 Published
February 1st, 2011
His emergence as Chairman of the Independent
Electoral Commission (INEC) sometime in August, 2010, after
prolonged consultations by President Jonathan following the
forced departure of his predecessor, Professor Maurice Iwu,
was jubilantly celebrated as the panacea for the nation’s
electoral woes; supposedly heralding the dawn of a new era
in the nation’s electoral history. And given Nigeria’s
contentious electoral outing the last time around the
reverberations of which are still with us today, everyone,
including, I dare say, the professional election riggers
themselves was on the same page that the nation needed a
total break from the jinx of calamitous elections that
threaten the very foundations of the nation.
His appointment, therefore, was not supposed to be
mere change of guards to continue business as usual as in
other agencies, but one to inaugurate a revolutionary epoch
that would effectively consign the past to the past never to
rear its ugly head again in the nation’s electoral affairs.
And that expectation was not pulled from the air just like
that, but solidly founded on the president’s solemn pledge
and the commitment of the National Assembly to the nation to
do it right this time around in order to remove, once and
for all, both domestic and international stigma from our
elections. As far as the president and the National
Assembly, and indeed, the nation were concerned, no
sacrifice would be too great and no mountain would be too
steep to climb, paraphrasing the immortal words of late US
President JFK, to get to where we wanted our nation to be in
the conduct of her democratic transitions. In other words,
the nation was able, willing, and ready to throw in whatever
she had at INEC even if it meant Nigerians starving.
And he was universally acclaimed as the right man
to get it right. Never before in the nation’s tortured
electoral history had the appointment of one man brought so
much relief to the nation and restored so much hope and
confidence on her electoral agency, INEC, for a better and
much improved electoral outing in this and subsequent
electoral cycles. And he was swept into his expansive office
on the crest of public goodwill which knew no bounds.
However, when we get right down to it, we will find that the
hope and confidence reposed in the man were somewhat
misplaced because they were largely borne out of
superficialities rather than of any substantive resume of
the man at the center of it all—Professor Attahiru Jega, now
arguably on the nation’s hottest seat. And this writer has
had cause to point this out in the past. Dishing out
Marxism/Leninism theories to a bunch of students in the
classroom is not the same thing as organizing elections even
for a local government area. And that fundamental difference
is already manifesting itself to the chagrin of the nation.
Today, it is doubtful if the hitherto overflowing fountain
of public goodwill on Jega is still active or extinct. If it
is not already extinct, that volcanic eruption of goodwill
has definitely cooled down and it’s only a matter of time
before Nigerians start calling for Jega’s head as they did
for his predecessors. They’re already bestirring themselves
and glimpses of that are already evident.
Therefore, although Jega had little more than his
admittedly impeccable academic robes to bring to the job,
his public persona acquired as erstwhile president of the
nation’s radical university teachers’ association, ASUU, was
enough to instill calm in the frayed nerves of the political
class mainly in the opposition, who wanted no one else but
Jega. To be sure though Jega had a lot going for him in
terms of personal integrity and independent mindedness;
qualities that are essential for the job of INEC’s helmsman.
Besides he had served as secretary to the Justice Uwais
Panel on INEC, which made sweeping recommendations to the
government some of which have been implemented. However,
those are just the basic qualities that do not necessarily
speak to the on-the-job-demands and, therefore, not nearly
enough to place the man on a solid footing for the daunting
tasks that laid in wait for him at INEC headquarters. In
other words, his cognate resume did not exactly match his
job description. And if not for the fact that his was a
purely political appointment, he would probably not have
made the short list in the first place. Sitting in some cozy
air-conditioned office to receive memos and dishing out
recommendations on paper is one thing and actually
implementing the recommendations in real world situation is
quite another as it has clearly become evident. No sooner he
got the job than the evidence began to pile up of his lack
of gravitas for the job. Iwu’s shoes are simply too big for
him and he is only limping in them, not walking let alone
running. The man was soon to find out that the utopian world
of academia is so different from the real world where
different players and cross forces are at play at the same
time with some cancelling out one another, and others
prevailing albeit temporarily, that not only defy, but in
fact make nonsense of the theoretical idealism of the ivory
towers where he belongs and to where he should, candidly
speaking, return before our hopes and aspirations are
totally dashed on the rocks of gross incompetence.
