, especially the South West and South East. And to think of the talent Nigeria holds (and is bound to lose) amongst her Diaspora ranks makes it even scarier. And then this suit is coming in an era of unprecedented global enlightenment when Arnold Schwarzenegger (an Austrian) is Governor of California today and Barrack Obama (a Kenyan) is about becoming president of the United States. Yet, a whole body of teeming Nigerian Diasporans is just about to be barred from holding a job in their motherland. Can you dig it?

What to do? Well, for starters, a friend of the court brief (amicus) is in the offing to interplead the Nigerian Diaspora as a class party-by-consequence; and the National Assembly will surely be pressured to amend the constitution to remove any consequences of dual citizenship for those who are Nigerians by birth. It is so sad that from demanding absentee voting rights, the Nigerian Diaspora has come full circle back to just about losing it all. The way the average Diasporan sees it, is this: we cannot be remitting over $4 billion Dollars into the Nigerian economy (according to World Bank) and be timid about our basic citizenship rights. That doesn’t add up. And in the United States, a Nigerian Diasporan can walk into an American court and walk away with top Dollars if he has been discriminated against based on national origin. So, why would anyone expect him to remain silent when some politician is trying to visit him with much worse in the land of his birth – the land of his ancestors from the beginning of time? No way.

If I may add, it is dubious of anyone (a Godwin Akinwande or any other) to harass any Diasporan who has spoken out against this suit. Akinwande tried to do that by resorting to some time-worn allegation that Iwu or INEC were the ones that encouraged the Diasporan backlash against the suit. It is unlikely that such tactics will back-off the Nigeria Diaspora from tackling a lawsuit that portends real danger to all Diasporans presently in service of the motherland and those still aspiring to serve because any Diasporan opposed to this suit is most probably propelled by nothing else but fear – real fear that the odds are good that Atiku/AC might prevail to the partial disenfranchisement of Nigeria’s multitudes sojourning hard in foreign lands. Fear of partial loss of citizenship is a greater motivation than money and partisanship combined.

Wale wrote in from the US waleodusote@yahoo.com

FROM AN AMERICAN TO NIGERIANS: MY TAKES ON YOUR 2007 TRANSITION

2008-05-16T14:52:00.000-07:00

By: Al Clinton, USA

I am an American – Caucasian, suburban, center-left, and ‘Afro-philian’. The last one means simply that I love Africans (and Nigerians) to the point that I married one from central Nigeria. We are a happy couple with three wonderful kids that I like to adorn in rich Nigerian fabrics, take to Nigerian balls, feed Nigerian dishes (no pepper, though) and I have taken them to Nigeria four times in a row. My children bear American as well as Nigerian names and I would like them to be accepted as Nigerians of full blood and given as much opportunity as everyone else, including the opportunity to be president someday – which, by the way, is a desire burning deep inside the innocent soul of my first son, who fancies himself being the first Obama of Nigeria. So, with this kind of attachment to the country of my wife’s birth, I am naturally a sucker for everything Nigerian – the food, the music, the laughter, the oil windfalls, and of course, the needless running battle Nigerians are having with each other over matters coming out of their 2007 elections (which I like to see more as an historic transition). That means that I have read it all or almost all – the Blogs and hardcopies, but certainly enough to form some strong opinions to the point of feeling pretty confident to share same with my in-laws on the national scale. Trust me, I don’t mean to hurt anybody; I write from the heart - no malice, no fear, no favor, no bull –well, now that you get it, below is the rest of the story.

Regarding whether Nigerians held an election or not, I am convinced that they did. If they did not hold an election, then they held a peaceful transition, which is somewhat enough for majority of Americans, especially our black folks who are sick and tired of hearing about failed elections and violent transitions in the mother continent. For Americans - with hindsight, the Nigerian elections did not produce ethnic bloodletting like in Kenya where the umpire could not defend the result he declared; nor did it produce suspense like in Zimbabwe where the umpire did not have the guts to declare the result. Whether the election met or even surpassed acceptable standards for emerging democracies, you bet it did. Whether it met the highest standards set by European monitors, no it didn’t and couldn’t have – because, even in the US, the presidential election between Al Gore and Bush did not meet the lofty absolutes set by the Europeans. What this means is that EU, except for former Soviet Union, embodies the highest standards for elections, higher than we Americans, but still, we are not ashamed of our elections, rather we strive to do better with the next election. Nigeria is no different, and so, although elections in Nigeria may still be contentious for a while for reasons related to how free and fair they are, the people of Nigeria need to get real about it. And just how do you get real about your elections and their outcome? You get real by using pre-election/exit polls or other unique Nigerian methods that can predict the outcome of elections. For Americans, polls and informed predictions work some to reduce post-election tensions because we figured that if you knew you had no chances of winning, then you shouldn’t be complaining afterwards just because the election board failed to comply with one technical rule or the other. That means that Nigerian politicians (and some tribunals) may be taking the right of petition too far, including the one that might undo everything you have achieved – the presidential election.

Take Florida and California – two states with very large native Hispanic populations. There, it is commonplace to see unqualified foreign Hispanics who just as much crossed the border the days earlier voting in elections that determine who gets to rule America, a democracy much more advanced in matters of elections than Nigeria. Some get caught before they vote but vast majorities just go on to beat the system anyway and vote, mostly, well – for Democrats. In America, you can’t vote unless you are a citizen, and these guys are not even legal residents; they are what we call: illegal aliens or undocumented immigrants. So, if you are one of those unauthorized aliens and you vote, you have broken the law, but no result is gonna be nullified for anybody just because of that; and the umpire that oversaw the election doesn’t get harassed for a whole year-long as if he went across the border to procure illegal voters on behalf of Democrats. There are many other violations of America’s electoral regulations; but we know from commonsense that electoral umpires are not to blame because they are not the ones that rig elections. If we lay blames at all, we stop the buck with the political parties. The only thing an electoral umpire can do to affect election outcome is to cook the numbers or make mistakes. I don’t believe that Nigeria’s umpires cooked any numbers, but they may have made a few mistakes. In the US, the usual reaction of the law to irregularities (or mistakes) is two-fold: the guys that voted when they are not supposed are prosecuted and sent to jail and then deported if they have no legal claim to live in America; and umpires get down to the business of correcting their mistakes so that the occurrence of similar violations is reduced, not necessarily eliminated. Nigeria should be no different.

The only election irregularity in recent memory that merited a petition that moved for a re-count (not even nullification) was that of Gore versus Bush. And you know what? The only reason that the Courts in Florida and the Supreme Court of the United agreed to consider the petition was because, according to polls and predictions, Al Gore had equal chances of winning as much as Bush had. That means that the election was close, and the judges and justices of the United States, being citizens first and judicial men second, knew that already; so they applied their common human discretion, not arguments of slick lawyers that danced around technical violations that had nothing to do with who should have won or lost. Even then, getting the Supreme Court to agree to a re-count was real hard, which was why Gore had to quickly concede victory and get on with his life and his passion for global warning and the ozone layer. And by winning the Nobel, Gore has proved that doing good deeds and forgetting his electoral nightmare was the most important decision he has taken in his life. In other words, the US presidency is not the most important pursuit in life, after all. That means that Atiku and Buhari should just move on just like Orji did, if only to prove that they have other things to offer except being fixated on being president of Nigeria at the cost of defaming the country. If you think that’s hard to do, just consider that a Hillary Clinton who has plotted from her college days to be president is now under pressure to quit for Obama (a half-African like my son) who was still in high school when Hillary was already in play and looking to be anointed. The didactic lesson from this is that it is bad politics to insist on being president when everyone else knows that the other guy has better chances than you do. That means that if you don’t quit when you should, you begin to lose respect and appear desperate, sour and selfish. Americans don’t like it one bit and I don’t think any humans should, including Nigerians.

Back to Nigeria’s 07 transition, I looked everywhere for any possible clue that Atiku, Orji or Buhari could have won the presidency. I found none. The plain truth is that the PDP which Atiku helped to build into a strong party possessed all the characteristics that must be present before a party can win national elections; the others did not even come close. Think the Libertarian Party or the Reform Party holding America’s presidency hostage to technical violations of the electoral statute when everyone else knows that they had no chance to win anything, not to talk of the presidency. Their petitions will surely be laughed out of court. Atiku and Orji knew that it was the PDP only that possessed the requisite electoral strength and that’s why they fought real hard to remain in the party; but Atiku stayed on too long even when all decency demanded that he should have left the party from the moment he lost the trust of his president. In my reckoning, I knew right off from the very beginning that Atiku and his party had no fighting chance – not because he was disqualified – but because his party was new and held no recognizable national spread, if not the many troubles he had with the law in Nigeria and right here in the US. So, for Atiku to continue to claim that he lost because he was excluded, and then included (and then frustrated by Maurice) makes no sense. If he was popular with the electorate, he remains popular throughout, excluded or frustrated. And his popularity was bound to soar on account of the perception from the voter that he was being persecuted. That happened in America with Martin Luther King who became more and more popular with Americans – white and black alike, simply on account of the perception that Jim Crow South was persecuting him and what he stood for. That was the single factor that led to his meteoric success as a civil rights leader. British persecution of Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa was responsible for catapulting him into international celebrity that the British could not subdue when the Mahatma took his struggles to his native India. Nigeria’s Azikiwe is another internationally known leader who soared on the same account.

Coming to the other two major parties – the PPA and ANPP, it appears the young politician - Orji Kalu ran for respect. He kind of knew that his time was yet to come but he wanted to prove the real man he is by telling PDP off and founding his own party. To his eternal credit, Orji is not contesting the presidency in court. Americans respect him for that and considers his generous concession of victory a statesmanlike and sportsmanly conduct that advantaged Nigeria within the comity of nations. Buhari of ANPP ran on a spartan and fundamentalist agenda that paled against a Yar’Adua who ran on the huge coattails of Obasanjo and what looked like a better national appeal for his party, if not the establishment appeal that remains vital in determining who rules Nigeria. As naïve as people may think we are, Americans were in the know of all these calculations and that’s why there was a groundswell of pride in the fact that Africa's largest democracy was able to overcome the bogey of failed elections in Africa. I believe that Nigeria has much to celebrate over her historic 2007 transition; and for good measure, Nigeria's national election board should serve as a reference point for other African countries still struggling with elections that can stick. I have noticed these unfair attacks at Nigeria’s INEC, especially its chairman, Prof Maurice Iwu. That should cease forthwith. I think the man has taken enough and he seems to be paying the price for a victory that the PDP was poised to win anyway. And for the PDP to remain silent while Nigeria is taking a beating from opposition partisans smacks of some kind of cowardice that should not arise with a party in government. In the US, liberal Democrats have learnt the hard way not to suffer the Republican far- right critics lightly after a rampaging neocon Republican Party gained control of Congress for the first time in forty years following a bewildering Democratic timidity in the face of Newt Gingrich’s low-ball contract with America. Nigeria’s PDP is just about coming to the same pass. There is a huge political price that comes from playing dead or wimp when your opponent wishes to take no prisoners. Therefore, the best defense for Nigeria must include one in which her ruling party is at the frontlines of defending the electoral process that brought it to power. There is no other way. Trust me.
Al Clinton, Germantown, USA al.clinton@yahoo.com

YOU CAN’T LOVE YAR’ADUA FOR BEING PRESIDENT AND HATE AN IWU THAT MADE THE TRANSITION POSSIBLE

2008-05-14T05:30:00.000-07:00

Dr. Tamuno Jonathan

It is funny to read how some people out there are still laboring very hard to peddle this bizarre notion that it’s okay to crucify Professor Iwu/INEC for declaring Yar’Adua president while at the same time appear to ingratiate towards Yar’Adua. The notion is so bizarre that you can’t help but begin to wonder and search for possible motives for the vile Iwu-hating that continues to consume these folks to this day.

There is a Sam Nda-Isaiah of Leadership newspaper who loves to call Iwu an ‘evil man’ and all sorts of epithets for declaring Yar’Adua winner; yet he invited the same Yar’Adua to his pet ‘De-Industrialization of Northern Nigeria …. ’ conference held in Abuja back in March this year. Mr. Sam also saw nothing wrong in inviting and extolling all the 19 Northern Governors to his conference – the same governors enjoying an election and transition Iwu’s INEC saw through. So, to this Sam, it is okay to romance and grovel to Yar’Adua and these governors (and solicit favors from them indirectly) while at the same time calling for the head of an Iwu that made their election (or the transition) possible. If you follow his many write-ups in the Leadership, you will see a guy that is at war with himself. On the eve of the tribunal verdict in favor of Yar’Adua, Sam - the self-conflicted and logically-challenged, wrote and I quote “The only germane point is that the election had been rigged beyond what could be called a democracy and should therefore be annulled”. That was vintage Sam on February 25, and then on March 4 (just eight days later) he invited and extolled Yar’Adua (an Iwu-declared president) to his pet conference. Then you might want to ask: what is Sam’s motivation for all these self-contradictions? Well, you don’t need to look far if you have been following his many rambling essays in his column called ‘Last Word’ in the Leadership. One sure piece that should provide a window to what this Sam is all about is the one he did in celebration of Danjuma’s 70th birthday. It was in that piece that our ethnic-baiting, Iwu-hating Sam revealed himself in his best and worst elements by waxing nostalgic about the second (anti-Igbo) coup of 1966. He not only celebrated the blood-letting that was unleashed on the Igbos but he also had a great time rehashing and applauding the gory details of how Danjuma murdered Ironsi and mutilated his body. He wasn’t done until he let it be known that he is in full support of what happened and sounded as if he is looking forward to it happening again. Reading that piece directed against the Igbos specifically and keeping in mind that Maurice Iwu is also an Igbo and gutsy to boot, makes it easier to see why a Sam Nda-Isaiah has been driven raving mad. They wanted to see Iwu fail to transit as a sequel for an excuse for another blood-letting that he seems to see as long overdue.

Then you have an Okey Ndibe - a guy who seems embittered by being caught up in America with too many bills to pay while Dr. Andy Uba he feels is inferior to him came back to Nigeria and made good in record time. Here again, you need to go back in time to determine why this Ndibe guy has never seen anything good in Iwu. It all began with Obasanjo’s hiring of Andy as his domestic advisor and Andy’s meteoric rise to prominence in Obasanjo’s kitchen cabinet. I wager that Ndibe is one of those Diasporans who expected to benefit instantly from people like Andy who someone found their way out of unhappy long sojourns in America to prominent government positions in Nigeria. Going by his gaunt looks and the terminal bitterness of his column, Okey Ndibe appears trapped, overworked and over-billed in America and he doesn’t like it one bit, and someone gotta pay. Somehow, he blames Andy and any Diasporan that made good through Andy, and Maurice Iwu is the poster boy for Ndibe’s many frustrations because he continues to believe that Iwu became INEC Chair on Andy’s recommendations. Ndibe too wanted to become INEC Chair or something as equal in stature to enable him extricate himself from what has become a failed quest to make it as a fringe journalist in America. This was how it all began to the point of no-return for Ndibe who now sees Maurice Iwu as an alter ego for Andy Uba and all the rejection he feels he received from Andy, Obasanjo and motherland Nigeria. That is part of the reason why Ndibe continues to indulge in all kinds of self-contradictions that include a hero-worship of a Chris Ngige who stole Peter Obi’s mandate and then after his fall, escaped to America where he partied hard with Ndibe. All at once, Ndibe is now caught up with rooting for Peter Obi for prevailing against Andy Uba in court; and he is now poised to accept Yar’Adua as his president but would rather lynch Maurice Iwu for making that possible. He even added Justice Ogebe to his ‘enemy list’ just because he seems to have some bones to pick with Ogebe’s controversial son who lives in America with him.

Then take Atiku, and you begin to see a troubling pattern of misplaced aggression. Anybody who read the odd 27 interrogatories propounded by Atiku to Maurice Iwu will surely come to the conclusion that Atiku’s petition against Yar’Adua’s victory has never been about the irregularities that he is supposed to prove but has to do with something of a personal war he is determined to levy on the person and office of Maurice Iwu. And this is symbolic of vintage Atiku who seems to always pick the wrong targets for his political battles while the very people who are intent on visiting him with untold political harm are left unchallenged. Take his many troubles with the system. It is on record, as others have also said, that El-Rufai, Ribadu, and other young Turks of the Fulani Mafia in Obasanjo administration were the ones that first began to insist that Atiku will never succeed Obasanjo. Add a Professor Jibril Aminu that had always wanted Atiku’s job as vice-president and had seized every opportune moment to haunt Atiku on that account. Instead of finding ways to checkmate El-Rufai and Ribadu, Atiku instead decided to pick on OBJ and a PDP leadership that he proved no match for. Consider these also: It was not Iwu but Ribadu that indicted Atiku for corruption; it was not Iwu but the National Assembly that reprimanded Atiku for corruption; it was not Iwu but the PDP that went to court with a petition that Atiku had seized to be vice president after his defection (real motive was to strip Atiku of his immunity so Ribadu can cuff him and take him prisoner); it was not Iwu but El-Rufai that bought or sold Atiku’s house and rained insults on him for good measure; it was not Iwu but OBJ that did scorched-earth third term battles with Atiku and questioned his patriotism in the public; it was not Iwu but Yar’Adua that used ‘blood is thicker than water’ tactics to finally deal Atiku the death blow by succeeding to the remnants of Shehu Yar’Adua’s PDM; and it was not Iwu but Yar’Adua that persuaded elements of AC stalwarts to abandon Atiku and join his government of national unity. If I may ask: Did Atiku expect Maurice Iwu to turn to something of an almighty - able to surmount all these system obstacles to make him president or deliver Adamawa to him? And for good measure, Atiku is still behind scenes trying so hard to broker deals with Yar’Adua and the PDP while at same time fighting Iwu tooth and nail. Haba.

The saving grace though is that the putrid comments emanating from these guys have made it a lot easier to see why some folks are ready to cozy up to Yar’Adua (just for being president) while simultaneously pillorying an Iwu that made the transition possible. Therefore, it will not surprise many Nigerians if they now turn their combined gunsights to the direction of Justice Ogebe (as Ndibe already did in his SUN column of March 4, 2008) and find the guile to still love Yar’Adua. But before uttering the next defamation against Iwu, they should dust up their dictionaries and check out the definition of ‘vindication’. That is where they will see that the person most truly vindicated by the tribunal verdict is Iwu because the judgment confirmed his long-held position that the election passed muster and therefore should stand. They cannot take it away from Iwu because vindication is complete and self-evident once a contest is resolved in favor of one of two opposite propositions. In this instance, the proposition that carried the day at the tribunal is the one long advanced by Maurice Iwu that the presidential election was in substantial compliance with statutory mandates. One last word: If these anti-Iwu people fall over themselves to hail every verdict of nullification (against PDP), reasonable people will not allow them the double-standard of defaming the Nigerian judiciary (and Iwu) each time a tribunal refuses to invalidate an election challenged by Atiku/AC. I mention PDP and AC only because the people that hate Professor Iwu most and continue to harass the man have two things in common. One, they are all ‘madly in love’ with Atiku; two, they don’t care a hoot about petitions involving Kalu’s PPA and Buhari’s ANPP.

Dr. Jonathan wrote from USA tamunojonathan@yahoo.com

HERE IN AMERICA, PEOPLE DON’T BELIEVE ATIKU ANYMORE

2008-05-05T16:55:00.000-07:00

By: Attorney Aloy Ejimakor

Every democracy has its own fair share of failed politicians who are in the habit of complaining and blaming the wrong people to the point that brings pundits to dismissively dub them serial-complainers. They come in different hues – from spoilt money-bags to fringe mavericks that contribute nothing to the process except some theatrics and comic drama. Here in the United States, we have seen the McCarthys – who saw platoons of communists in nooks and crannies of America while everyone else saw nothing; and then the Lyndon LaRouches – who always claimed to have been robbed of the presidency by a grand conspiracy of Republicans and Democrats.

In the US, the presidential system is mature to the point that it can tolerate or accommodate all manners of upstarts and trailer park self-glorifiers who attempt to stress the system to no end with their little politics of distraction, complains, petitions and what not. Nigeria is a different story, what with her democracy so young and not yet fully tested, except for the historic moment of the successful transition eked out of the onerous 2007 general election solely on the resilience of Iwu/INEC and the Nigerian common man. So, the question is: how does a country like Nigeria, where President Yar’Adua’s commitment to rule of law (already being abused by some fellas), deal with nasty politicians like Atiku, who has become a serial complainer and detractor of everything good about Nigeria’s emerging democracy? Recall his ongoing petition in court to disenfranchise millions of Nigerian Diaspora for daring to acquire the citizenship of other countries, not minding that he might also succeed in denaturalizing some of his kids borne here in America and even one of his wives who is well-known to be a naturalized US citizen. But no matter because for Atiku, foul is fair when it comes to doing anything to get at Professor Iwu and INEC. But for Yar’Adua’s aptitude for political rope-a-dope, Atiku would have also sought to harangue the man to no end.

Just the week before, I was at a meeting in downtown Washington DC where the Nigerian Diaspora gathered to rub minds on Nigeria and her issues. Discussed amongst House probes and energy policy was Atiku’s clear and open endorsement of INEC’s preparation for the governorship re-run in Adamawa State – before the results were declared. Such was reported both in the Nigerian and international media and were detailed enough on Atiku gushing on INEC, Maurice Iwu and law enforcement for the professional and competent manner they prepared for the Adamawa re-run. The Nigerian Diaspora was happy that perhaps this development was the beginning of rapprochement of sorts between the AC and INEC or that Atiku has suddenly found superior counsel to cease and desist from always blaming Professor Maurice Iwu for every political loss the system dishes out to him. But it was not to be, which came to the fore when just few days later Atiku and his spokesmen turned around to complain that the Adamawa re-run was stolen from them. What was confusing though is that they could not clearly state who stole the election from them. Was it a credible President Yar’Adua, who was away in Germany tending to his health; or Nyako, whose mien and carriage portrayed a man that cared less whether he lost or not, or was it INEC or an upstanding Maurice Iwu Atiku had praised to high heavens just days earlier. Or maybe, it was Ogbulafor who purveyed the harmless puffery that PDP will rule Nigeria for a millennium. The point really is that Atiku’s antics and entrenched hostility towards Iwu will never cut it for him and he damages what remains of is credibility when he waxes so mean to a man that had no hand in what happened to him. What he needs to do is to re-examine himself and his environment in order to re-discover the true reasons and culprits for his many political troubles.

But, assuming he still doesn’t get it, everyone knows that his troubles began from when OBJ accused him of disloyalty on prime-time television and instead of doing the sensible thing all vice-presidents do (play dead), Atiku unwisely decided to fight with an executive president that possessed a reputation for taking no prisoners. Then enter Ribadu, El-Rufai, Bayo Ojo, the Jefferson scandal back in the United States and finally, PDP’s ‘non-elective’ convention that saw to the total annihilation of Atiku and his loyalists (if any at all). The rest, including his hasty-patchy exit to an embryonic AC is now history. These and many more skirmishes here and there were what brought the drag that finally nailed Atiku, not INEC or Maurice Iwu that were just doing their job within the framework of extant law and all kinds of political fracas. Atiku blames losing the presidential election on non-serialized ballots and he also blames Iwu alone for not serializing the ballots. But pray: what better leverage would serializing the ballots give him that PDP, OBJ, Ribadu, El-Rufai, and the Jefferson scandal did not already take away from him? In America, they have a saying that technical challenges are the forte of bad sportsmen. Lesson: if you are so good at the game, bad umpiring can hardly prevent you from winning – either as a heavyweight boxer –who can pack a knockout punch or a political gladiator – who can get out the votes.

Now Atiku is at again - blaming Iwu for the latest loss suffered by his party in Adamawa without pointing to any concrete evidence compelling enough for him to change suddenly from an INEC/Iwu ‘praiser’ a few days before to the basher and complainer he seems very good at. So, you might ask: what about the other factor comprised of Jibril Aminu and Marwa? Surely, with this mighty duo, you don’t need a very cautious Iwu to influence anything in Adamawa because those other two (Aminu and Marwa) can pack enough electoral punch to subdue Atiku any day, anywhere. Then add Yar’Adua’s aggressive campaign stump in Adamawa, an Ogbulafor that waxes very partisan and a heterogeneous ethnic scenario and you have forces that don’t need Iwu’s vaunted capabilities to be at all places at the same time stuffing ballot boxes against Atiku.

I don’t know if Atiku knows this but the Jefferson scandal back in the States is a flashpoint for the Nigerian Diaspora. All with the American aversion to public corruption that has found ardent disciples amongst us, serious doubts persist as to Atiku’s integrity and patriotism; and now, with his puzzling tendency to always attack INEC, much question is also raised about his presidential character and temperament. The stuff about patriotism arises because when McCarthy launched his mean-spirited pursuit of those shadowy communists he claimed to be lurking in the alleyways of America, an innocent America hailed him and he was much loved and romanced as a bleeding heart patriot. And then the bubble burst. America woke up one day to discover that McCarthy had lied and cheated and branded innocents that were not supposed to be so branded. He destroyed reputations and America would have none of that. He was then brought down and shown to be anything but patriotic. Maybe, no one believes any more than the next regular guy that INEC and Iwu were the ones that subdued Atiku on behalf of PDP and Yar’Adua back in April 2007 and then lately, in the Adamawa re-run – as if anyone believed such fairytales in the first place.

The same is true of Lyndon LaRouche, who pretended to hold much love for the liberals of America and aspired to their leadership, but in the end was convicted of multiple tax frauds and related aggravated felonies. In America, you are not patriotic if you didn’t pay your taxes or conspired with foreigners to hurt America’s economic interests. So, the way the Nigerian Diaspora figured it is this: if it is true that Atiku was mired in some influence peddling in tow with Congressman Jefferson to corner some Nigerian deals they shouldn’t, then that’s lack of patriotism for sure because it could have hurt Nigeria’s economic interests; and were he to have become president, such sordid past would have made him a national security risk. And if he did the many bad things Ribadu said he did with the PTDF, that’s even worse. And now this: what do you call it when someone is hell-bent on rubbishing the integrity of his nation’s elections without any hint of circumspection? Well, it is called lack of patriotism – simply because it stokes the impression of a persisting instability that frightens foreign investors away from Nigeria’s shores. That’s the way the Nigerian Diaspora saw it and that’s the way our hosts here saw it as well. So, tongues are beginning to wag amongst policy levels here in the US that Atiku may have sold a dummy to Americans when he pretended to be a democrat for fighting Third Term when he was amongst those that sought from behind the scenes to frustrate Iwu from holding the polls. More contradictions abound.

And the questions being asked are legion. The ones that stand out are: what is it about gaining the presidency that has driven Atiku to such level? And with regard to Adamawa, is it that he must win for the nation and her electoral umpires to know peace? And does he really understand he was arrayed against titans like Nyako, Jibril Aminu, Marwa, and others right there on his own turf? Why is he always trying to defame some poor guy of a professor from Imo State who left the comfort of a prestigious research position to chair Nigeria’s first attempt at transiting from one civilian administration to another and goddamn well succeeded? Folks, there are just too many questions but the kernel of them all is that Atiku and AC are not conducting themselves the way a serious opposition party should. With Bugaje (who is now probably half-caged by lack of standing as a ‘non-secretary’ of AC) and Lai Mohammed (who has proven very inept at building an election-winning party), AC is surely on a quick route out of the game. So, it makes sense to call on the likes of Tinubu and all the crew from the reasonable and realist side of the party to step in and arrest this drift. Atiku is not synonymous with AC and vice versa, and they are not Siamese twins either. Nigeria needs a responsible opposition, and a sensible AC will do well as part thereof and not this other AC that is allowing itself to be destroyed piecemeal by Atiku, Lai Mohammed and Bugaje.

If Atiku needs to borrow a leaf, then hear this: Orji Kalu’s responsible tactics are the stuff a serious opposition leader is made of. Dr. Kalu adores Nigeria, respects the President and Nigeria’s public institutions but still finds his voice to hammer his opposite point of view whenever necessary. And a patriotic Orji knows when to wax bipartisan for the sake of Nigeria – like agreeing to the GNU. Atiku does none of these things, he is rather obsessed with demonizing and denaturalizing Professor Iwu and blaming the man for things no human can be capable of. That makes the Nigerian Diaspora as mad as hell because they love Nigeria, respect and trust Iwu (for his 2007 accomplishments), and wish that the President could be left alone by Atiku and his tag team so he can concentrate on his job. That is why here in America no one (Nigerian Diaspora and Americans alike) believes Atiku anymore. It can never get any worse than that.

Ejimakor wrote in from Washington DC, alloylaw@yahoo.com

NIGERIA’S 2007 ELECTIONS: WHAT WENT RIGHT?

2008-04-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

*Lecture Delivered by Professor Maurice M.Iwu, Honourable Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission at the Department of Political Science, Univeristy of Ibadan Annual Distinguished Lecture, Ibadan, April 15, 2008,

It is a glaring testimony to the abiding commitment of the University of Ibadan to the promotion of knowledge and the quest for better understanding of the dynamics of existence within the Nigerian society that this lecture is holding today in this campus.

I am honoured and delighted to be invited to speak at this august lecture. Let me at once pay my respect to the Vice Chancellor of the University as well as to the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Head of the Department of Political Science and the rest of the leadership and members of this respected community not only for hosting this lecture, but more importantly for sustaining the spirit and the culture of intellectual inquiry for which the University of Ibadan is renown.

I did not hesitate in accepting the invitation to speak at this forum for various reasons. For one, I know for sure that here, in this citadel, even for all the robustness of contention for ideas, we can discuss with candour and civility and that empirical evidence more than visceral outbursts determine the conclusions we reach on issues.

In this community, I very much want to believe, men and women still listen to, and reason with each other; they ask questions about things they do not understand and they are sober and sincere enough to accept that the social and political matrix out of which public policies of a society emerge do not always yield outcomes that approximate the idealistic construct of our fancies.

I know this to be a community that places premium on rigorous inquiry on why things are the way they are and also on how things can be better than the way they are presently. I am here to discuss, to examine the reality of our collective existence and aspiration, subscribing as I do to the notion that if we know the truth it shall set us free. Posturing hardly takes an individual far and for a nation it serves no enduring purpose.

Yesterday, April 14th marked exactly one year that the 2007 General Elections commenced. The polls were concluded fourteen days after, on April 28, 2007. Situated properly within the context of Nigeria’s political development and experience, the 2007 General Elections were at once uncommon and remarkable. We shall return in detail to the uncharted course and peculiar circumstances through which the conduct of the elections passed.

Given the historic importance of the 2007 elections as well as the complex challenges that doted the path of the entire process; from the preparatory stages to the end [if indeed they have ended] it can be understood if debates and discussions on issues and policies pertaining to the civic exercise are prolonged.

Alas, much of what has been thrown on the 2007 elections in terms of public assessment and comments have been more heat than light as the expression goes. To borrow the very apt words of the respected African American scholar, Cornel West[1], albeit in a different context, “instead of critical dialogue and respectful

exchange, we have witnessed several bouts of vulgar name-calling and self righteous finger-pointing. [But] battles conducted on the editorial pages….do not take us far in understanding the issues...”

This lecture, with its topic couched in creatively positive hues seems, from all indications, to be a characteristic clear-minded initiative by the Department of Political Science of this great University to rescue discussions on the very critical issue of our last general election from what appears to be a determined stranglehold of emotiveness, a situation over which many of us have become helpless. But where do we go from there?

In 1958, as part of the preparation to grant Nigeria independence, the British created the first electoral commission: 'Elections Commission of Nigeria' under the chairmanship of Mr. R. E. Wraith, OBE, a senior lecturer in Public Administration at the University College of Ibadan, and gave it the responsibility of organising elections for political offices in the impending independent Nigeria. It is noteworthy, that after 50 years, we are returning to Ibadan to review how well we have done in election management and to discuss methods of improving both the administration and management of democratic elections in Nigeria.

In putting together this lecture, the University of Ibadan and its Political Science department have rendered an invaluable service to the nation. An interactive platform such as this serves to foster better appreciation by the citizenry of the reasons and thrusts of public polices and actions. Hopefully, at the end of discussions here today, not a few people would have gained new and better insight into the policies and framework of the last General Election, all of which have been twisted out of perspective by those who elect for their own purposes to see more of what went wrong with the elections instead of what went right.

What were the issues in the conduct of the 2007 General Elections? What were the challenges of the process? How did the established old order impact on emerging tendencies and dispositions in the general bearing of the elections? And how receptive was the environment to the infusion of new ideas in the system, even when it was obvious that the extant order held no redeeming prospect for the interest of the society? An attempt to answer the foregoing questions will help to provide valuable insight into the complex dimensions to the 2007 elections.

Providing answers to these questions are daunting but necessary endeavour, otherwise how can we seriously examine the quality of our electoral democracy? Emotions, personal prejudice and the news of the day are in reality poor indicators that could lead either to undue pessimism or false optimism. To effectively discuss the topic, Nigeria’s 2007 elections: What went right?, it will not only be helpful, but also crucial that we first examine and understand three basic facts; (i) What went wrong with Nigeria’s elections in the past; (2) Why the successful conduct of the 2007 elections was not negotiable and (3) What the definition of success is for the 2007 elections.

Although the contention for power between political interest groups and parties commenced in earnest on the broad stage of what eventually crystallized as the Nigeria state in the 1940s with the beginning of nationalist struggle, it did not take too long before identifiable features in the jostling for power by the political class became manifest.

Progressively through the years and across regimes, it can indeed be said of elections in Nigeria that they have not always been easy and smooth. As it were, the quality of elections in the land has always been affected by the character of politics in the environment. And this has not always been civil.

The expectation that the rough edges of electoral contests will gradually be smoothened out as democracy stabilized and more enlightened citizenry emerged has not exactly been borne out. Indeed, it can be said of the political class and their ways that the more things seemed to change, the more they have remained the same. Or perhaps, worse.

To be fair to the early nationalists and the political class of their era, there was more depth and service-orientated approach to politics. Vision, principle, ideology and meticulously developed manifestos formed the basic foundation on which the pursuit of power was hinged then. Most of the early political parties clearly had identifiable leaders who were the fulcrum on which the activities of their groups rotated. Even at that however, none of the political parties in Nigeria’s early years belonged as it were to any one man or to few individuals whose contempt for fiscal discipline and order was as manifest as what obtains in recent times[2].

The old political parties developed their rules and guidelines based on their philosophies and no member of any of the parties were above the law or beyond reproach within his group. Not any more.

Elections in Nigeria have consistently been made tedious over the years more by the unruly disposition and activities of the political class than any other identifiable factor. A high level of indiscipline and disorder has pervaded the nation’s politics for so long, almost crystallizing in a culture of incohesion.

Without doubt, one of the most grievous features of contemporary politics and the conduct of politicians in the Nigerian environment has been the absence of order. Within the political parties, among competing entities and instructively even in individual tendencies, priorities and articulation of goals, order seems presently to be in abeyance. This indeed is dangerous, for as the International Affairs scholar, Harvey Starr [3]posited, “even in anarchy there is still order”. The lack of order and restraint within Nigeria’s political class has, naturally, adversely affected the development of the political system

It is a fact for instance, that the demise of the various earlier republics; the First Republic, the Second Republic and the partly formed Third Republic stemmed incontrovertibly from lack of restraint as well as unholy initiatives within the political class as a result of struggle for power. Till this very day as with those other times, the mentality within the political class seemed to be; if you cannot win power, smash the system.

But elections are made to be conducted in systems where order prevails. This is the marked difference between competition for power in a civilized setting and that within Thomas Hobbes’s state of nature where the only recognized interest is self interest and the struggle for survival is basically mortal.

Any quest for power that does not make room for restraint and respect for constituted authority is bound, sooner or later, to do damage either to the self or to the system. As it turns out unfortunately in Nigeria’s case, the system rather than individuals has been bearing the brunt of unbridled pursuit of power.

In such an environment of individual and group excesses in which the mechanism for state control is weak or compromised, expectation of an ideal electoral contest is often unrealistic.

The pressure on the system was compounded by the emergence of a class of super rich citizens under the prolonged reign of military dictatorship. This category of the new rich obviously has no regard for such apparently belittling doctrine as equality of all citizens. Nor do they have patience for such measured processes as democracy carries along.

And so with a combination of stupendous wealth, limitless access to authority and influence which literally placed them above the law, Nigeria’s later day politicians are at once a threat to such fundamental ingredient of democracy as electoral contests. It is not difficult really to see the root of electoral problems in contemporary Nigeria.

The prospect of a big man politician failing to clinch the office of his heart’s desire is simply inconceivable to him and so almost always there is a resort to extra-ordinary measures to ensure victory at all cost. Such desperate measures include undermining the process of voter registration. This was done through various means, among them sponsoring ghost registrants, propping up the under-aged to register, sponsoring unemployed youths to take up ad hoc election duties with the electoral Commission - from which vantage angle the recruited polls officer was expected to give the interest of his principal a helping hand.

Even beyond our boarders, elaborate arrangements were made to gain the confidence of foreign missions and international agencies way ahead of the 2007 elections and unsuspecting foreigners were recruited as agents to be used at a later date to discredit the election (even before a single ballot was cast), the electoral management body and the nation.

Then there is the violence dimension. With every wealthy and influential politician having a battery of well armed security guards around him round the clock, the capacity to intimidate political opponents and unleash violence is ever present. At the same time the likelihood of anyone restraining such a citizen from conducts that are outside the orbit of the law is highly reduced. This is the setting in which elections are organized in the Nigerian environment.

The Independent National Electoral Commission was not oblivious of these problems and the difficulties they portended for the conduct of a smooth election. Having identified four broad categories of problem areas that needed to be addressed to enhance the environment in which elections are held in Nigeria, the Commission not only called for concerted efforts in tackling the problem areas, but embarked on various programmes designed to improve on the situation.

In embarking on these programmes, the Commission was propelled by concern rather than any legal obligation to initiate the enhancement programmes. Thus did the Commission initiate programme that focused on (1) the nagging problem of electoral violence (2) the adverse influence of money in Nigeria’s politics (3) Gender inequity and (4) Unhelpful mindset on elections.

Among others, there were anti-electoral violence campaigns and workshops, programmes to strengthen the administrative capacity of political parties; seminars and workshops for the security agencies on handling electoral duties; conferences and interactive sessions with the civil society organizations as well as a spirited effort to promote a new campaign finance regime that will conform to the ceiling set by the Electoral Act for political campaigns.

In all these, the larger society and the media showed very little interest. These issues have also not received the attention they deserve within the academic community. The Electoral Commission was left as it were not only to prepare for the elections, but also to address the daunting problems of the political environment which had been exploited in the past by unconscionable politicians to undermine elections and the will of the electorate. Any serious focus on the reform of Nigeria’s electoral process with a view to strengthening democracy will have to pay very profound attention on these issues.