However, it is clear that the problems of INEC are
beyond INEC and many of them are traceable to the
incompetence of other critical agencies such as the security
agencies and our incorrigible politicians as we have seen in
the disappearance of DDC machines right at the airport and
now from INEC storage facilities and registration centers.
There is no question as to who are behind these heists.
According to latest report “INEC
Loses 20 DDC Machines To Thieves,”
carried by the Tribune newspaper, the electoral body may
have lost no less than 20 machines to hoodlums so far and
still counting some of them right under the nose of security
officers at registration centres. Would anyone argue that
with the DDC machines suddenly acquiring biological
properties immediately they touched Nigerian soil at Murtala
Muhammed Airport (MMA) by growing long legs and simply
walking away unchallenged from INEC stores and registration
centres would not result in denying thousands their rights
to be registered to vote? Is anyone out there seriously in
doubt that those machines that couldn’t grow legs and walk
away which happened to be the ones breaking down
intermittently and constantly being shipped to repair shops
and winding up being marked “return merchandise to
suppliers,” would not negatively impact the outcomes of the
registration exercise resulting in disenfranchisement of
hundreds of thousands, if not millions of eligible
Nigerians? How many DDC machines would be available to INEC
to do the job with the rate of stealing and breakdown? Your
guess is as good as mine.
But one has got to ask the question as to how a
nation of 150million hotheads came to this sorry pass. It’s
precisely because she was intimidated by rabble rousers to
throw away the baby with the bathwater! Although everyone,
especially those strident voices from the camp of the
opposition were quick to ask for the head of the former
Chairman of INEC on account of his alleged incompetence, no
one, not even the media, was prepared to critically examine
the nature of the daunting challenges facing the body and
all of INEC’s woes were conveniently reduced to one man, and
one man only, Professor Maurice Iwu. Remove him, they howled
at us, and all would be just fine with INEC and our
elections! That was the gospel according to the book of the
opposition. Iwu’s replacement was stridently touted by the
“Lagos Axis of Evil” as the cure all for INEC’s diseases.
One, Femi Falana, took it rather personal by going to court
to compel his ouster alleging against the clear provisions
of the law, that Iwu’s appointment had expired before its
due date, all in desperate and unconscionable attempts to
forcefully remove him before his due date.
As Shakespeare would put it, he was like a dog tied
to the stake and bayed from all sides by other dogs, but
unable to fight back. And so it came to pass that anyone who
could find one, including even the lame, carried a club to
strike Iwu on his head, including, get this, even the NLC
that forgot the woes of its members to jump on Iwu. Yes,
even the same NLC, led by the same Abdulwheed Omar, who is
now rushing to defend Jega’s scandalous handling of the
registration exercise, lifted its otherwise timid hands to
strike Maurice Iwu on his head, because he was tied to the
stake and could not fight back his vicious attackers. And
all of that animus was because he had refused to award the
presidency to Buhari or Atiku or I should say to both of
them since both claimed to have won the 2007 presidential
elections and went to court to claim victory. Perhaps they
would have shared the presidency between them had both of
them won their cases against Yar’Adua. Too bad they were not
as lucky as other failed candidates like them in Edo, Ekiti,
Osun and Ondo states, whom the gods of the Nigerian
Judiciary smiled upon to “reclaim” their mandates.
No one could see that INEC problems had very little
to do with its head as they are with the system itself, that
is to say, the environment in which it has been made to
operate. No one could figure out that you could replace the
head of the body a million times over and the problems would
remain untouched if the environment is not fundamentally
changed for the better. A tree can only grow in a suitable
and conducive soil not in an inhospitable and hostile soil.
I thought that was elementary wisdom enough not rocket
science, but I have since realized that politics is not
about wisdom but about something else called “politrics” and
grandstanding.