In preparing for the 2007 elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission had its eyes set on history. It was determined to address as much of the loose ends that marred past elections as was possible. For such a society as ours that thinks and acts on short term basis, it may be difficult at the moment for many to appreciate the foundation for a better electoral process laid with the 2007 elections.

If the nation stays the course however, and if the destructive culture of discarding already laid foundation for a new one does not again prevail, subsequent management of the electoral process will draw tremendous stability and bearing from the seminal work done with the 2007 elections.

The setting of an upper ceiling for political campaign expenses for instance, may appear idealistic and unenforceable at the moment.

The mere coming into being of a law on political party finance is however, monumental in itself. The law provides a framework for stricter control and order in the use of money in Nigeria’s politics which will, down the line assume its desired impact.

A new and modern regime of registration of voters also came into being with the 2007 elections. For those who are more interested in what went wrong, the initial hiccups and teething problems recorded by the new voter registration format is the story.

For the positivists and patriots whose interest is in what went right, the introduction of the electronic voters register with its promise of eliminating such vices as multiple registration and registration of ghosts and the under aged holds out a bright new prospect for registration of voters and elections in Nigeria. With the new regime of voter registration the age-long practice of the entire nation coming to a virtual end for two weeks or more simply for prospective voters to get registered is no longer necessary.

The commencement of continuous voter registration which is made possible by the dynamic nature of the electronic voters register now means that every Nigerian who turns eighteen years of age simply goes to the nearest INEC office and gets registered. This is the way it is done in civilized parts of the world today. This is the way it now is in Nigeria. This is one of the things that went right with Nigeria’s electoral process on the way to the 2007 elections.

The computerization of the Nigerian electoral system did not end only with the introduction of electronic voter register; it included the establishment of a robust communication system in all the 778 local government areas of the country and linking them to the 36 state capitals and FCT. The improved communication platform made it possible for results collated by the Resident Electoral Commissioners and their field staff to be sent to Abuja in real time. For the presidential elections, for example, field results were also independently transmitted directly to INEC’s headquarters in Abuja through the Commission’s secure and dedicated electronic network. This made it possible for the Commission to declare authentic election results on time.

Another thing that went right in 2007 is the use of customized ballot papers for each electoral constituency, which was introduced for the first time in Nigeria’s electoral history in order to minimize ballot-box stuffing. So also is the historic establishment of The Electoral Institute (TEI). With two satellite campuses and partnership arrangements with three Nigerian universities, TEI will undertake training of electoral personnel, research and documentation and further institutionalize the innovations and reforms introduced for the 2007 elections. The Institute will seek to make electoral system reform an adaptive management programme, which will constantly seek to optimize electoral democracy in Nigeria.

There was also the improvement in our storage and distribution of electoral materials by the building of 6 zonal stores in various parts of Nigeria and the establishment of 2 secured warehouses in Abuja and Lagos.

Back to the elections of 2003, the Commission contended with a most chaotic situation in which political parties substituted, resubstituted and unsubstituted their candidates for the elections up till the night preceding the elections. A bigger manifestation of disorder and indiscipline in the rank of the political parties could not have been seen. The confusion eventually resulted in the aberrant situation in which some candidates of a particular political party who were the last substitution in the list of the party for the election and who eventually won the elections were rejected at the 2003 election tribunals as not been the correct candidates.

Such a chaotic and whimsical substation regime stopped being in existence with the commencement of preparation for the 2007 elections. The Commission’s proposal for a new reasonable time frame for substituting of candidates by the political parties gained legal backing in the 2006 Electoral Act. As it turned out, once the political parties were restrained from eleventh hour substitution of candidates as was the case in earlier elections, they opened up new sources of problems by substituting in some cases aspirants who actually won their primaries. This, as the nation has come to live with, later became the basis for far reaching decisions and reversal of election outcomes by the election petition tribunals. These internal decisions and conducts of the political parties over which the Electoral Commission had no control were to become a burden for the entire nation. Hopefully the parties are learning new lessons. The Commission on its own part is taking measures to promote and enforce internal party democracy in the registered political parties to underscore the point that democratic contrivance is ultimately counterproductive.

As if the existing problems of the political environment did not present enough challenges in the preparation for the 2007 elections, the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic party (PDP) foisted a most unusual and unprecedented crisis on the nation, an irreconcilable disputation that resulted in the incumbent vice president parting ways with both the government and the ruling party. He promptly transformed into an opposition kingpin. The burden of managing an election with such fractious and bitter rival interests and entities became the lot of the Electoral Commission[4].

The unrelenting assault on the Electoral Commission by some of the opposition candidates and their parties in the 2007 election, though most uncharitable and illogical, can perhaps only find explanation in the calculations by the parties of how best to gain upper hand in the spirited struggle for supremacy within the political elite. Again, the Commission remained steadfast against such well funded and orchestrated attacks.

Tackling an Electoral Commission with such viciousness as has been visited on the Commission over the 2007 elections reflects the failure of politicians to appreciate the place of public institutions in the modern state. Undermining a pivotal public institution as a means of advancing parochial aspiration betrays a defeatist mentality.

So much bone has been made of the exclusion of some candidates from the 2007 elections as if the Electoral Commission whimsically embarked on the exclusion of some candidates from the elections it was conducting. Nothing can be further from the truth than this fanciful design to present the Commission in a bad light. The truth remains that the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria outlines certain conditions which if any aspirant to a political office falls under he is disqualified from contesting for the office.

Ordinarily, INEC did not need any external assistance to interpret or ensure compliance to this provision of the Constitution. The duty of seeing that all aspirants complied with the requirement for qualification to contest in the elections was implicit in the constitutional responsibility of the Commission.

It is pertinent to point out here that while the Commission was still engaged in the process of verifying the credentials of aspirants as they submitted them to the Commission, the Attorney General of the Federation officially reminded the Commission in more than one communication of the Constitutional stipulation of categories of individuals who were not eligible to contest in the elections.

For good measures, the reminder from the office of the nation’s Chief law officer had attached to it a comprehensive list of all those who for one reason or the other fell out of the bracket of constitutional eligibility to stand in the elections.

Then there was also the Economic and Financial Crimes commission. Though not assigned by the Constitution to disqualify anyone from contesting for public office, the agency had enormous
powers to investigate into the activities and transactions of individuals and corporate entities in the country.

From its strategically prime point in the scheme of the nation’s security, the EFCC, especially when it moved with the backing of the law to charge individuals of financial crimes and obtain indictment which was confirmed by the highest law enforcement office in the land could not be ignored by the Commission.

This is the background and the true account of the exclusion issue, a matter in which the Commission did not even in one instance operate outside the ambit of the prevailing law.

But on April 16, 2007, two days after the governorship election had been held across the country, the Supreme Court in its ruling in the case in which Alhaji Atiku Abubakar challenged his being declared ineligible to run for the office of president took away the powers of INEC to determine the eligibility of any candidate contesting in elections in the country.

Interestingly, the Court of Appeal had ruled in an earlier case that it was within the competence of INEC to vet the credential of aspirants in elections and determine their eligibility or otherwise. Of course, when the Supreme Court rules there is no appeal and so here we are.

It is inconceivable that the Electoral Commission could have excluded any candidate from any elections after the April 16 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court. The Commission has not done any such thing. For elections that were held before the Supreme Court ruling however, especially against the backdrop of earlier validation by the Appeal Court of the powers of the Commission to carry out the functions determining who did not meet the criteria to contest in the elections, all that the Commission can plead is that it does not have such supernatural powers as will enable it to turn back the hands of the clock.

The core successes of the 2007 elections are substantial. Compared to previous elections for instance, the level of violence in the 2007 elections was very minimal. That is a remarkable development that cannot be wished away, to borrow a phrase out of our recent political past.

Unfortunate though it may be, it took only one or two local government elections that were conducted by states after the 2007 elections for many to appreciate the success of the 2007 elections in terms of posting minimal violence.

Again, it took the unmitigated disaster that a national election in a sister African country turned into soon after the 2007 elections for many in Nigeria to appreciate the level of efficiency in the management of polls and prompt release of results as was achieved in the 2007 general Elections. And yet those who are preoccupied with what went wrong with the 2007 elections scoffed at the efficiency and even the very existence of the technology for rapid transmission of polls results which was deployed in the 2007 elections. Must it take some tragedy somewhere for us to appreciate God’s grace and what the Nigerian nation accomplished with the 2007 elections?

For so long Nigeria, vibrant and heterogeneous by composition failed miserably to move the system of democratic governance within its domain beyond one single term of four years by any elected government. Every election that was to lead to the consolidation of democracy by moving beyond the one term glass ceiling always managed to snowball into a crisis that consumed the process. Was that incidental or was it a deliberate plot by the wily, vicious and self-centered political elite to keep the nation where they want it?

It has been suggested that “political uncertainty is the essence of democracy” and that there is a distinction between institutional uncertainty, namely uncertainty about the rules of the game – which is bad for democracy - and substantive uncertainty about the outcome of the game – which is good for democracy[5]. It is believed that sponsoring of institutional uncertainty promotes vulnerability of the democratic system to anti-democratic forces. On the other hand, substantive uncertainty keeps the politicians on their toes and makes them responsive to their citizenry. Some of the major political players in 2006 sort to impose an environment of institutional uncertainty in Nigeria solely for the purpose of undermining the system.

On the issue of substantive uncertainty, some scholars have raised concerns over the electoral and political dominance of one political party in Nigeria and have argued that if unchecked that such dominance could threaten or weaken the nation’s fledging democracy. In 2007, there was more alternation of government (rotation of power) among the states than was the case in 2003 – this is good for democracy. Opposition parties should not only be encouraged and given full opportunity to contest political power but they must also periodically win it.

As preparations for the 2007 elections entered its most crucial stages, it was not difficult to see the worrisome signals at various junctures that the old jinx and its Genies were around the corner once again. At the Independent National Electoral Commission however, the determination to break the forty year jinx was resolute.

It is true that at some critical junctures along the process of preparing the elections, it was not quite certain if the contending sides to the upcoming polls were still committed to the scheduled polls. But to successfully conduct the 2007 elections and lift the veil of perpetual political uncertainty had become non negotiable for the Commission. The odds were high, the hurdles were many, but there was no doubt that the elections had to hold come what may or the reign of the transition jinx would be extended.

Dear compatriots, the cup of our electoral democracy may be viewed today as either half full or half empty, depending on each individual’s disposition or state of mind. One thing is for sure, however, and about that I am proud; that the cup of democratic governance is firmly in our hands still and the water in it is more than half full.

Even if there is no other accomplishment in the elections of 2007; even if everything about the elections deserves denigrating on the editorial pages of newspapers; even if some foreign determiners of questionable unilaterally set standards insist on tutoring us on what they believe we had not done right; even if the sacrifices of the patriots who gave their all including their lives for the elections are denied; even if the printing of 65 million ballot papers in four days is no big deal, since the said ballot papers did not carry serial numbers; even if the reversal of six odd governorship election results out of thirty six in the nation (based in the main on technical grounds and internal party problems) translates into failure for the entire General Elections; even if all these were to be so, the historic mark that the 2007 elections finally lifted Nigeria over a forty-seven year jinx of not managing to transit from one elected government to another will always stand. This is what went right for the 2007 elections. We saved Nigeria.

April 15, 2008
Ibadan, Nigeria.

[1] West Cornel (1994); Race Matters. Vintage Books, New York.
[2] Iwu Maurice(2006); Democracy and Constitutional Governance in Nigeria: Paradox of the excluded Middle.5th distinguished faculty of Social sciences Public Lecture, University of Benin
[3] Starr, Harvey (1999); Anarchy, Order and Integrtion.How to Manage Interdependence. The university of Michigan Press, Anna Arbor
[4] The Official Report on the 2007 General Elections, INEC, Abuja. Page 10
[5] Habit Adam and Schulttz-Herzenberg Collette (2005) Accountability and Democracy: Are the ruling elite responsive to the citizenry? In: Richard Calland and Paul Graham (Eds): Democracy in the Time of Mbeki. IDASA. Cape Town.

DIASPORA PERSPECTIVES ON MAURICE IWU AND THE 2007 ELECTIONS

2008-04-17T02:53:00.000-07:00

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

After reading some essays posted to the internet on the subject of Maurice Iwu’s December 2007 trip to America to release the report of the 2007 general elections and other opinions expressed on the conduct of the elections, I decided to also write my own impressions and conclusions based on my personal and first hand observations of how the event panned out in Washington DC. I was present at the events where Iwu (who I have never met before) released the Election Report. I went home to do some more research and I reached certain simple conclusions which I will now proceed to share with my fellow Nigerians both in the Diaspora and at home. They are as follows:

One - A lot of folks are attacking Iwu because of their personal or political frustrations with his tenure as INEC Chair - it is either they could not compromise him or prevent the elections from holding or that they had some personal spats with him for losing an election that they had no political capacity to win in the first place. Some, like a Professor Bolaji Aluko with us here in the United States took it personal because his brother had lost a bid for the Senate, and he seems to openly blame Iwu for this. Further, it is well known to us in the US that Bolaji Aluko has a personal professional frustration with Iwu as a fellow Professor that was able to return home to something as important as chairing INEC while Aluko is trapped in America, having lost all hope when Atiku that promised him something lost the election to a Yar’Adua that has continued to ignore him.

Two – The report turned in by the EU Observer Mission is not credible because it is plausible that Iwu annoyed them by refusing their money, denying them presence at INEC’s meeting, and above all rejecting their illegal request for the biometrics of Nigerians (President Yar’Adua, Atiku, Buhari and Orji Uzor Kalu included), apart from the glaring fact that their report on the 2007 elections seemed to be a self-plagiarism of the same thing they had said in 2003 both in terms of choice of words and general assessments. The Kenyan riots have shown that too much leverage to foreign election monitors can goad citizens into resorting to violence over commonplace election problems that are better resolved by the judicial system.

Three – Maurice Iwu should be praised for his courage for standing up to the several interests and institutional difficulties hostile to the conduct of the presidential elections, and it was this singular act of courage that assured Nigeria her first civilian to civilian transition in history. If the election irregularities had been exaggerated to the point of succumbing to them to cancel the elections by administrative fiat, Nigeria would have been worse off for it. And the verdict in the presidential tribunal bears this out. Those judges at the Court of Appeals are Nigerians that, like the rest of us, know the duplicitous ways of our politicians too well.

Four – Nigeria should never take any grants from any foreign government to conduct our elections because those grants come with conditionalities that breach our national security and make us seem like a self-disrespecting ‘banana republic’ (to borrow Iwu’s words) and Nigeria is not too poor to provide the relatively low funding required for her national elections. Foreign observers are welcome but their report should never be given prominence to the point that it poses a threat to our emerging democracy or raised to the level that will create a pathological distrust of our own umpires.

Five – As the local government elections (NOT being conducted by Maurice Iwu) demonstrate, the problem of elections in Nigeria and amongst Nigerians is a cultural thing with Nigerians everywhere (including us in the United States). Even amongst Nigerian town unions in America, Nigerians take each other to court over who becomes Chairman of something as civic and little as a branch of a town union. Maurice Iwu has shown the way out because he seems to possess the strong character and consistency a volatile Nigerian electioneering climate needs in a federal electoral umpire.

Six - Nigeria needs to adopt a new system of permanent tenure for chairmanship of INEC - like Ghana and other countries which have done so with much success. This is the only fair way to retain the skills of those like Maurice Iwu who represents the best chance at giving Nigeria an election that leads to something (not one that gets annulled or stopped midstream – like in 1993, which was acknowledged as free and fair but which produced no transition – no pun intended).

Seven – Maurice Iwu is right that most parties and candidates lost because they didn’t have the requisite numbers to win elections, and those that won did so for the opposite reason. Contrary to submissions in opposite, this is an issue appropriate for comments by Maurice Iwu because he meant to serve a note of warning to parties to be better prepared next time around or merge with other parties that have proved stronger. In other words, it is not Iwu’s fault that the Nigerian opposition is fractured into more than 50 political parties, as opposed to Zimbabwe (or even the United States) with only one strong opposition.

Eight – Maurice Iwu’s press briefings should continue because through them Nigerians both at home and in the Diaspora are becoming more informed about what happened before, during and after the elections from someone in authority and with first-hand information. A more informed electorate and political class are less likely to be prone to repeating the mistakes of the past than the opposite. United States election umpires also have a duty to inform the public and they do so to the hilt and with lots of gusto..

Nine – Orji Kalu of PPA deserves respect and honor from all Nigerians for helping stabilize Nigeria at a critical time by joining President Yar’Adua’s GNU, and that should be a reference point that should encourage others still in the trenches to call a truce. Thus, President Yar’Adua should continue to extend an olive branch to Alhaji Atiku and General Buhari, despite their unreasonable intransigence. And finally, people should refrain from pressuring President Yar’Adua to tempt the unknown by forcing Maurice Iwu’s resignation. Nigeria should learn to reward public servants who, like Professor Iwu, succeeded in delivering on difficult and dicey national assignments

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

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT BOLAJI ALUKO’S HATEFUL BUT FUTILE PURSUIT OF MAURICE IWU

2008-04-08T06:49:00.000-07:00

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT BOLAJI ALUKO’S HATEFUL BUT FUTILE PURSUIT OF MAURICE IWU

By: Dr. Tamuno Jonathan, USA

Having followed Professor Bolaji Aluko’s sustained rain of invectives on the person of Professor Maurice Iwu and government of Nigeria, I felt compelled to share with my fellow Nigerians what I observed when the duo of Iwu and Aluko encountered each other during the season of Iwu’s release of the official report of the 2007 elections in America. I was present at the event and I observed that Professor Iwu wanted the proceedings to be interactive and he was determined to give everyone the opportunity to speak or ask questions including even those that appeared to have been planted by interests hostile to him and INEC, like Mobolaji Aluko. Immediately after the event was over, Bolaji Aluko went to press to purvey all sorts of inflammatory remarks and made a helluva of misrepresentations, all in an attempt to rubbish Iwu and Nigeria’s electoral process. He confirmed that he harbored festering animosities towards Iwu and President Yar’Adua by freely admitting to his initial support of Buhari’s presidential bid (and later, Atiku) in an essay published on his own politically sponsored weblog – www.nigerianmuse.com.

Here is what Aluko said (paraphrasing to Iwu’s remarks at the event releasing the Election Report) “He (Iwu) said that INEC had THE BEST FACILITIES in Africa to run any elections; that on the eve of the elections, everybody including Gowon and Buhari and the Council of State testified to his readiness. [That is true: I watched that TV drama; Buhari lost my support on that day for not seeing through that charade.]” To this Aluko guy, I ask you this: If you didn’t agree that INEC had the facilities to conduct the elections, does that not put you squarely within the mold of those who wanted the elections not to hold? And if you were supporting Buhari, and he lost your support merely because he confirmed along with many others that INEC had the requisite preparedness to conduct free and fair elections, did you then turn an Atiku-supporter as you seemed to have suggested when you stated in the same essay under reference that (again referring to what Iwu had said): “He (Iwu) stated that power-drunk people with deep pockets - aka Abubakar Atiku, without naming him - were prepared to drag the country down, and even infiltrated his INEC”. Here again is a desperate distortion of the true import of Iwu’s general remarks. Atiku is not the only Nigerian with deep pockets opposed to Iwu, Obasanjo or President Yar’Adua. That Professor Iwu never named Atiku yet Mr. Aluko is now imputing it to him is very revealing and clearly points to an evil agenda on the part of Aluko, apart from confirming that he might have set up his website just to attack Professor Iwu, INEC and the Nigerian government as anyone can see from the sleazy nature of the putrid news and articles he gives prominence on that site – all against Nigeria with Maurice Iwu as his poster boy.

Back at the Press Club, Mr. Aluko had attempted to filibuster the proceedings by employing fuzzy math to back up his bizarre postulations that the number of petitions issuing from the 2007 elections is greater than the number in 2003, and he attempted to get personal with Iwu, all at once (calling Iwu ‘professor’ with a evident derision and combativeness in his voice and general demeanor). He also seemed to suggest that the South East (Igbos) dominates the ranks of past Chairmen of INEC and he started reeling out names of all Igbos who had held that position, conveniently omitting others who are non-Igbo. At this point, a good number of Nigerian Diaspora present challenged Aluko and told him to shut up but Professor Iwu told them to leave him be – showing that Iwu had the guts to do his own battles. So, when finally Professor Iwu took Aluko up on the miss-compared statistics he cited as evidence of more petitions in 2007; he just nodded and resumed his seat, remaining quiet throughout. Aluko just saw that his numbers didn’t add up. And Nigerians present enjoyed this brief intellectual exchange between two professors with Maurice Iwu clearly coming out the winner. A no contest of sorts, if you will.

Now, having read the rest of what Aluko had to say on his website, I am persuaded that he also harbors some tribal animosity towards the Igbos, and Iwu just happens to be the center piece for attacks Aluko really meant to haul at an entire ethnic nationality; and he doesn’t care if Nigeria’s image abroad is caught in the crossfire. Here is what he said “All the people who asked questions - except maybe three of us - might as well all have been from Imo State, possibly even from Iwu's village, maybe all with the last name of Iwu but with pseudonyms”. Even a non-Igbo like my humble self would be put off by such naked ethnic-baiting and wild guesses. Pray, what does an Igbo expressing his opinion on a presidential election won by a Yar’Adua from the North (Katsina State) have to do with being Igbos from Imo State? Or, why does Aluko find something negative to say about everybody and organization that as much attempts to express a positive view about Nigeria? Just go to the web, and if you google Aluko’s write-ups, you will see his consistent diatribes against Nigeria and her public institutions. Why would Aluko say that he called on President Yar’Adua to fire Iwu, knowing fully well that he is also challenging the legitimacy of President Yar’Adua’s election?

Continuing - Aluko (and his ilk) seem to harbor some guilt about aiding and abetting the conspiracy to stop the election as he revealed in his essays. Here is what Aluko said (i.e. referring to Iwu’s remarks), “He (Iwu) stated that some people in Washington, colluding with some Nigerians in Washington - and looking slightly towards me - colluded against Nigeria”. So, here you have it folks. Now judge for yourselves why Iwu’s general allegations had to make Aluko uncomfortable, merely on some transient eye contact. Iwu did not ‘slightly’ look to anybody’s direction. He made eye contact with the crowd and waxed emotional and patriotic when he condemned such conspiracy against “my country” (which were the words Iwu used to refer to Nigeria – it was admirable, my eyes misted too). People sighed and nodded in agreement, and Aluko squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. I think it was James Hardly Chase that said that “the guilty are always afraid”.

As for the millions of Euros and EU’s request for biometrics data of Nigerians, which Iwu had rejected, everyone who spoke up both at the Press Club and the Embassy praised Iwu’s stance and agreed that he did the right thing. It will be an egregious breach of Nigeria’s national security to turn over the biometric data of over 60 million Nigerians to all manners of foreign governments in Europe. Even in the US (where Aluko resides permanently), citizens have fought the right of their government to a national biometric data collection based on fingerprinting, except on occasions where a citizen committed a felony or some foreigner applied for immigration benefits. Why would Aluko suggest that Nigerians and Iwu should have gone willy-nilly to turn over our biometrics to Europeans merely because we want their 40 million Euros (peanuts) and their stamp of approval on our election process? If Nigeria cannot go to our foreign reserves to get the money, then 1000 Nigerians can contribute 40 thousand Euros each to pay for our elections.

Finally, Iwu’s patriotism and pride as a Nigerian are clear and credible and it makes a lot of people like a Professor Bolaji Aluko uncomfortable. Some proof found when Aluko visibly became agitated and uncomfortable each time Iwu mentioned Nigeria in glowing terms, such as calling Nigeria “my country” with an emotional tinge to his voice. Ditto for when Iwu said “the God that I serve”. Go and read Aluko’s essay and see for yourself (too much to quote here). Everything he said on that essay raises uncanny questions about the true motives of his diatribes against Nigeria, INEC and Iwu. If you read his many internet essays, you are sure to also see a growing pattern of targeting people from a certain area of Nigeria. First, Aluko railed against Okonjo Iweala, and then Soludo of CBN, and now Iwu (all Igbos and competent to boot).

Dr. Tamuno Jonathan wrote in from Potomac, MD USA tamunojonathan@yahoo.com

MORE REASONS WHY THE TRIBUNAL RULING IN ABIA CANNOT STAND: Part Two

2008-04-08T06:47:00.000-07:00

MORE REASONS WHY THE TRIBUNAL RULING IN ABIA CANNOT STAND: Part Two

By: Attorney Aloy Ejimakor

This is the second part of a learned treatise on the nullification of the election of Governor TA Orji of Abia State. Part one is already published and in it, I critiqued that part of the ruling holding Governor Orji to membership of a secret society. This second part will deal with the portion of the judgment that also resolved Ugochukwu’s assertions of non-resignation against Orji and Akomas. As was done in the previous piece, this one will be glanced off the pertinent provisions of the Nigerian Constitution and the Electoral Act and interspersed with some thorough analysis of the Nigerian (or common law) rules of evidence germane to all the material facts at issue.

Now to the main point of this treatise and the second basis for ruling against TA Orji – that he and Akomas did not resign their political appointments, which also were held by the tribunal to have met the definition of public or civil service within the provisions of the pertinent statutes. Leaving aside the unique nuances that can, at law, differentiate political appointments from public/civil service appointments for the moment, let us now turn to the legalities of adequate resignation. Resignation is a word of art for describing an employee’s voluntary termination of an ongoing employment by oral or written notice to the employer. At law and jurisprudence, resignation can be either actual or constructive. It is ‘actual’ (or written) and therefore a no-brainer when there is sufficient litter of paper trails or real evidence clearly bearing the act of resignation.

The paper trail begins with a letter or some other form of written correspondence from the person resigning addressed to and received by the authority standing in law as the proper destination for the correspondence; and barring any printer’s devil and allowances for lack of form or human error, a letter of resignation bears both the date of its writing and the effective date thereof. And the trail may continue with another correspondence (usually an acceptance letter) sent back to the person resigning informing him that his resignation has been accepted. In this case, proving that one resigned is as simple as tendering the originating correspondence and its acceptance. But keep in mind that extant Nigerian law does not require resignation to be accepted in order to be valid for purposes of proving qualification to run for office. In other words, resignation can still be valid even when it appeared to have been unilateral, as the letter submitted by Akomas seemed to have suggested. And no straightjacketing is required – meaning that there is no particular format required for resignation to pass legal muster, including the strict requirement of being dated or written to form as was held by the tribunal when it discredited Akomas’ letter for lack of form.

The act of resignation, like all other human transactions, can sometimes be in dispute, and when that happens, it is often because it was not actual (written) or that it was written but missing the critical elements showing when it was written and when it became effective. In such a case, the fact-finder must proceed to the use of parole (mostly oral) evidence to determine whether resignation can be said to be, in point of law and fact, constructive. And where a respondent rebuts with the defense that resignation was not required, the court must also examine whether employment has been terminated by some supervening event that rendered resignation superfluous. In other words, where actual resignation (or effective date thereof) is in material dispute and central to the final determination of important political rights between two disputants, a serious court must look to parole or other alternative evidence to disprove any assertion of the negative, especially where the popular will of super majorities of the voters of a State was also at stake.

But in all instances, the burden of proof and persuasion rests squarely and throughout with the party that brought the act of resignation into dispute – in this case, Chief Ugochukwu. And the burden even becomes greater because Chief Ugochukwu is not in any privity with Chief Orji and Akomas with respect to whether they resigned or not. Therefore, without the lax rules allowed by the Abia tribunal, Chief Ugochukwu could have been held not to have the standing and thus not credible to raise the issue in ordinary judicial proceedings before our superior courts. The legal and procedural rationale is simple and that is: if such wild bare assertions of the opposite are allowed a free reign in our courts of law, all of us will be in court everyday burdened to disproving claims as wild and prejudicial as being accused of grand larcenies, without the concomitant burden on the part of the accuser to prove the truth of the negative he is asserting.

The only parties in ordinary privity and thus possessing of clear standing to raise credible claims of non-resignation against Orji/Akomas are the Abia State government and the former Governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, at whose pleasure both TA Orji and Akomas served as political appointees. Take this further to INEC which screened Orji and Akomas and did not find cause to disqualify them on the basis of non-resignation. This point is being made because the tribunal seems to have applied the evidentiary doctrine of ‘rebuttable presumption’ against Chief Orji and Akomas (instead of against Chief Ugochukwu) as if the allegation of their non-resignation was a plain truth raised by those under whom they served (with personal knowledge of the issue) or the agency that screened them (INEC). Therefore, lacking in any personal knowledge and absent credible hostile evidence compelled from or volunteered by those possessing personal knowledge, Chief Ugochukwu must be assumed at law to be a busy-body on a fishing expedition and thus imputed with the burden of strict proof of his bare assertions before any burden of impeachment, contradiction or rebuttal could be said to shift to Orji and Akomas. This, the tribunal did not do.

According to the record, the tribunal discredited Orji/Akomas’ real evidence of their resignation on a finding of absence of some official stamp or other mark showing when the correspondence was made or received by the authorities (implying uncertainty of effective date or lack of form). Though, it never would have become necessary to hold Orji/Akomas to disproving what Ugochukwu has not yet proved, the tribunal can be said to have amazingly assumed the worst against Orji/Akomas or abandoned the path of good law (or reasoned analysis) and looked to only one aspect of legal proof of resignation. Simply put, the tribunal held Orji and Akomas to the strict and narrow absolutism of perfected paper trails as the only form of proving resignation (or disproving claims of non-resignation). This is unknown to modern notions of our common law and jurisprudence which have long recognized as a settled rule that resignation can also be constructive when it can be proved by evidence other than the sort represented by some paper trails. Such other evidence is what is generally called parole (read: oral or admissible alternative) evidence, which is even used in resolving disputes implicating real property law – the only part of our common law that can be said to still strictly require everything to be in writing. In the case of Orji and Akomas, such parole evidence is legion and they are admissible to boot. For purposes of clarity, let me list some of them below and in seriatim.

More than thirty days to the election, there was no pay stubs or other credible financial records presented by Ugochukwu to corroborate his bare assertions that both Orji and Akomas continued to receive salaries as employees of Abia State government; Orji and Akomas had both held out to the whole world as no longer in the employ of Abia State government; they had stopped acting in their former capacities as employees of Abia State government; new people had been appointed to the positions they formerly held in Abia State government; Abia State government and the whole world at large had ceased seeing them or referring to them as occupying the offices at issue; there was no evidence-in-chief led by Ugochukwu showing that Orji or Akomas signed any letters or correspondence in which they passed off as officials of Abia State government, carried out any official functions in their former official capacities, received any financial emoluments entitling to those occupying the offices from which they resigned, or otherwise engaged in any other act that can be said to have reasonably established that they still continued to occupy positions as officials of Abia State government within the statutory time-line.

Keep in mind that, at law, both Orji and Akomas bore no burden of proving any of the foregoing or even disproving the opposite until Ugochukwu has amassed quantum material evidence weighty enough to discharge the many evidentiary presumptions against him. That any of them – Orji and Akomas went the extra mile to tender a letter of resignation represents a mere attempt at corroboration because, other than that letter, there is plenty of other competent evidence in plain view that preponderated in favor of the presumption that they were no longer public or civil servants long before the time-line mandated by law.

And above all, there was no scintilla of hostile evidence compelled or subpoenaed from Abia State government tending to show that Orji and Akomas continued in some form to be employees of the government. The uncorroborated parole evidence led by Ugochukwu demonstrating that Orji and Akomas were seen in official vehicles and continued to retain their official residences may, at first impression, appear material and damning but becomes rebutted, on a balance of probabilities, by the greater weight of the opposite parole evidence enunciated in the preceding paragraphs. This last point frames the further issue that the tribunal clearly erred by allowing Ugochukwu a free reign on leading liberal parole evidence but seemed to have held Orji and Akomas to the strict parameters of producing actual proof (or perfected letters) of resignation.

And for good measure, the tribunal should have taken administrative (or judicial, if you prefer) notice that both Chief Orji and Akomas ‘openly and notoriously’ ceased to hold public office due to their disengagement by the former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu as far back as October 2006. This partly supports the pre-eminent issue framed by Orji’s lawyers that the governor and Akomas never really needed to resign. And the secondary point in favor, though most probably of first impression and thus bound to be contentious, is that the appointments they held are not hit by the legal definition of the sort that strictly requires resignation before seeking election into public office. In other words, they held political offices in the mold of all other public officers from Vice President Atiku, National Assembly members, governors and some political appointees who contested for elections while holding fast to their public (read: political) appointments.

Thus, in addition to further arguments and authorities that can be better developed and presented as an appellate brief, coupled with the points enunciated in the first part of this treatise, it is expected that upon balanced review of the record, the learned Court of Appeals will move to admit the appeal as meritorious and reverse the judgment in its entirety.

Aloy Ejimakor is of Law Group International, Washington DC alloylaw@yahoo.com

MORE REASONS WHY THE TRIBUNAL RULING IN ABIA CANNOT STAND: Part One

2008-04-08T06:45:00.000-07:00

MORE REASONS WHY THE TRIBUNAL RULING IN ABIA CANNOT STAND: Part One

By: ALOY EJIMAKOR

This is a learned treatise that will come in two parts. This is part one and it will deal with the ruling resolving the claim of membership of a secret society against Governor Orji. The second part will deal with the portion of the judgment that also resolved Ugochukwu’s assertions of non-resignation against Orji and Akomas. Both parts will be glanced off the pertinent provisions of the Nigerian Constitution and the Electoral Act and then interspersed with some thorough analysis of the Nigerian (or common law) rules of evidence germane to all the material facts at issue.

The law of evidence is the basic kernel that underpins the administration of the civil and criminal laws of any common law country when it comes to fair and balanced resolution of disputes presented before the courts. Nigerian superior courts operate within the parameters of settled common law rules of evidence received from the British as a consequence of colonialism, and then adopted and saved by local legislation and judicial precedents as part of the laws of Nigeria after independence. Nuances may be present but they are wont to be tangential and infinitesimal. The only marked departure from the common law precepts can be found only in our Customary and Sharia court systems where strict adherence to the common law (or federal) rules of evidence is not mandated as the norm.

On the other hand, our High Courts of original jurisdiction, including the Election Tribunals are bound to some strict application of the federal (common law) rules of evidence, which for the most part, have been codified in the Evidence Act. It cannot be otherwise without being repugnant to the system we currently operate. It follows therefore that whenever the record on appeal demonstrates a clear violation of the evidence rules, a court of appeal is expected to easily find error or abuse of discretion and reverse or remand. This is why some outrage is now trailing the recent ruling of Abia Governorship Election Tribunal nullifying the election of TA Orji and declaring Ugochukwu the duly elected governor. For a tribunal charged under law to interpret our electoral statute and the constitution (and weigh the scales of hard evidence), voiding an election based on the reasons it adduced is troubling because there is hardly anything in our current substantive and adjectival laws that can justify the ruling, even by some stretch. Add the tribunal’s clear and quantum breach of our settled rules of evidence and you have a judgment most likely to be struck down on appellate review. Reversal becomes ever so likely and may even turn summary when you consider the flurry of critical treatise and outrage issuing from Nigerian and foreign jurists of world acclaim.

Thus, as regards the evidence-in-chief (the video) introduced and admitted to prove Orji’s membership in a secret society, our law of evidence was variously violated both in its spirit and black letters because it strictly requires that no photographic or video evidence is admissible without proper foundation or authentication, unless in some rare cases where such evidence is at once both self-authenticating and non-hearsay – meaning that such evidence is generally viewed as hearsay unless robust evidence is led by the proponent showing why it should be recognized as one of the few exceptions to the hearsay rule. In other words, what is depicted in the video or photograph must make both legal and common sense. Therefore, considering the possible abuse of the scientific techniques of superimposition and the high motive for subornation of perjury in cases bordering on high contests for public office; and that it does not make sense for anyone to shoot his own video in near nudity before a shrine or consent to its making thereof, that video of someone purported to be Governor Orji in diapers and manacles can hardly be said to be self-authenticating because it just doesn’t make any sense that any person (or his agents) would willingly consent to being videoed in such a demeaning manner. The claim by another person (the shrine secretary) that a Dr. Duru shot the video was inadmissible hearsay because the Dr. Duru was never produced in court to either admit or deny the statement. In that case, the tribunal should have assumed that the identity of maker of the video remained unknown and un-established, and then allow the rest of the evidentiary process to proceed on that premise.

So, who really shot the video, when it was shot and for what purpose were central to determining credibility and admissibility but the tribunal failed to fully pursue that inquiry before ruling to admit the video. Thus, as introduced through sources that can be imputed with the high proclivity for tampering, embellishment, mischief and ill motive, the tribunal should have elicited hard foundational and confrontational testimony, not by shifting the burden of disprove or contradiction to TA Orji as the tribunal implied by its ruling but by applying the presumption of hearsay against Chief Ugochukwu. To be sure, proper foundation strictly requires the purveyor of such highly prejudicial evidence to prove the identity of who made the video, when it was made, whether the video is a copy or original, the purpose for which the video was made, in-court production and technical inspection of the recording device used in producing the video; and most importantly, that the video depicted TA Orji being initiated into secret cult membership that took effect before the election, and not after. The testimony from the witness claiming to be the secretary of Okija shrine constitutes mere corroborative testimony – meaning that until the video is properly admitted as competent evidence, any testimony proffered as corroborative must fail simply because corroboration can never carry a greater weight than the piece of evidence it is seeking to corroborate. Simply put, it is unknown to law to say that you can corroborate hearsay.

The point about the date of production of the video is ever so important and dispositive because it is implied in the Nigerian constitution that before one is damned by his membership of a secret cult or society, there must be hard proof that his membership occurred and was subsisting before he ran and won the very election at issue. Our laws do not yet have statutory bar to running for public office based on an ex post facto membership of a secret cult or relating back to void an election won by someone who became a member of a secret cult after winning the election at issue. Therefore, absent a date-stamp or other admissible proof of when the membership became effective (other than the oral testimony of the said shrine ‘secretary’), it could as well be assumed at law and evidence that if the video is in truth that TA Orji being initiated into the membership of Okija ‘secret’ cult, it then follows that his membership, most assumedly occurring after he won the election, cannot stand in law to meet the implicit constitutional requirement that such membership must have been perfected and he also remained in good standing before he ran and won the election. In such a case, the evidence embodied in the video can only be held as a possible statutory bar to Chief Orji’s probable re-election bid in 2011, and not before; or better still, as grounds for preferring articles of impeachment against him at the pleasure of the House of Assembly. Again, it constitutes error for the tribunal to rely on the solitary, uncorroborated testimony of the ‘secretary’ of Okija shrine in resolving a claim that bore all the infirmities of a terrible hearsay. If it is that easy, then it might as well become a field day for politicians in Nigeria to just go somewhere and suborn testimony from some fringe fellow parading himself as ‘secretary’ of some shrine and use that to overturn the election of a rival and even one who won with super majorities like Governor Orji.