Thus a president, who publicly voiced his
preference for experienced hands to return to the National
Assembly and Government Houses in the States, wound up
appointing a complete rookie into such a sensitive and
critical agency as INEC. And today the nation is harvesting
bountifully the fruits of that presidential capitulation to
the demands of political blackmailers. Even though it was
politically expedient to let Iwu go, his manner of departure
left much to be desired from the point of view of his
treatment by the government and, I dare say, the nation in
general, because only few voices were raised in his defense
even by those who ought to have known better that it is not
about him but about the system itself. And I want to single
out the Edo State Governor, Adams Oshimhole, for coming to
Iwu’s defense then, which was at variance with the position
of his party, ACN.
It must bear notice, however, that the same
challenges that bedeviled INEC under Iwu are rearing their
ugly heads again in much greater reliefs, because the
environment in which INEC operated back then has not changed
significantly or at all. The only thing that has changed is
leadership at the center and with that, the unbridled
funding of INEC. But that has not had much of an effect
either, because INEC’s problem is not money, but systemic
and structural anomalies that have been left untouched and
seemingly untouchable in a nation bedeviled by entrenched
interests even within INEC itself. Today, however, with the
obvious disaster that has become of his replacement, those
strident voices that had demanded Iwu’s head to be delivered
to them on platter of gold have all curiously fallen silent
as if all is now well and dandy with INEC and our electoral
journey. The loud and shrill voices of the Tinubus and the
Falanas and the so-called civil society groups in the Lagos
Axis, who were at the forefront of demonizing Iwu have
suddenly fallen loudly silent. You can bet on this that if
Iwu was still the head of INEC today with this terrible mess
going on, they would have literarily brought down the roof
literarily on our heads. If he had dared to lift his hand to
ask for half of what Jega got, he would have been lynched
and crucified outright in broad daylight literarily in the
streets of Lagos. It is utterly amazing how a supposedly
intelligent people would simply reduce our serious systemic
maladies that needed to be holistically addressed to
personalities whose faces they don’t seem to like. And this
has been going on since independence. Hack the head off and
all would be well with us! What a simplistic mindset! But
how has the change of personality substantively improved the
fortunes of INEC so far since Iwu left? That is the
inevitable question that needs to be answered by the Tinubus
and the Falanas in Nigeria.
I’ll answer it for them straight up: The fortunes
of INEC have nosedived and taken a turn for the worse since
Iwu left. And that is not an opinion but obvious facts on
the ground today. For starters, just look at the few bye
elections and reruns conducted by INEC under Jega in Ekiti
and Delta states and compare them with the last three
elections conducted by INEC under Iwu in Abuja, and Anambra
and Delta states, and you’ll find that the difference in
quality and integrity cannot be clearer. While Nigerians
hailed those elections and the president himself publicly
touted them as evidence of an improved INEC under Iwu,
nothing but public outcries trailed those conducted by INEC
under Jega with INEC trading blames with other agencies. I
don’t want to be misunderstood here: No one is saying here
that INEC under Iwu was a paragon of efficiency and
effectiveness. It fell short of public expectation in 2007,
but it had substantially improved in performance after the
2007 elections under presidents Yar’Adua and Jonathan. That
is important. And any sensible nation would have opted to
build on those improvements rather than pulling down the
walls altogether.