In my opinion and that of my American colleagues familiar with Nigerian rules of evidence and the rampant use of modern techniques of technology to create ‘believable’ hoaxes, that video reeked of multiple layers of hearsay (think: the widely discredited videos of UFO and the Abominable Snowman shot in the plains of Alaska and Wyoming). At common law, in operation in Nigeria, Britain and the United States, hearsay evidence is roughly defined as a prior statement or any proposition being presented in court as evidence by a person other than the ‘utterer’ or maker for the purpose of proving the truth of the matter asserted in the statement or proposition. In lay terms, hearsay arises when someone else seeks to repeat what another person said without the person that made the statement being in court to deny, admit or be cross-examined on the statement.

Therefore, as a matter of evidence law, a video is a statement of fact or a proposition that seeks to prove a material fact at issue. So, the person seeking to introduce the video (the shrine ‘secretary’) cannot be different from the person claimed to have made it (Dr. Duru) unless the maker was in court to be confronted and cross-examined to determine veracity, credibility and chain of custody; except in the rare event that the maker is dead. There is nothing in the record of proceedings leading up to the admission of the video that can suggest that the tribunal subjected the video to even the most liberal (or even lay) tests of hearsay before ruling to admit it into the record and then finally using it the way it did to set aside the overwhelming popular will of the people of Abia State. Again, was it Chief Ugochukwu that adorned some night-vision camera and somehow trailed Governor Orji against the odds of the scary everglades of Okija shrine to make the video or hired some resourceful paparazzi to do so? We don’t know. This is but one of the myriad questions that a fact-finder must resolve before ruling to admit such a video.

However, in all fairness to Chief Ugochukwu (considering that the video constitutes his evidence-in-chief), if the tribunal determined the origins of the video in his favor and that the locale depicted in the video is that of Okija shrine with TA Orji under the pain of some ritualistic initiation into the ranks of its membership, then it may no longer be hearsay and may thus become admissible to prove that TA Orji was present at the Okija shrine at some time before or after the election. But before Governor Orji can be said to be finally damned by his presence at the shrine, three further questions must be resolved, and they are: One – whether his presence at the shrine was for purposes other than initiation into its membership; Two- if infact his presence at the shrine was for the purpose of initiation into its membership, can the shrine be said to meet the constitutional definition of a secret society or cult; and Three – did Chief Orji become a member before he ran for governor? At this point, the tribunal should then analyze the nature and practices of the Okija shrine against the constitutional definition of what constitutes a secret society and proceed to making a clear finding in favor of one of the two opposite propositions.

If the tribunal finally determines that Okija shrine met the constitutional definition of a secret society or cult, then it must reach a clear finding grounded in hard evidence in the record that Chief Orji became a member before he ran and won the election, and not after he became governor. But as we have seen from the contents of its judgment, the tribunal did none of these. If it did, it would have elicited the later admission made by the shrine ‘secretary’ that the video was shot during TA Orji’s ‘initiation’ after he became governor, and not before. The full content of the interview is at Page 23 of Tell Magazine issue of April 14, 2008. So, given that the shrine ‘secretary’ was a hostile witness against TA Orji, this post-trial statement of his squarely constitutes admission of a party-opponent and thus admissible to impeach his claims of pre-election initiation, if not as solid proof that Orji’s membership most probably occurred after he became governor, which does not meet the basic element required by the constitution before the issue can be raised as a possible bar. I will be surprised if Orji’s lawyers failed to make contents of that Tell Magazine interview a vital part of their appellate brief.

Therefore, the video claimed to have placed Chief Orji at the specific locale of Okija Shrine is not admissible because, as presented, it clearly constitutes hearsay; and if it does not, then it is manifestly insufficient to prove a pre-election membership in a shrine which can hardly be said to meet the strict definition of a secret cult under the laws of the Federation of Nigeria. If Okija shrine is a secret cult (and not a mere pagan religious order) based on the lone testimony of its ‘secretary’ that it is, then any of the received mainstream religious organizations common to majority of Nigerians can be easily branded a secret society merely on the tenor of the uncorroborated testimony of anyone purporting to be its ‘secretary’ tendered before a tribunal that might have been challenged by some cultural misunderstanding or mischaracterization of the unique use of rituals, animal sacrifices, or other ethereal practices in the religious traditions of all persuasions.

Aloy Ejimakor is of Law Group International, Washington DC. alloylaw@yahoo.com

MORE REASONS WHY THE TRIBUNAL RULING IN ABIA STATE CANNOT STAND: Part One

2008-04-04T07:08:00.000-07:00

By: ALOY EJIMAKOR

This is a learned treatise that will come in two parts. Part one will deal with the ruling resolving the claim of membership of a secret society against Governor Orji. Part two will deal with the ruling that Orji and Akomas did not resign from the public or civil service of Abia State before running for office. Both parts will be glanced off the pertinent provisions of the Nigerian Constitution and the Electoral Act and then interspersed with some thorough analysis of the Nigerian (or common law) rules of evidence germane to all the facts at issue.

The law of evidence is the basic kernel that underpins the administration of the civil and criminal laws of any common law country when it comes to fair and balanced resolution of disputes presented before the courts. Nigerian superior courts operate within the parameters of settled common law rules of evidence received from the British as a consequence of colonialism, and then adopted and saved by local legislation and judicial precedents as part of the laws of Nigeria after independence. Nuances may be present but they are wont to be tangential and infinitesimal. The only marked departure from the common law precepts can be found only in our Customary and Sharia court systems where strict adherence to the common law (or federal) rules of evidence is not mandated as the norm.

On the other hand, our High Courts of original jurisdiction, including the Election Tribunals are bound to some strict application of the federal (common law) rules of evidence, which for the most part, have been codified in the Evidence Act. It cannot be otherwise without being repugnant to the system we currently operate. It follows therefore that whenever the record on appeal demonstrates a clear violation of the evidence rules, a court of appeal is expected to easily find error or abuse of discretion and reverse or remand. This is why some outrage is now trailing the recent ruling of Abia Governorship Election Tribunal nullifying the election of TA Orji and declaring Ugochukwu the duly elected governor. For a tribunal charged under law to interpret our electoral statute and the constitution (and weigh hard evidence), voiding an election based on the reasons it adduced is troubling because there is nothing in our current substantive and adjectival laws that can justify the ruling, even by some stretch. Add the tribunal’s clear breach of our settled rules of evidence and you have a judgment most likely to be struck down on appellate review. Reversal becomes even much more likely when you consider the quantum of criticisms and outrage issuing from Nigerian and foreign jurists of world acclaim.

Thus, as regards the issue bordering on Orji’s membership in a secret society, our law of evidence was variously violated both in its spirit and black letters because it strictly requires that no photographic or video evidence is admissible without proper foundation or authentication, unless in some rare cases where such evidence is at once both self-authenticating and non-hearsay – meaning that such evidence is generally viewed as hearsay unless robust evidence is led by the proponent showing why it should be recognized as one of the few exceptions to the hearsay rule. In other words, what is depicted in the video or photograph must make both legal and common sense. Therefore, considering the possible abuse of the scientific techniques of superimposition and the high motive for subornation of perjury in cases bordering on high contests for public office; and that it does not make sense for anyone to shoot his own video in near nudity before a shrine or consent to its making thereof, that video of someone purported to be Governor Orji in diapers and manacles can hardly be said to be self-authenticating because it just doesn’t make any sense that such a man (or his agents) would willingly consent to being videoed in such a demeaning manner. Conversely, it stretches credulity to imagine that Chief Ugochukwu (and his agents) shot the video because they suddenly mustered some power of divination to predict the ultimate impact of the video in deciding who ultimately rules Abia State. So, who shot the video and for what purpose were central to determining credibility and admissibility but the tribunal failed to pursue that inquiry. Thus, as introduced through sources that can be imputed with the motive of tampering, embellishment and mischief, the tribunal should have elicited hard foundational testimony, not by shifting the burden of disprove or contradiction to TA Orji as the tribunal implied by its ruling but by applying the presumption of hearsay against Chief Ugochukwu. Proper foundation strictly requires the purveyor or the person proffering such highly prejudicial evidence to prove the identity of who made the video, when it was made, whether the video is a copy or original, the purpose for which the video was made, in-court production and technical inspection of the recording device used in producing the video; and most importantly, that the video depicted TA Orji being initiated into the membership of Okija shrine before the election, and not after. The testimony from the witness claiming to be the secretary of Okija shrine constitutes mere corroborative testimony – meaning that until the video is properly admitted as competent evidence, any testimony proffered as corroborative must fail simply because corroboration can never carry a greater weight than a piece of evidence that comes with the inherent infirmities of hearsay and lack of foundation/authentication. Simply put, there was nothing to corroborate.

The point about the date of production of the video is ever so important and dispositive because it is implied in the Nigerian constitution that before one is damned by his membership of a secret cult or society, there must be hard proof that his membership occurred and was consummated before he ran and won the very election at issue. Our laws do not yet have provisions for disqualifications to hold public office based on ex post facto membership of a secret cult or nullifying an election won by someone who became a member of a secret cult after he won an election. Therefore, absent a date-stamp or other admissible proof of when it was made, it could as well be assumed at law and evidence that if the video is in truth that TA Orji being initiated into the membership of Okija ‘secret’ cult, it then follows that his membership of a secret cult, most assumedly occurring after he won the election, cannot stand in law to meet the implicit constitutional requirement that such membership must have occurred and be subsisting before he ran and won the election. In such a case, the evidence embodied in the video can only be held as a possible statutory bar to Chief Orji’s re-election bid in 2011, and not before. Or better still, as grounds for preferring articles of impeachment against him at the instance of the House of Assembly. Again, it was wrong for the tribunal to make vague references to the so-called secretary of Okija shrine as a ‘witness of truth’ and use that to resolve the secret cult assertions against Chief Orji. If it is that easy, then it might as well become a field day for politicians in Nigeria to just go somewhere and suborn testimony from some fringe fellow parading himself as secretary of some shrine and use that to overturn the election of a rival and even one that won with super majorities like Governor Orji.

In my opinion and that of my American colleagues familiar with Nigerian rules of evidence and the rampant use of modern techniques of technology to create hoaxes, that video reeked of multiple layers of hearsay (think: the discredited videos of UFO and the Abominable Snowman shot in the plains of Alaska and Wyoming). At common law (in operation in Nigeria, Britain and the United States), hearsay evidence is roughly defined as a prior statement or any proposition being presented in court as evidence by a person other than the ‘utterer’ or maker for the purpose of proving the truth of the matter asserted in the statement or proposition. In lay terms, hearsay arises when someone else seeks to repeat what another person said without the person that made the statement being in court to deny, admit or be cross-examined on the statement. Therefore, as a matter of evidence law, a video is a statement of fact or a proposition that seeks to prove a material fact at issue. So, the person seeking to introduce the video cannot be different from the person who made it unless the maker was in court to be confronted and cross-examined to determine veracity, credibility and chain of custody; except in the rare event that the maker is dead. There is nothing in the record of proceedings leading up to the admission of the video that can suggest that the tribunal subjected the video to even the most liberal (or even lay) tests of hearsay before ruling to admit it into the record and then finally using it the way it did to set aside the overwhelming popular will of the people of Abia State. Again, was it Chief Ugochukwu that somehow trailed Governor Orji and braved the odds of the scary everglades of Okija shrine to make the video or hired some resourceful paparazzi to do so, we don’t know. This is but one of the myriad questions to which an opposite answer will surely invite the temptations for a summary reversal of the judgment by the Court of Appeals.

However, in all fairness to Chief Ugochukwu (considering that the video constitutes his evidence-in-chief), if the tribunal determined the origins of the video in his favor and that the locale depicted in the video is that of Okija shrine with TA Orji under the pain of some ritualistic initiation into the ranks of its membership, then it may no longer be hearsay and may thus become admissible to prove that TA Orji was present at the Okija shrine at some time before or after the election. But before Governor Orji can be said to be finally damned by his presence at the shrine, three further questions must be resolved, and they are: One – whether his presence at the shrine was for purposes other than initiation into its membership; Two- if infact his presence at the shrine was for the purpose of initiation into its membership, can the shrine be said to meet the constitutional definition of a secret society or cult; and Three – did Chief Orji become a member before he ran for governor? At this point, the tribunal should then analyze the nature and practices of the Okija shrine against the constitutional definition of what constitutes a secret society and proceed to making a clear finding in favor of one of the two opposite propositions. If the tribunal finally determines that Okija shrine meets the constitutional definition of a secret society or cult, then it must then reach a clear finding grounded in hard evidence in the record that Chief Orji became a member before he ran and won the election, and not after he became governor. But as we have seen from the contents of its judgment, the tribunal did none of these.

Therefore, the video claimed to have placed Chief Orji at the specific locale of Okija Shrine is not admissible because, as presented, it clearly constitutes hearsay; and if it does not, then it is manifestly insufficient to prove a pre-existing membership in a shrine which can hardly be said to meet the strict definition of a secret cult under the laws of the Federation of Nigeria. If Okija shrine is a secret cult (and not a mere pagan religious order) based on the lone testimony of its ‘secretary’ that it is, then any of the received mainstream religious organizations common to majority of Nigerians can be easily branded a secret society merely on the tenor of the uncorroborated testimony of anyone purporting to be its ‘secretary’ tendered before a tribunal that might have been challenged by some cultural misunderstanding or mischaracterization of the unique use of rituals, animal sacrifices, or other ethereal practices in the religious practices of all persuasions.

Aloy Ejimakor is of Law Group International, Washington DC. alloylaw@yahoo.com

DUAL CITIZENSHIP CONSTITUTES NO BAR TO IWU HOLDING OFFICE AS INEC CHAIR

2008-03-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

DUAL CITIZENSHIP CONSTITUTES NO BAR TO IWU HOLDING OFFICE AS INEC CHAIR

By: Aloy Ejimakor & Obi Mbanaso

This piece is intended as an opposite view to any notion that Professor Maurice Iwu’s dual nationality or citizenship (of Nigeria by birth and the United States by naturalization) constitutes a bar to his holding office as Chairman of INEC. That it is wrong is so self-evident and trite, yet it is sadly the sole basis upon which the Action Congress/Atiku (through Ricky Tarfa, as counsel of record) has brought suit seeking to have Iwu removed from office as Chair of INEC.

The core constitutional provisions on dual citizenship and any effect it might have on qualification to hold certain public offices are found in Section 28 (1); Section 66 (1) (a); Section 153 (1) (f); and Section 156 (1) (a) of the 1999 Constitution now in force. These sections spelt out the constitutional consequences of dual nationality but also saw fit to place specific and clear limitations on those consequences.

Section 153 (1) (f) provides that the Independent National Electoral Commission which Iwu heads shall be one of the bodies “established for the Federation”. And Section 156 (1) (a) provides that “No person shall be qualified for appointment as a member of any of the bodies aforesaid if – he is not qualified or, if he is disqualified for election as a member of the House of Representatives”.

Section 66 (1) (a) provides that: “no person shall be qualified for election to the Senate or House of Representatives if – subject to the provisions of section 28 of this Constitution, he has voluntarily acquired the citizenship of a country other than Nigeria or, except in such cases as may be prescribed by the National Assembly, has made a declaration of allegiance to such country”

Section 28 (1) provides that: “Subject to the other provisions of this section, a person shall forfeit forthwith his Nigerian citizenship if, not being a citizen of Nigeria by birth, he acquires or retains the citizenship or nationality of a country other than Nigeria, of which he is not a citizen by birth”.

The legal action by the AC/Tarfa is primarily propelled by an amazing misreading of section 66 or a reading that deliberately excised the operative phrase: “subject to provisions of section 28 of this Constitution”. Additionally, the petitioners also ignored a critical sentence in section 28 that contained a prohibition against applying the dual citizenship bar to a “citizen of Nigeria by birth”, of which Professor Maurice Iwu is one.

Our reading of these sections as they pertain to Maurice Iwu and his qualification to hold office as INEC Chair is in opposite to Tarfa’s, and that is: The bar found in Section 28 of the Constitution is not applicable to Iwu because he is a citizen of Nigeria by birth. The negative consequence of this section is intended to be operate against only those Nigerians who acquired foreign citizenship without first being citizens of Nigeria by birth or lineage (such as citizens of Nigeria by naturalization or registration).

Taken further, even if Iwu is also a citizen of the United States by birth (which he is not), he still would be eligible to hold high office provided he is also a citizen of Nigeria by the other means saved by the Constitution such as by derivation, lineage or aboriginality – through his parents being citizens of Nigeria by birth (hailing from Imo State) or by being borne of Igbo stock, which is one of the tribes aboriginal to Nigeria. By the same interpretation, Iwu’s children and many others borne in the Diaspora of Nigerian parents are all eligible to run for the House of Representatives and thus hold other high offices such as INEC Chair.

Therefore, assuming that Iwu acquired citizenship of United States by naturalization and also subscribed to some oath of allegiance to the United States, his right to hold office as INEC Chair is saved by the sheer fact that he also holds Nigerian citizenship by birth and not by the other discretionary means such as by registration or naturalization.

The plain meaning of all the pertinent sections read together demonstrates that Section 28 is paramount and controlling and unambiguously so, as found in the limiting language rendering the broad sentence of Section 66 subject to the saving sentence of Section 28. In other words, even if Iwu voluntarily acquired United States citizenship or made a declaration of allegiance to the United States, he is still eligible to hold office as someone qualified for election to either the Senate or House of Representatives simply because he is a Nigerian citizen by birth and not by the other means not saved.

In other words, Iwu would have been disabled only if he is a Nigerian citizen by other means such as through any of the discretionary grants already mentioned. So both Sections 28 and 66 must be read together and interpreted to conform to the plain meaning of the black letters expressly limiting the overbroad application of Section 66.

Further, sections 153 and 156 cannot be read and understood without first referring back to Section 66 where the elements of the said qualification are clearly spelt out. And once you pedal back to Section 66, the plain language immediately compels you to again go back to Section 28 where the Constitution contained a proviso intended by the framers and the people of Nigeria as a shield against denaturalization of any Nigeria by birth for merely acquiring the citizenship of another country by naturalization.

Therefore, the language of section 28 controls all other related provisions and saved the day for any Nigerian citizen by birth to remain eligible to hold the enumerated offices notwithstanding the concurrent presence of citizenship of, or some oath of allegiance to another country. The only possible situations where any Nigerian citizen may be barred would be one of the few cases where Nigerian citizenship was acquired by means other than by birth or lineage, which is no where near-applicable to Iwu.

Thus, Professor Maurice Iwu is eligible by any interpretation of the Nigerian Constitution to hold office as Chairman of INEC. The claim by Action Congress/Ricky Tarfa that the constitution disqualifies Iwu is deceitful and exhibits a blatant abuse of the judicial process, if not a clumsy portrayal of some nasty desire to get at Professor Iwu at all costs.

Ejimakor & Mbanaso are US-based Lawyers alloylaw@yahoo.com

MORE REASONS WHY MAURICE IWU PREVAILED ON SUPER TUESDAY

2008-03-03T03:30:00.000-08:00

MORE REASONS WHY MAURICE IWU PREVAILED ON SUPER TUESDAY

By: Prince Femi Omoyole

Apart from the many legalisms cited by the tribunal in its dismissal of the petitions against Iwu’s declaration of Yar’Adua as president, I have many reasons of my own why I believe that Yar’Adua stood the best chance of winning the presidential poll. Those reasons are to be found aplenty in the events that occurred in the period before the elections, and they had absolutely nothing to do with Maurice Iwu or any rigging or irregularity. Let us now candidly examine those reasons in seriatim.

Atiku’s problems and eventual fall stemmed from his bitter split with OBJ which set off a chain of adversities that included his grave but contested indictment for corruption by the EFCC, his expulsion from the PDP, the censure from the National Assembly for corruption, his unwise protracted battles over some spats he should have just ignored, and his take-no-prisoners tactics to boot. The INEC and Iwu he loves to blame for all his woes acted within extant legal authority to disqualify him pursuant to the written advise of the then AGF Bayo Ojo and a damning ruling by the Court of Appeal. Nigerians may have humored him at his many rallies but we all knew that he lost the election before it began because he no longer possessed what it took to have won it against Yar’Adua and a formidable PDP. Atiku’s pet PDM was wrenched from him, not by Iwu, but by a combination of system forces arising from the political and legal war he and the system levied against each other. PDP even went to court with a near successful claim that he was no longer vice-president; and some elements in his own AC sought to frustrate him because they saw him as a desperate interloper. And Nigerians knew that AC was just a party of protest held together by anti-establishment rhetoric and possessing of only sentimental appeal in Atiku’s Adamawa and Lagos (because of Tinubu). And where is AC today? Many are with Yar’Adua – meaning, the man is still winning in the countdown to the appeal Atiku says he will file. Maurice Iwu, again, has nothing to do with AC members jumping ship in Atiku’s many hours of need. Tinubu is now even urging him to cease and desist from further challenge of Yar’Adua. So, why would anybody still call for Iwu’s sack for declaring a result that has now passed the most strenuous judicial scrutiny ever?

On his part, Buhari had his many issues with his own party, including the nasty challenge by Ahmed Yerima, the strongman and main financier of ANPP. Add the other ANPP governors and apparatchiks who decamped to PDP in droves and under circumstances that politically wounded Buhari. And Buhari did not have the kind of money and ANPP lacked the national spread that must be present before anyone could think of winning a presidential election. Its popularity and structure lay in only four or five states in the core north; and there was no credible evidence that Buhari or the ANPP had sufficient numbers or spread anywhere in the south to even have a fighting chance. So, how could he have won the presidency? And where is ANPP today? Majority are in Yar’Adua’s government. So, as Buhari also contemplates filing his appeal, he needs to bear all these realities in mind and consider whether he is merely engaging in a frivolous pursuit of an election his party (not Maurice Iwu or INEC) lost for him way before the first votes were cast.

Orji Kalu was very clever to acknowledge early in time that his party did not yet have the structures to win the presidency. PPA was just a new party borne in protest over the lack of internal democracy in the PDP. It bears repeating that Orji has even praised Iwu for ensuring that the elections proceeded to conclusion and has now again congratulated Yar’Adua for prevailing at the tribunal. It is unfortunate that the tribunal in Abia has upturned PPA’s victory but the fact remains that the two reasons cited by the tribunal – secret cult and lack of resignation, have nothing to do with what Maurice Iwu did or did not do. And to Iwu’s eternal credit, the tribunal in Abia ruled that the election proper was free and fair. This is in addition to similar pronouncements for Jang of Plateau and Mamman Ali of Yobe, not to talk of the governorship tribunal in Nasarawa which even went further to award costs as a deterrent to frivolous judicial challenge of election results.

Back to the presidential polls, AC and ANPP’s poll agents accepted and signed off on the REC-collated final results sheets before Maurice Iwu went to press with it. So, how can Atiku or Buhari or anyone else for that matter now claim that there was no election in more than 29 states when their agents had contemporaneously signed off on the results of elections conducted in those states? And Atiku’s claim that he was excluded by Iwu from the ballot failed simply because all Nigerians (including those who testified for him) knew for a fact that Maurice Iwu had to go to extra expenditure and hard work to include him in the ballot pursuant to the Supreme Court ruling in his favor. I personally saw his name on the ballot. And if you look at the spread of the party’s performance in the state/national assembly and governorship elections, you will notice that the parties maintained just about the same number of votes they garnered in the presidential election. These were part of the larger evidence that bolstered Iwu/INEC’s position that the outcome of the election reflected the popular will and thus was in substantial compliance with statutory mandates.

If aspects of the election were irregular, I would say they are too minuscule to constitute grounds for disturbing the overall outcome. In some few isolated cases such as Benue, the tribunal held the election to have been free and fair in seven out of nine LGAs that make up David Mark’s senatorial district and only cancelled two LGAs merely because the presiding officer there had initially held the polls to have been inconclusive. This had nothing to do with Maurice Iwu because he was not the one that declared the result in Makurdi that was at issue. Thus, in the rest of the country, the PDP prevailed for the same reasons ANPP, AC, and PPA prevailed in the select areas where they did, and the reason is nothing more than that the overall result is merely a reflection of party strength, structures and spread. Anybody who recalls how and why Osakwe prevailed over Ahmadu Ali’s wife in Delta can easily discern what was really going on in the country and would agree that it was not Maurice Iwu or INEC that also went over to Delta and picked Osakwe over Ali’s wife. It was OBJ (who then was nursing a huge animus against Ali) and El-Rufai, who was busy demolishing Ali’s house in Abuja and thus distracting him from ensuring his wife’s victory. Add that to a foxy Ibori, who wanted to please OBJ in the hope that Ribadu would remember the favor and forget about following through with the threat to arrest him once he leaves office. So, where did Iwu figure in all these mess? See what I mean?

You can’t win any general elections without winning in your party first. OBJ’s anointment of Yar’Adua brought a mass capitulation of other aspirants, including a formidable Babangida and Odili, and that alone paved the way for Yar’Adua to win handily inside the PDP. Conversely, Atiku and Buhari were fighting to survive inside their own parties at the same time they were also arrayed against a cruising Yar’Adua. Elections are not won on the pages of newspapers, by protracted court battles or demonizing of umpires but with lots and lots of money, organization, and quantum of party spread and strength in electoral wards and precincts. Maurice Iwu is not the person that empowered the PDP. Atiku helped to empower the PDP from way back in 1998 until it grew to proportions that finally overwhelmed him and Buhari in 2007. This is the plain truth.

Prince Femi Omoyole fomoyole@yahoo.com

MAURICE IWU IS VINDICATED IF THE TRIBUNAL SUSTAINS THE PRESIDENTIAL POLL

2008-02-26T05:19:00.000-08:00

TRANSCRIPTS OF INTERVIEW GRANTED BY ATTORNEY ALOY EJIMAKOR TO MEMBERS OF THE NIGERIA MEDIA ON THE 2007 ELECTIONS AT ABUJA ON FEBRUARY 10, 2008

Q: After so many years in America, you are just back into country. May we know you?

A: My name is Aloy Ejimakor. I reside in the United States where I have worked as an Attorney since 1995. I am the Convener of the Organization of Nigerian Lawyers in Diaspora. We monitored the 2007 elections and with regard to the many difficulties encountered with the elections, my attitude and that of most prominent Nigerian Diaspora is that Professor Maurice Iwu and his team at INEC did a marvelous job of transiting Nigeria from one civilian regime to the other. And this view is shared by many top American policymakers and opinion leaders with whom I am familiar – a shared viewed helped mostly by a team of Nigerian and American Lawyers I co-led to Senator Russ Feingold’s office on July 27, 2007 to make a case for a constructive engagement of Nigeria’s electoral issues instead of the opposite view canvassed by the opposition, which surely would have isolated and hurt Nigeria. I believe that the shortcomings noticed during the elections are insufficient to warrant isolation of Nigeria or nullification of the election. Therefore, in deciding the ongoing election petitions, the tribunals are expected to be averse to some notion of strict liability for every violation of the statute, unless there is robust evidence that the violation substantially affected the outcome of the election. With particular regard to the presidential election, it is my considered view that the Tribunal should let it stand. And if this should happen, it will represent a complete vindication of Maurice Iwu because the presidential election is the only one over which it can be argued that he had complete legal control as the chief returning officer as opposed to the governorships which were statutorily under the exclusive control of the Resident Electoral Commissioners for the states.

Q: How would you compare anticipation of justice between America and your native Nigeria?

A: In terms of core legislations and black letter law, there are several similarities. And of course, our Constitution is a version of the US Constitution, as amended and interpreted over the centuries. But where the difference is marked and clear is in terms of the many nuances brought by America’s pure federalism as opposed to Nigeria’s, which still lacks some of the core elements of a truly federal system. And then there is the irony. Before the 2007 elections, the then AGF Bayo Ojo issued advisory opinion to INEC to follow through on the indictments issuing out of EFCC, the Commissions of Inquiry, and the White Papers, all as grounds of disqualification to run for office. This is besides the string of Appeal Court rulings sustaining INEC’s power to disqualify or exclude for cause. Professor Maurice Iwu did the right thing by adhering to the legal advice of Nigeria’s chief law officer, having been emboldened by the Courts of Appeal. In the US, the election umpires would have also done the same thing. This comports with modern notions of constitutionalism. The difference is that in Nigeria, everyone now seems to have ignored this and taken to criticizing Maurice Iwu as if he acted arbitrarily; whereas, in the US, if the disqualifications or exclusions turned out to be wrong, it is the AGF or the judiciary that should become the fair target for criticisms, if at all.

Q: Does the United State have an electoral body, and what about qualification to run for public office
A: Yes, it does, but with nuances, of which some, if not most, will definitely work for Nigeria. For instance, the Boards of elections for the counties have some oversight of the party primaries or caucuses for nomination of candidates. This helps to ensure that political parties conform to their own rules of engagement. My research tells me that Professor Iwu is poised to introduce this concept in the by-elections that will come soon, beginning with the Kogi governorship re-run; and hopefully, with him in charge of the 2011 elections, I am sure Nigerians will as soon see lots of innovations, assuming that politicians get beyond petty ambitions to trust Iwu and give him the free hand to do his job. Don’t forget that Maurice Iwu lived in America before all these, and that was what prepared him for the Electronic Voting system and other innovations he proposed but which the National Assembly rejected for some reasons that are beyond me. But most importantly, the election bodies in the US are permanent and uninterrupted institutions that are permitted to self-reform without having to be re-constituted all the time with new Chairmen and whatnot that will again begin to learn the ropes anew. When it comes to qualification to run for public office, America, just like any other morally upstanding modern society has some strict rules, mostly bordering on moral turpitudes. For instance, a felony conviction, not only disqualifies you from holding public office for the most part, but also bars you from voting; and you don’t need the courts to tell you that.

Q: What are your views on the nullification in Kogi and the others that might come?

A: Anybody gleefully rooting for a rash of nullifications should also contemplate the spectre of no-election or the grave nullification of Abiola’s election in 1993. Therefore, as the Tribunals weigh the various requests for nullification, the learned justices will do well to consider the uniqueness of the Nigerian federation, and consider whether the framers of the Electoral Act really wanted otherwise good elections to fall for every infraction. One might say with some justification that some isolated cases of exclusions or other irregularity merely constitute technical violations or omissions of ordinary course that can hardly justify the extraordinary remedy represented by nullification. In the United States, the learned justices there call such technical violations ‘excusable neglect’, and as the phrase implies, they are excusable, and if standing alone, can never be seen to strictly require quashing the outcome of an election. With regard to the Kogi case, there is some merit to the opposite argument that the exclusion was in order because it was valid under law when it occurred. If you read the analysis of the learned justices in that case, they stated clearly that INEC just complied with the extant law at the time it disqualified the candidate at issue but that the tribunal felt compelled to nullify solely on the strength of a contrary ex post facto Supreme Court ruling - meaning that the Supreme Court ruling is being applied retroactively. This is the kernel of the ruling which the media needs to stress to the Nigerian people for a better understanding and debate of the legalities of the 2007 elections. Blaming Maurice Iwu or INEC for merely acting within authority of extant law won’t cut it.

Q: Are you are saying that the Tribunals might be applying laws retroactively?

A: This is one important area the Electoral Reform Committee needs to look at so that Tribunals are not forced by passage of time into rendering judgments that tend to confuse our strict constitutional system by raising the spectre of retroactivity of laws – be it legislation or a judge-made law. A democracy should be very conscious of rejecting any notion of retroactive application of her laws. Better practice seems to support the postulate that if your rights were breached by some law that is no longer good law, then you try your hand next time around and you could prevail on the tenor of the new law that now favors you. The right to hold political office can never be said to be so vested and absolute to the point that Nigeria must pedal back all the time to accommodate every infringement, otherwise we may come to the point where a Shehu Shagari and others who lost their constitutional tenure and mandate due to illegal and violent sack of their government may begin to file legal actions to be restored to office. The dangerous judicial remedy of mass cancellation of elections in a young and fragile democracy like Nigeria requires more circumspection and judicial conservatism than the need for the judiciary to be seen to be independent. Ours laws must be interpreted in ways that must not threaten our survival as nation.

Q: It seems the Tribunal rulings have put INEC in very bad light before many Nigerians

A: Yes, because of the general tendency to spin, parse and distort. And the media has not fully explained the true meanings of these rulings to the average lay Nigerian. But those who have devoted some intellectual downtime to studying the rulings are likely to posit that INEC and Maurice Iwu should never be blamed for what happened. Election flaws or exclusions have been discussed enough, and again, in a way that seems to ignore the duplicity of the political class – all in an attempt to single out one man for scapegoating. And the secondary point to consider is that we may have come to the point that endangers our democracy and stability should we continue to so carelessly continue this voyeuristic harassment of INEC and the government of the day. Whilst some people might recoil at my directness, candor and neo-legalisms, I will be mindful to put matters into proper legal context and hope for a better and richer understanding hereafter. Nigeria should not be belittled for the historic leap it made with the 2007 elections.

Q: What is your advice to politicians, the political parties, PDP, AD, political class generally?

A: For most of the West, especially the European Union, there is this rampant tendency to rush to conclusions that elections held in countries that the West fears, loathes or does not understand are never free and fair. The West does not understand Nigeria. If you don’t know by now that the West considers candidate Abubakar Atiku pro-West and President Yar’Adua, a closet anti-West or too Islamist (and frugal, meaning - a radical socialist that may prefer China), then you have not been reading everything out there. And more to the point, Yar’Adua’s fiscal conservatism in Katsina when he was Governor was mis-characterized as neo-socialist by a naïve West that looked forward to an Atiku they believed through his PR spin in the US to be anti-socialist and thus more representative of any Western desire for a President likely to draw down Nigeria’s hard currency reserves to finance high technology acquisitions from the West. Therefore, our politicians need to do some serious contemplation of their patriotic duty and remain vigilant to protecting Nigeria from the sort of misguided interference in our electoral process that led to the debacle in Kenya. In other words, we should learn to accept our democracy as it is while working patiently towards attaining the idealisms and stable order that took a helluva of political hard work and give-and-take to achieve in other climes that started before us. All victories or good things don’t have to come in our lifetime.

Q: What is your take on the petitions challenging Yar’Adua’s victory?

A: Let me put it this way. That Dr Orji Kalu and other odd 50 presidential candidates did not file petitions against Yar’Adua is relevant and probative evidence that the presidential election must have passed statutory and political muster and impeaches the merits of any claim to the contrary. Concession of defeat is the first starting point to determining the legitimacy of an election, and concession by some fifty candidates is some concession indeed and cannot be ignored when deciding whether the election should stand or not. In the United States, Al Gore’s initial concession of victory to Bush based on initial results collated from statute-mandated machine count of the ballots as opposed to a manual recount was part of the material evidence that emboldened a politically-conscious US Supreme Court to stop the recount and affirm the initial declaration of Bush as winner. As regards our own, AC and ANPP’s poll agents accepted and signed off on the REC-collated final results of the presidential poll before Maurice Iwu went to press with it. So, how can anyone now claim that there was no election in more than 29 states when their agents had contemporaneously signed off on the results of elections conducted in those states? What happened to the basic law of agency that binds a principal to the actions of his agent? And if you look at the spread of the party’s performance in the state/national assembly and governorship elections, you will notice that the parties maintained just about the same number of votes they garnered in the presidential election. If aspects of the election were rigged, I would say they are too minuscule to constitute grounds for disturbing the final outcome. This does not mean that the Tribunals or the Supreme Court should go wholescale political but it will be naïve and suicidal for our political order if these petitions are lent completely to the absolutism of strict legal solutions without regard to the unique political history of Nigeria. Mistakes are bound to be made along the way, but as good and conscientious citizens, we will all do well not to overplay them.

Ejimakor can be reached at alloylaw@ahoo.com

MAURICE IWU AND THE 2007 ELECTIONS: MY CASE AGAINST NULLIFICATIONS

2008-02-13T07:04:00.001-08:00

MAURICE IWU AND THE 2007 ELECTIONS: MY CASE AGAINST NULLIFICATIONS

By: Prince Femi Omoyole

After Maurice Iwu’s telling and credible responses to the interrogatories propounded by Atiku, I wonder why anybody would still be calling for nullification of the 2007 polls. All those still complaining, including the complainer-in-chief, Atiku should pause for once to recall the events in the period before the elections, and they would as soon agree that their defeat at the polls had absolutely nothing to do with Maurice Iwu or any rigging. Atiku’s problems and eventual fall stemmed from his bitter split with OBJ which set off a chain of adversities that included his grave indictment for corruption by the EFCC, his expulsion from the PDP, the censure from the National Assembly for corruption, his unwise protracted battles in court over some spats he should have just ignored, and his take-no-prisoners tactics to boot. The INEC and Iwu he continues to blame acted within extant legal authority to disqualify him pursuant to the written advise of the then AGF Bayo Ojo, which was confirmed by the Court of Appeal. Everyone, except Atiku, knew very well that he lost the election before it began because he no longer possessed what it took to have won it against Yar’Adua/PDP, and the little he had (including his pet GDM) was wrenched from him, not by Iwu, but by a combination of system forces arising from the political and legal war he and the system levied against each other. The PDP even went to court with a near successful claim that he was no longer vice-president and even some elements in his own AC sought to frustrate him because they saw him as a desperate interloper. And Nigerians knew that AC was just a party of protest held together by disgruntlement and possessing of only sentimental appeal in Atiku’s Adamawa and Lagos (because of Tinubu). And where is AC today? Many are with Yar’Adua – meaning, the man is still winning while Atiku is still losing.

On his part, Buhari had his many issues with his own party, including the nasty challenge by Ahmed Yerima, the strongman and main financier of ANPP. Ditto for many other ANPP governors and apparatchiks, most of whom decamped to PDP. Further, Buhari did not have the kind of money and ANPP lacked the national spread that must be present before anyone could think of winning a presidential election. Its popularity and structure lay in only four or five states in the far core north, and there was no evidence that Buhari or the ANPP had sufficient numbers anywhere in the south to even win a councillorship election. So, how could he have won the presidency? And where is ANPP today? Majority are in Yar’Adua’s government. That means Yar’Adua is still winning.

Orji Kalu was very clever to acknowledge early in time that his party did not yet have the structures to win the presidency not because he is not popular (the man is well-liked amongst Ibos and Northerners) but because PPA was just a new party founded in protest over the lack of internal democracy in the PDP and OBJ’s bitter battles with Orji. So, Orji demonstrated better political smarts than Atiku and Buhari when he chose not to contest the presidential poll results in court. That Orji and the other odd 50 presidential candidates did not file petitions against Yar’Adua is relevant and probative evidence that the presidential election passed statutory muster and impeaches the merits of any claim to the contrary. In the United States, Al Gore’s initial concession of victory to Bush was part of the material evidence that emboldened the US Supreme Court to stop the recount and affirm the initial declaration of Bush as winner. As regards our own, AC and ANPP’s poll agents accepted and signed off on the REC-collated final results of the presidential poll before Maurice Iwu went to press with it. So, how can Atiku or Buhari now claim that there was no election in more than 29 states when their agents had contemporaneously signed off on the results of elections conducted in those states? And as if this was not enough, Atiku is now claiming that he was excluded from the ballot when all Nigerians knew that Maurice Iwu had to go to extra expenditure and hard work to include him in the ballot pursuant to the Supreme Court ruling in his favor. I personally saw his name on the ballot. And if you look at the spread of the party’s performance in the state/national assembly and governorship elections, you will notice that the parties maintained just about the same number of votes they garnered in the presidential election. These and Iwu’s credible responses to Atiku’s interrogatories have bolstered the proposition that the election was actually in substantial compliance with statutory mandates and therefore should stand for the most part. The governorship tribunal in Nasarawa has led the way and even went further to award costs as a deterrent to frivolous judicial challenge of election results.

If aspects of the election were rigged, I would say they are too minuscule to constitute grounds for disturbing the outcome. Notice that each of the parties won in the states and electoral precincts where they had larger followership and better structures. AC strong-armed PDP in Lagos not because of Atiku but due to Tinubu’s famous winning abilities. Or did he and Atiku rig that one too? In Adamawa, AC was strong but the Court of Appeals’ affirmance of the disqualification of their governorship candidate and the presence of warhorses like Jibril Aminu and Marwa overwhelmed a wounded Atiku. So, it was a no contest for PDP. PPA carried the day in Abia because Orji proved too wily for a clumsy Onyema Ugochukwu who expected OBJ to do every winning for him. And in Imo, the entire PDP National and State leaders, including Governor Udenwa leveraged on their control of the political space and state power to deliver an unknown Ikedi Ohakim of a fledgling PPA, trouncing a lonely and party-less Ararume and a rejected Agbaso whose structure lapsed into disarray when PDP double-crossed him at the ninth hour. It is laughable that these folks are also blaming Maurice Iwu for troubles that totally had nothing to do with the man. Thus, in the rest of the country, the PDP prevailed for the same reasons ANPP, AC, and PPA prevailed in the select areas where they did. Anybody who recalls how and why Osakwe prevailed over Ahmadu Ali’s wife in Delta can easily discern what was really going on in the country and would agree that it was not Maurice Iwu or INEC that also went over to Delta and picked Osakwe over Ali’s wife. It was OBJ (who then was nursing a huge animus against Ahmadu Ali), El-Rufai who was busy demolishing Ali’s house in Abuja, and a foxy Ibori, who wanted to please OBJ in the hope that Ribadu would remember the favor and forget about following through with the threat to arrest him once he leaves office.

In both emerging and advanced democracies, elections are not won on the pages of newspapers or by court battles like Atiku loves to do but with lots and lots of money, organization, and quantum of party spread in electoral wards. Nigeria is a special case - the monumental level of poverty and deprivation in the country affects or even controls voting behavior, as majority of Nigerians are likely to vote for the highest bidder. A few are just cowed and no Iwu can change that. Another factor that affects voter behavior is our well known system of communal harmony where communities get together and decide to give most of their votes to only one party, except in few ultra-metropolitan areas with little ethnic homogeneities. This is true of both the North and South. If you doubt it, go and ask the Emirs, Ezes, Obas and all the other layers of community leadership common to many locales in Nigeria and they will give you details of how they preside over meetings where decisions like this are reached. Certainly, Maurice Iwu did not invent this culture. So, all the blame-mongers are either ignorant of the uniqueness of the Nigerian voter or trapped in terminal hostility to a man who just declared a result handed to him by Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) he cannot even overrule or fire. As fellow Nigerians, the learned justices of the Presidential Election Tribunal cannot ignore all these and return a verdict of nullification because whoever wins in any re-run would have won for the same reasons that Yar’Adua won, and the reasons are nothing more than the ones listed above. And none of these reasons had anything do with Maurice Iwu (as the umpire-in-chief) or with any other new umpire that might replace him when his tenure expires in about three years. The same set of serial complainers will still rise against any new umpire and harangue him until he buckles under and declares them winner or eats crow like the Kenyan umpire did with disastrous consequences. And they are certain to use their second passports and prodigious wealth to escape to the safety of their foreign mansions once Nigeria begins to boil, leaving the innocent common man to hold the short end of the stick. It is so obvious and so sad.

It is now clear that Atiku and the others who pressured Iwu not to hold the election and even went to court to stop it are abusing the opportunity of a petition to achieve the same dubious aim. Whether the election was then postponed or cancelled by Iwu could have brought the following scenarios into play: Some mischief makers would have instigated violence against Ibos by claming that Iwu, an Iboman cancelled an election won by a Northerner as part of an Ibo plot (again?) to frustrate power shift to the North. OBJ could have gleefully declared a state of emergency and thus achieve his third term ambitions by default and thanks to Atiku who was opposing third term and pressuring Iwu not to hold the elections all at once. The much worrisome ‘failed state’ predicted for Nigeria by America would have come to pass before time. And the army could have struck, and justifiably so. Nigerians would have been likened to the gladiators of ancient Rome who sang ‘Mori Turi Te Salutamus’ (we, who are about to die salute you, our king) as they marched past their Emperor into the arena to fight lions made raving mad through starvation. In this case, the King would have been OBJ and the lead gladiator would have been Atiku. The same could be true in the event of judicial nullification.

A popular adage in management goes thus ‘if you think that training is not important, you should try ignorance’. As applied to the 2007 elections, if you think an election that ushered a crucial transition should be nullified, then try no-election or the famous nullification of Abiola’s election in 1993. Therefore, as the Tribunals weigh the various requests for nullifications, the learned justices will do well to consider the uniqueness of the Nigerian federation as part of the material evidence that should detract from what many legal experts have come to see as mere technical violations of the Electoral Act in which INEC was helpless due to the many skirmishes instigated or abetted by those who are rooting for nullification. In the United States, the learned justices there call such technical violations ‘excusable neglect’, and as the phrase implies, they are hardly grounds upon which an extreme and extraordinary remedy like nullifying the result of a major election can be sustained. A good example is a situation where a party known to exist only on the pages of newspapers or inside the briefcases of one man seeks nullification merely because it was excluded from the ballot. In such a case, the Tribunal will be well within the universal rules of evidence and fairness to require such party to show strict proof that it had the numbers, the structure, the preparedness, and the spread to win the very election from which it has been excluded or was itself in compliance with the strict statutory mandates on national spread. So, absent the high probability that an excluded party had provable or judicially-noticed chances of winning, it will comport with real-world principles of political justice to conclude that such a party or its candidate only existed to play a spoiler role in a volatile polity like Nigeria that does need such distractions.

Prince Femi Omoyole fomoyole@yahoo.com

BARRISTER ITSEY SAGAY, I HEREBY HOLD YOU IN CONTEMPT

2008-02-10T03:45:00.000-08:00

IF I WERE ATIKU, I WILL FIRE ITSE SAGAY AS MY LAWYER

By: Ibrahim Danlami, College Park USA

Lately, Nigerians have been treated to a series of interviews and sometimes nasty opinion pieces credited to Barrister Itse Sagay, who is on the legal team representing Atiku in his ongoing petition against President Yar’Adua’s victory. What makes Sagay an interesting character is not the jurisprudential quality of the many things he has to say but the lack thereof. The other is his carriage and demeanor which all together demonstrates a brazen contempt for the learned justices of the Presidential Election Tribunal. Without doubt, Sagay’s true intention is to intimidate and pre-empt the tribunal by recklessly opinionating on why Atiku should win the case. What is more? Mr. Itse Sagay is an attorney of record to boot, retained by Atiku in the same case in which he has abandoned the privileged corridors of the tribunal for the allure of romancing the media with his wild and hollow postulations that don’t mean much for rehabilitating a petition that Atiku is losing by the day. Atiku is losing partly because of Sagay’s tactless pastimes which, in the opinion of many trial lawyers, clearly constitute ineffective assistance of counsel and flagrant violation of ethical rules of conduct in many ramifications.

While Mr. Sagay occupies his attorney billable hours with pillorying Maurice Iwu/INEC in the press and taunting the tribunal and President Yar’Adua, his client’s case continues to suffer several setbacks that a little bit of legal research by Sagay could have foreseen and averted. The tribunal hearing the petition against Yar’Adua, as constituted, has the powers of a superior court, which includes the broad powers to punish in contempt and to prevent pre-emption and unnecessary distraction by an officer of the court and counsel of record who should know better than engage in conduct deemed prejudicial to the proper administration of justice. What makes it more troubling is that the NBA has chosen the path of silence while Mr. Sagay continues to conduct himself in manners that are clearly violative of established norms of professional behavior for an attorney of record and of his standing at the bar. Every bar association in all democracies – both emerging and advanced have clear rules barring counsels of record from engaging in unguarded public utterances that might either hurt their client’s interest or appear to be interfering with a decorous handling of the proceedings still pending before a court. And the prestige and integrity of all bar associations is largely judged by their ability and readiness to bring discipline to bear on any erring member, otherwise overall professional discipline may suffer in the long run.

As a common law jurisdiction, Nigerian courts – tribunals and regular courts alike should abide or be seen to abide by the universal rules underpinning professional conduct of lawyers retained to represent clients in matters already pending before a court of law. In the past, we have seen the superior courts of this country proceed aggressively against professionally irresponsible behavior similar to Mr. Sagay’s by either issuing a gag order or invoking its inherent contempt powers to punish as a means of curbing such misconduct. Therefore, Mr. Sagay must be prepared for the consequences of his conduct once the tribunal gets beyond its busy docket to notice the damage he has been doing to the legal profession, the integrity of the court process, and even the interest of his client - Atiku. Atiku is not a lawyer and thus may not have realized the monumental damage Sagay is doing to him and his case, but with the likes of Professor Nwabueze on his legal team, I don’t see how Sagay’s clumsy and bizarre public remarks can go unchecked in the interim.

When a lawyer puts his legal maneuvers in the public glare as Sagay does, he unwittingly undermines and hurts his client’s interest in so many different ways. One way he can hurt his client is by giving away his strategies confidences to the party opponent. For instance, through Sagay’s numerous interviews and careless publicized remarks, it is now well known to INEC/Yar'Adua’s side that Atiku lacks specific proof of his case-in-chief (irregularities). Perhaps part of the reason Iwu/Yar’Adua’s lawyers appear to be a step ahead of Atiku’s legal team is because Sagay’s numerous public remarks have provided a window and a peek into the mental impressions and strategies of Atiku’s team. This is the stuff many a lawyer will pay humongous sums to a private investigator for, but thanks to Sagay, Iwu/Yar’Adua’s lawyers are getting the whole stuff for freebies and using it so successfully to build a solid defense for their clients. And if you think about it, you will notice that Iwu/Yar’Adua’s lawyers are not in the habit of disparaging Atiku or even Buhari in the press because they know better than do that; and from the quiet way they carry on by limiting themselves to answering on the record, they exude the requisite confidence and professionalism common to a case of such national significance. The parties in the case are free to unleash their spinmeisters on the public without a Sagay who is duty-bound to limit his comments to the record.

Sagay’s conduct hurts Atiku and makes him out to be a desperate litigant, if not casting his petition as lacking in any real legal merit. And the public which Sagay appears to be courting by what he is doing is likely to also come to the same conclusion that the only reason for such misbehavior and pedestrian tactics is because Atiku is devoid of any compelling evidence that can pass evidentiary muster, thus prompting Sagay’s panicked resort to appealing to public sentiments. Further, Sagay seems less credible when he goes to the press with his theory of the case instead of the tribunal which is where whatever he has to say matters. Additionally, if anything he is saying is true or admissible, all he needs to do is to convert it into material evidence and file it before the tribunal for consideration as part of the record.

And when a lawyer such as Sagay continues to behave as he does, he hurts the administration of justice by hampering the efforts of the tribunal at putting his client’s case into proper context. The learned justices of the tribunal read newspapers and when they read Sagay’s comments, certain questions must arise in their minds. What do they go by? Is it by any legal briefs filed before them by Sagay or is it by his many public comments? Judging by the recent turn of events, Sagay’s mission to intimidate the tribunal or harass Maurice Iwu or Yar’Adua is not working because it is now clear that both Iwu and Yar’Adua have adopted a scorched-earth policy towards this case and have hankered down to answering Atiku with equal aggressiveness. To the credit of his case and stability of the country, Yar’Adua is no longer telling anybody that he will go back to Katsina were he to lose the case at the tribunal. It is now the opposite as the President has been emboldened to a gutsier defense of his mandate by irresponsible and disrespectful statements being purveyed by Sagay and his likes.

What is more troubling is Sagay’s evident evasiveness in not disclosing to the public that he is fact a counsel of record for Atiku in the ongoing petition. He pretends to be rendering an objective and disinterested professional opinion in a manner that is misleading about his true role in the case. This is unacceptable both under the cannons of professional conduct, common decency, and rules of the court. The legal profession is an honorable one, and if Sagay takes this seriously, then he needs to just stop from going from one newspaper to the other to plead Atiku’s case. Instead he needs to go back to the drawing boards or his law library and find out why Atiku’s case seems to be floundering especially since after Maurice Iwu answered the 27 odd irrelevant interrogatories Sagay and his colleagues saw fit to tactlessly propound. And as if that was not enough, Sagay and his team leaked the interrogatories and the answers to the press in the vain hope that some sympathy will be drawn to their side. But it seems to have backfired as many legal analysts are at a loss over how helpful it is to Atiku’s evidence-in-chief to go off-mark to issue interrogatories on whether the presidential ballots contract was awarded or re-awarded to a South African firm or how much it cost to print them.

And hear this: Is it relevant to making a case for electoral irregularities by querying Iwu on whether the ballots underwent customs destination inspection or not? This is the sort of interrogatory Sagay is promoting in the media as part of his case-in-chief, hoping to make some connection that no one as yet understands. If he cares to poll some of his peers, he will be shocked to learn that this whole strategy of rushing to the press to say one nasty thing or the other about Iwu or Yar’Adua every other day is not working for him or his client - Atiku, but is fast making him and what he represents a laughing stock and butt of jokes amongst all lawyers that know better than embarrass themselves the way Sagay does.

Therefore, if Barrister Itse Sagay does not summon the good sense and professional judgment to walk a straight path and behave responsibly, it might get to the intolerable point that Atiku and his other lawyers will lose their cool and cut him loose, if the tribunal does not beat them to it by censuring him for contempt.

Ibrahim Danlami is a research scholar in Legal Ethics and he wrote in from College Park USA. ibrahimdanlami@yahoo.com

IT'S TIME FOR PRESIDENT YAR'ADUA TO BRING SLOK HOME

2008-01-30T17:08:00.000-08:00

WITH ALL DUE RESPECTS, MR PRESIDENT, IT’S TIME TO BRING SLOK HOME

By: Attorney Aloy Ejimakor, Washington DC

Before I came into motherland Nigeria late in the week before last, I had a busy schedule of sorts back in Washington DC. Busy in more sense than one. It was supposed to be a mild social schedule of going from one Nigerian community event to the other to enjoy some good wine and old-world comradeship with fellow Nigerians from across North America, with some coming from as far as Halifax in the far reaches of Canada. Well, from coming together to socialize, a plurality of Nigerians that descended on Washington waxed true to type by taking the opportunity to quickly founding an ad-hoc body that soon began to do some serious appraisals of the state of the Nigerian Federation, and they so aptly named it ‘One Nigerian Diaspora, One Nigeria’ or ONDON, for short. Amongst the ranks were elements from the crème de la crème of the Nigerian Diaspora – from members of the Organization of Nigerian Lawyers in Diaspora, to Executives of the mother Union – the Organization of Nigerians in Diaspora, Nigerian Professionals in North America, and so forth – mostly middle-of-the-roaders who wouldn’t be caught dead consorting with any ideological or ethnic partisans.

So, it came to pass that the many ordinary Nigerian social gatherings slated to occur in Washington DC inside the last months of 2007 soon graduated from the usual social banter and a good dose of Nigerian music and cuisine to something of a national patriotic chest-beating that included President Yar’Adua and Chairman Iwu’s crucial visits to the US in the same period. Washington DC was thus so hyped up with the Nigerian flavor that Usman Baraya, the acting Nigerian Ambassador to the US called it the season of Nigeria and Nigerians in the US. That so much captured it all.

President Yar’Adua (tentative, diplomatic and credible) was the first to come to town. After him, enter Professor Maurice Iwu (self-assured, patriotic, and primed to inform). For their different missions, both Yar’Adua and Iwu had largely successful outings with Americans and the Nigerian Diaspora to varying degrees. President Yar’Adua charmed George Bush and the White house with his rule of law mantra, commitment to electoral reforms and a diplomatic sleight of hand on Africom. On Africom, Bush was befuddled, and those that didn’t know Yar’Adua well failed to appreciate the deft manner he handled Africom - with no clear pointer to where Nigeria actually stood. On his part, Chairman Iwu made a compelling case for the integrity of Nigeria’s electoral process with his release of the 2007 general elections report, aided by intellectual and patient engagement of his most unreasonable critics. His moral conviction and love of Nigeria was touching.

But one thing (or more) was missing. Not with Iwu’s fine presentations – because the man won hearts and minds and took the wind out of the sail of his critics. It was instead with President Yar’Adua that Nigerians in Diaspora harbored some regret that they did not have enough opportunity or proximity to ask him to address some urgent national business – and that is to say: the business and commercial interests of certain Nigerians significantly hurt by some Obasanjo-era executive decisions that much of the Nigerian Diaspora understood to have been politically motivated. Discussed alongside this issue is the logic advanced by many that Obasanjo’s legacy (or even some peace and quiet in retirement) will continue to suffer unless President Yar’Adua urgently and clearly addresses some of the major questionable decisions carried over from the previous administration. What is more is that such decisions, while they persist, are seen to be a double whammy of sorts in the sense that they constitute both a drag on bringing some closure to Obasanjo – so he can have peace, and the moral burden such policy hangovers impose on a Yar’Adua that is supposed to be winning Nigerians to his side.

From the many such decisions, the two that became constant refrains and stood out like sore thumbs are the ones that had to do with revocation of Slok’s license and credible reports that Obasanjo also revoked up to four oil blocks hithertofore owned by Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, former governor of Abia State. Judging by the professional caliber, ideological and geographical spread of my fellow Nigerian Diaspora who gathered to discuss these issues among the many other national issues of the day that were also within gun sight, I surmised that something good will definitely come out of this. There was this general agreement that Orji Kalu was specially marked out and dealt an unfair hand. Throughout the discussions that spanned for hours on end, I noticed this palpable feeling that the opinions rendered were mainly propelled by a common human instinct to see immediate and total justice to a man (Orji) who has suffered so much just for making bold to speak his mind. One gentleman from up Northern Nigeria by name of Haruna captured it well when he just blurted out: ‘Guys, it’s time to bring Slok home and restore Orji’s oil blocks’. And another jolly good fella hazarded: ‘or pay him some compensation for every buck he lost’. It was admirable.

What made Orji’s case extremely compelling above the many others like it was the sad fact that the man may have irretrievably lost his controlling investments in Hallmark bank, and the Southgate, where he was said to also have substantial interests. The general feeling amongst the many Diasporans gathered preponderated so much in favor of making Orji Kalu whole again - to the extent that some people even toyed with the quaint idea of encouraging Orji to explore legal means of seeking recompense from the Nigerian government for all he may have lost from the summary expulsion of Slok from Nigeria’s skies, unlawful revocation of his oil blocks, and the unfair forcible closures of Hallmark and Southgate. This postulate assumes that a political solution will remain unlikely in the foreseeable future.

A few lawyers even suggested that action may properly lie in US courts because the unique investment structure of Slok, for instance may sustain a colorable claim of minimum contacts with the United States which is all that is required for an aggressive and activist US federal court to assert long-arm personal jurisdiction over foreign sovereigns when it comes to commercial activities. But those who know Orji well maintained that he is too patriotic to attempt anything that might make Nigeria vulnerable to some foreign court and the certain diplomatic embarrassment that follows. This is not discounting the plain fact that precedents are known to exist in every democracy touting adherence to the precepts of rule of law where someone in Orji’s position had proceeded to court and easily prevailed on an action for real and exemplary damages. Yet the feeling amongst the Nigerian Diaspora gathered was that Orji is smart and statesmanlike enough to look to President Yar’Adua’s well known goodwill for the final redress that must someday soon come to Slok and other investments interests of his that were similarly imperiled by executive fiat. It is seen to be an easy political decision for President Yar’Adua because of two reasons: one – no due process was present in the time-line of the decision that led to Slok’s fall and the oil blocks to boot, in addition to the high political content and drama that pervaded them all; and two – by credible accounts, these are amongst some of the few decisions that Obasanjo is said to be now regretting. And that Orji himself is not known to have pressured Yar’Adua in this wise even made his case much more compelling and his mien as admirable as ever.

Other national issues that dominated discussions throughout the two-day symposium included the place of Professor Maurice Iwu in the present scheme of reforming Nigeria’s electoral systems and institutions. On this point, the feeling was rife that Maurice Iwu deserves national gratitude for surmounting monumental hurdles to deliver on an election that was so crucial to advancing Nigerian democracy to the next level. And considering his evident mastery of the traditional difficulties that had burdened Nigeria’s past elections, participants resolved to encourage President Yar’Adua to consider Professor Iwu an indispensable part of the nation’s current efforts at electoral reforms that make sense. Ancillary to this was the hope that Alhaji Atiku and General Buhari would, in the nearest future, see the ultimate wisdom in having their cases withdrawn from the tribunal so that Nigeria will be free from the drag that comes with protracted legal challenge of presidential poll results. Parallels were drawn from the United States and India where politicians have understood that such prolonged challenge to results of national elections, howsoever justified, ultimately brings some incalculable harm to a nation’s standing in the comity of nations. But most importantly, while applauding the Nigerian judiciary for its independence, everyone present hoped that the election tribunals hearing petitions across the country will not turn copy-cat by frivolously nullifying elections that should ordinarily stand; and that the Presidential Election Tribunal particularly will muster the requisite judicial temperament to see beyond mere legalisms and understand that nullifying a presidential election in a nation as volatile as Nigeria is no child’s play and therefore should never arise unless on a strict proof of some egregious misconduct that cannot be ignored in any circumstance. There is no evidence of such a thing yet.

Back to Orji Kalu, Slok, and oil blocks, it was the final opinion of the Nigerian Diaspora gathered that The Gambia where Slok holds sway is not known by any credible accounts to be below par in her air safety regulations, and given the exemplary performance of Slok in West Africa’s airspace industry, Nigeria stands to benefit from calling the airline back home. The benefits are legion – running the gamut from reducing the nation’s unemployment rates to adding value to the private investment portfolio of Nigeria’s aviation industry. But more to the auxiliary point of this essay, the Nigerian Diaspora feels very strongly that Obasanjo should care more about his legacy by summoning his famous courage to finally go to President Yar’Adua and encourage him to reverse some of hard-nosed decisions he seemed to have taken in too much haste, undoubtedly as a consequence of his understandable attempt to protect his political turf.

Aloy Ejimakor is of Law Group, Washington DC alloylaw@yahoo.com

TIME TO PURGE JOHN ODAH FROM THE ELECTORAL REFORM COMMITTEE

2008-01-29T06:26:00.000-08:00

TIME TO PURGE JOHN ODAH FROM THE ELECTORAL REFORM COMMITTEE

By: Aloy Ejimakor, Washington, DC

Vanguard of January 28, 2008 reported a certain Comrade John Odah of the Nigerian Labour Congress as calling for the resignation of Maurice Iwu as the Chair of INEC. Fine, Mr. Odah is a Nigerian and therefore entitled to public airing of his opinion on any national issue. But when such national issue involves the ongoing debate on the reform of Nigeria’s electoral systems and institutions, Mr Odah is no longer entitled to an unfettered expression of his opinion, and even so publicly. He is however free to hold such opinion privately and to express it to the hilt but only within the boundaries of the privileged deliberations of the Electoral Reform Committee (ERC).

The ERC is still working on the important task of giving the nation a new electoral regime that will improve on the gains of the very difficult 2007 general elections and strengthen the institutions and laws for conducting future elections in the country. Under the universal rules governing public conduct and utterances of those who serve on such committees, members are seen as quasi-public officers even though of an ad-hoc tenure, and thus barred from making public utterances that might have the appearance of pre-empting the work of the committee or jumping the gun to go beyond the letters of reference establishing the committee. Anybody who read the letters of reference for the committee will agree that Professor Maurice Iwu’s tenure as INEC Chair is not one of them. Therefore, Mr. Odah went beyond the express scope of the ERC when he took words out of the mouths of the NLC and called for Maurice Iwu’s resignation or sack. The NLC can push for such if it so wishes, but Mr. Odah, regardless of his position as General Secretary of NLC must not be part of such call for as long as he continues to serve in the ERC. Other than calling for Iwu’s resignation which carries a veiled threat to President Yar’Adua’s tenure as well, Mr. Odah should himself resign forthwith from the ERC; otherwise other members of the committee which have been embarrassed by his irresponsible behavior and inflammatory public remarks might demand and compel his resignation or it might even get to a point where President Yar’Adua will have no other choice than to fire Mr. Odah to pave way for a more responsible labor leader to be appointed to the ERC to represent the Nigerian Labor Congress.

To be sure, Mr Odah was appointed by President Yar’Adua, who is in office on an election and result declared by Professor Maurice Iwu. That means that by calling for Iwu’s sack, Mr. Odah is also questioning the legitimacy of the very President Yar’Adua who appointed him to the ERC. And taken further, Mr. Odah should know that instigating the NLC to push for Iwu’s sack will not look credible unless he also simultaneously pushes for President Yar’Adua’s resignation. So, one must assume that the real and ultimate target of this latest attack from Mr. Odah is President Yar’Adua because it is conceivable that once Mr. Odah is finished with his threat to lead a charge to hound Iwu out of office, his attention will then be directed to President Yar’Adua whose tenure was established by an election and result declared by the same Maurice Iwu and the conduct of which Mr. Odah wants Iwu’s head to roll. Whether Mr. Odah will then be patient enough to push for President Yar’Adua’s sack by peaceful means or resort to suggesting some other extra-constitutional means to accomplish his task remains to be seen. But while Mr. Odah is at it, he should be told in clear terms by all who mean Nigeria well that the reckless and veiled threats he loves to make are matters that border on the national security of Nigeria. Maurice Iwu is just one factor, but President Yar’Adua’s tenure as a consequence of the crucial 2007 general elections is central to the national security and stability of the Federation of Nigeria.

The ERC exists solely for the broad and national purpose of making recommendations to reform the electoral systems and institutions of the whole of Nigeria, and not that of Edo State alone where the AC’s loss of the governorship still makes Mr. Odah as mad as hell. So, for as long as Mr. Odah continues to dwell on the singular politics of Edo state and what he may have lost there, he will be failing in his important and broader national assignment as a member of ERC. No meaningful contribution can be expected from a man who is so embittered and partisan to the point of continually occupying his committee down-time with some desperate efforts to hold brief for the AC and entertains himself with the same old wives’ tales of fantasying on Maurice Iwu’s sack. It must be noted that Mr. Odah’s efforts are merely futile because the AC can hold its own and properly press its case at the tribunal or the courts of public opinion. The AC has its own capable partisans and apparatchiks and so does not need a busy and desperate labor leader-for-sale like Mr. Odah to make a public case against Iwu. The ERC should not be converted to a forum for partisan brinkmanship or Iwu/Yar’Adua-bashing by those who continue to engage in the crazy notion that Maurice Iwu alone should bear all the blames for all the electoral woes that have betide Nigeria since its founding.

The primary duty of a labor leader in the caliber of Mr. Odah is to occupy his time with finding lasting solutions to the myriad issues confronting the Nigerian working man if he is reluctant to take his present assignment seriously and hanker down to quietly working out a fine boilerplate for conducting the nation’s future elections. He should not lend himself as a tool for politicians with all sorts of dubious intentions because doing so will be to the larger detriment of the non-partisan labor he represents. Thus, if Mr. Odah has had it and he no longer wishes to represent labor in the ERC because he now wishes to be a revenge-seeking politician, he should do the honorable thing by resigning his leadership of the Nigerian Labor Congress and dive into the murky waters of partisan politics to his heart’s content. Nigerians will not allow him free reign to use the Nigerian Labor Congress as sword to threaten those he regards as his political opponents or a shield to protect himself when he engages in unwarranted and malicious aggression against Nigeria’s institutions and those charged with the difficult task of overseeing them.

It is pertinent to note that this is not the first time Mr. Odah has allowed himself to be swayed by naked partisanship. It was reported then that no sooner was he appointed to the ERC than he canvassed the bizarre idea that INEC be disbanded and replaced by the ERC as the new body that will conduct future elections in the country. He was then laughed off as merely lacking in proper knowledge of Nigeria’s constitutional system. It is now clear that Mr. Odah still does not understand that INEC and its chairmanship is a creation of the constitution and the ERC in which he serves is not but was created merely at the pleasure of a President that means Nigeria well, if not with Professor Iwu’s blessing as well. Thus, for entertaining such fancy ideas of hounding people out of office, Mr. Odah immediately comes across as someone who is limited in his understanding of the ad-hoc nature of the ERC or the role he has so graciously been invited to play in it. In other words, Mr. Odah has shown that he lacks the requisite character, fitness and temperament to serve as a member of such an important committee. Thus, if he does not resign, President Yar’Adua should see fit to fire him with immediate effect if the committee proves unwilling to demand his purge from its ranks. The least that Mr. Odah can expect out of his recent outbursts is an official query to show cause why he should not be removed from the ranks of the ERC forthwith.

Mr. Odah cannot defend himself by any wild claim that he was merely restating the position of NLC. Eve if it can be argued that NLC is free to take a stand either for or against Maurice Iwu or President Yar’Adua or the 2007 presidential election, Mr. Odah is supposed to recuse himself from any proceeding where such resolution is carried because not doing so will clearly mark him out as partisan, irresponsible and dangerously pre-emptive of an issue that is still receiving attention in a committee he serves as a member. It is much like the law courts where a pending matter admits of no public opinionating because it is subjudice. Anything contrary is immediately deemed pre-emptive of ongoing proceedings and is therefore sanctionable. As a former Chief Justice, an experienced Justice Uwais, who chairs the ERC can be trusted to know what to do to protect the sanctity and integrity of the proceedings of the ERC from any member who believes he can get away with such unbridled contemptuous conduct. That Mr. Odah went as far as interjecting scathing statements of his own means that he is no longer interested in serving the overall interests of Nigerians as a member of the ERC but is now engaged in a mindless political campaign and mean-spirited personality attacks of his own.

Analogies can be drawn to so many others from the civil society, labor or judiciary who serve in this government either as members of some committee or as ministers or the like. Let us take AGF Andoakaa for instance. If for any reason, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) of which Andoakaa is a member wishes to rise against Chairman Iwu or President Yar’Adua, AGF Andoakaa, though a member of the NBA will not be the one reading the resolution, not to talk of adding additional remarks of his own. As a member of the ERC, Mr. Odah is a quasi-public officer for as long as the ERC sits, and thus should exercise restraint or do what all conscientious persons do by resigning if he disagrees with those under whom he serves instead of staying put to continue to embarrass himself and the Nigerian labor which he purports to represent.

Attorney Ejimakor is the Convener of Organization of Nigerian Lawyers in Diaspora. alloylaw@yahoo.com

HOW MAURICE IWU SAVED NIGERIA FROM BEING ANOTHER KENYA

2008-01-25T04:52:00.000-08:00

HOW MAURICE IWU SAVED NIGERIA FROM BEING ANOTHER KENYA

By: Ugo Harris Ukandu, Washington DC

Election is a necessity for every democratic country because it is the only fair way for making a clear choice between two or more competing opponents for public office. But in Africa, we seem to be falling for an international conspiracy (in collaboration with a few selfish African leaders) to perpetuate the long-term aims of slavery and colonialism to divide and conquer Africans by tribe, creed, ethnicity, religion and a ‘we-versus-them’ mentality. In every African election, there is hardly a loser willing to concede victory to the opponent. Every loser begins to believe that he won once the so-called international election observers and monitors begin their usual mantra of casting aspersions on the conduct of the election and the electoral umpire. These are the same observers and monitors who prefer to stay in five-star hotels in African capitals and give opinion and recite numbers on election preparations and results in rural areas of Africa, and purvey wild statements that incite a nation against herself.

It is time to curb these activities, especially when these monitors/observers do not know much about the local political or electoral dynamics of the African locale. International organizations and other countries are welcomed to partner in elections conducted in Africa if they come with the purpose of sincere collaboration in advancing our democracy without threatening our stability. But in any case, such as in Kenya where the foreign observers usurped the powers and roles of national electoral umpires, Africans are supposed to summon the courage to tell them off like Professor Maurice Iwu did before they go too far. Kenya capitulated to excessive foreign interference and is now paying the ultimate price for it.

In both Nigeria and Kenya, the EU offered some money, demanded pride of place at meetings of national electoral umpires and wanted unchecked access to the biometric data on all registered voters. In Nigeria, a patriotic Maurice Iwu and a confident INEC refused the EU money and the demands based on sound national security considerations. And this was the point when the EU at once began a sustained international and local campaign of discrediting the Nigerian election and INEC leadership. This sowed discord among the citizens of Nigeria, the political parties and the contestants for office. Added to this were the other problems Nigeria already had to deal with such as the militancy in the Niger Delta as well as some in Kano and Yobe states. But Nigeria was to overcome because Maurice Iwu refused to play wimp like his Kenyan counterpart, who has become notorious for allowing foreigners too much leeway and now seems unwilling to defend the result he declared.

INEC and Nigerian authorities did a very good job in saving Nigeria another sad story in our history. Today INEC and Dr. Maurice Iwu have been vindicated when you look at what is happening to Kenya primarily because the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) accepted the controversial demands Maurice Iwu had rejected and thus paved the way for a situation that has made the foreign observers the ultimate electoral umpires for a sovereign and stable nation like Kenyan. For some peanuts and poor handling of her national security, Kenyan now has to deal being turned against itself and for the first time in its post-colonial history. Now with more than 700 people killed by mob and more than three hundred thousand people displaced and turned to refugees, the same two-faced EU is still on hand to help settle the problem they fueled. This has become the lot of Africans every election time, except for Nigeria which, through Maurice Iwu’s eyes, saw Kenya and rejected it before it happened.

According to a recent report by Reuters of January 17, 2008 on aid to Kenya: “European Union should freeze all aid to the Kenyan government until the crisis over President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election is solved, members of the European Parliament have said. The lawmakers, who criticized the EU executive for disbursing 40.6 million euros ($NZ78.24 million) of aid a day after the election, said the result was not credible and called for a fresh vote if a fair recount was not possible. The European Parliament asks for the freezing of all further budgetary support to the government of Kenya until a political resolution to the present crisis has been found. The disputed election has dented Kenya's democratic credentials and rattled donors. Post-election turmoil, in which hundreds have been killed, has hit Kenya's economy as well as supplies to east and central African neighbors. Although its aid is limited compared with what it gives poorer African countries, the EU is one of Kenya's top donors, providing 290 million euros between 2002 and 2007…...” unquote

As an African, I am sick and tired of the problems and havoc election has caused Africans simply because we take some aids and economic assistance that don’t mean much to our overall national development. Nigeria has matured to a point where we must reject any attempt to dictate impossible electoral values to us just because of some small foreign grants we can afford from a day’s oil royalties. As a people, we have had our fair share of foreign-instigated conflicts during our infancy as a nation and we can ill-afford such conflicts in our present state of national maturity. In 1966, my father, my family, uncles, relatives and thousands of my people and other tribes were butchered in Northern Nigeria during and after an election which led to two bloody coups in rapid succession. My heritage and faith as a person born in Northern Nigeria was totally destroyed. Evidence is legion that another major part of the reason why these had to happen was because we had easily accepted the overbearing interference and influence of the British in our domestic politics and their instigation of bitter tribal politics in what was supposed to be a healthy contest amongst African brothers that happen to speak different languages. A repeat could have occurred in 2007 if Maurice Iwu had not been around to ensure that the transition took place despite all the international and domestic conspiracies to scuttle it.

Thus, looking at Kenya, and how Maurice Iwu saved the day in Nigeria, these questions arise in my mind: Does election or democracy really matter for Africans, given that both are creating more and more problems for us? Is there any other alternative for selecting our leaders in Africa in the face of this mindset from the West that African elections are not credible? Are we being herded to a corner where we can no longer be confident of our hard-won sovereignty and then go wholesale to invite our former colonial masters back to conduct elections for us? Is there no way we can have some sort of a tenured electoral umpire (one that has delivered on a transition election) at times like this when our nation is still in democratic transition?

While considering these questions, we must first deal with the problems which are already identified as constituting some of the drag that has bedeviled our difficult match to democracy. We must begin with the role of foreign election monitors, especially the EU genre, which all together must be told clearly where their role begins and ends. Their combined influence on local electoral logistics must be curbed, otherwise we may fall into the situation that led to the problem in Kenya where these foreign observers/monitors arrogated the powers and reach of the national electoral umpires to themselves and began to call the shots as though they are the final arbiters of all elections held in Africa, and thereby undermining the local constitution and authorities. Election is one of the most important and true tests of a nation’s sovereignty and coming of age, and therefore any nation perceived as wobbling on delivering on her national elections courts the disrespect and overlordship of other nations.

When these observers/monitors discredit the election authorities working under the difficult conditions of over-heated transitions, it becomes humanly impossible for the natives or ordinary people to respect the law and order in place, if not the election outcome as well. How can you expect your citizens to respect poll results declared by electoral umpires that have already been discredited by all manners of foreigners with doubtful intentions towards your country? No election is perfect and also cannot be expected to reflect values foreign to the locale where it is conducted. The Europeans learned from their mistakes and so, they should encourage Africans to learn from their own mistakes as well. Disparagement or reckless assessments intended to isolate the electoral leadership will never cut it.

Part of the effort therefore is to encourage aggressive information management on the part of African governments of the day to counter any negative misinformation that attempts to discredit our electoral umpires and the institutions we have in place at the given point in time. Lessons can be learned from India, Taiwan, South Africa, and other emerging democracies which have done well at countering negative press and succeeded in projecting an acceptable level of some electoral purity. And most importantly, we must understand that electoral tribunals (and judgments issuing from them) are part of the overall process of all elections even in advanced democracies. Therefore, we must refrain from this infantile tendency to celebrate yet another nullification of an election as further proof of how rotten our elections are. In our system of phased electoral process, INEC is merely the agency of original jurisdiction (much like a trial court with original jurisdiction), with finality of election outcomes residing with the tribunals and other higher courts. Thus, it will not be fair to call for resignation of an INEC boss merely because a result he declared had been overturned without also calling for the mass resignation of all trial judges whose judgments are overturned on appeal.

Ugo Harris Ukandu is of Nigeria Democracy and Justice Project, Washington, DC. abujarock@yahoo.com