Now, lets get right down to the real issues: What
exactly are the real problems with INEC, whether under Iwu
or Jega or somebody else? The answer is obvious, enough in
my view. The relevant competences are almost totally lacking
in Nigeria. Of course that’s why foreign powers always step
in to help wherever they can to bridge the yawning gap
somewhat. INEC lacks both managerial and technical
competences and that, of course, includes logistics. Those
in charge of these technical issues are not professionals
but civil servants, who don’t have the requisite skill sets
to get things done professionally. INEC’s logistics, for
instance, should not be handled in house because it simply
cannot. Rather, it should be outsourced to reputable firms
within and outside the country. Imagine this for a second:
INEC has gone digital but with its logistics still in the
Stone Age! How do you marry digital DDC systems with Stone
Age analog logistics for the exercise? Incongruence is the
word. They don’t belong together. Besides, how do you go
hi-tech when you, the head and your entire organization are
basically analog? How do you simply pull analog hands from
the street to operate hi-tech equipment overnight with no
test runs or pilot projects to ascertain their
functionalities and workability? That is a surefire recipe
for the disaster that we have seen. Again, INEC should not
rely on the congenitally corruption laden Nigerian Police
Force for anything resembling security. Rather, it should
have its own security apparatus. The voter registration has
further exposed the structural and managerial weaknesses of
INEC that Jega has been unable to put a handle on six months
after his appointment. It has also exposed the man’s sense
of judgment on critical technical and managerial issues.
Allow me to quickly add here though that I’m not
trying to blame everything on Jega as an individual as I
have already indicated above, because many of the problems
are clearly beyond him as a person even though he is the
head with the buck rightfully stopping at his desk. And
that’s why he should have been more sober and circumspect in
condemning the records of his predecessor in office rather
than joining the chorus of Iwu bashers especially so for a
rookie like him who had yet to be baptized. He should have
known better than running his loud mouth against his
predecessor’s records when he took over even before he knew
where the big shoes he had put on would pinch. Now under
heat for his scandalous performance he is threatening to
resign. Now too, he is racing to outperform Iwu in electoral
mismanagement. If what happened under Jega in Ekiti and
Delta are indications of what to expect in the April general
elections many Nigerians would wish for Iwu to be brought
back to INEC to continue from where he stopped, because
rather than moving forward we have moved backwards since he
left office. Again, that is not an opinion but the facts on
the ground starring at us all in the face.
Iwu cried out loud about the challenges he was
faced with while in office, but the nation laughed him to
scorn and threw him out like a piece of trash with utter
disrespect which I found stunning indeed. Why am still
talking about Iwu? It’s because of what is happening now
with INEC. It’s because of the ill-treatment meted to him by
the Nigerian nation. But you know something; they may have
thrown him out, but they didn’t throw him out with those
problems he cried about which remained at INEC and inherited
by his substitute, Jega. His detractors sure had political
agenda to avenge their defeats in the 2007 elections, which
they blamed on his person not even the agency as a whole as
an institution. Therefore, rather than blame INEC’s poor
performance on systemic and structural failures, Iwu’s
detractors would rather they blamed it on his alleged
incompetence and partisan manipulation by the powers that
be. And although no tangible evidence of those charges were
laid before the public, each time a partisan court or
election tribunal handed down a partisan judicial ruling to
upturn any election results against the PDP, it gave
ammunitions to his detractors as purported evidence of his
incompetence and manipulation. However, each time an
election result was sustained by the courts or election
tribunal, the man received no credits, but the same
sustained, vicious attacks. There was no let up.
But how could he be wrong all of the time even when
the courts or tribunal upheld the results he declared? Or,
put another way, how could the man be right and be wrong at
the same time? Why would he be criticized when the judiciary
upturned the results he declared and not credited and
praised for the results that were upheld? What did that say
about fairness? Sounds to me like double standards. When we
critically examine the election results upturned by the
courts, however, we will find that a great majority of them
were purely on technicalities rather than on substantive
issues of votes scored by the candidates. Should the nation
be so sanctimonious as to crucify someone for results
upturned on mere technicalities by the judiciary? I don’t
think so. And what’s more, far more results were upheld than
were upturned by the courts at all levels. The records are
there for those who care to investigate. Without Iwu
proceeding with the elections as he did in those difficult
days when opposition elements were plotting for Interim
Government, there would have been no transition and our
democracy would have been history by now—no question about
it. Yet the man got absolutely no credits whatsoever even
for the things he did right. Head or tail he was already a
marked man and no amount of judicial affirmation of the
results he declared in presidential, gubernatorial,
senatorial or house election, was good enough to save his
job. And that is line with the history of INEC. Under such
atmosphere of unbridled blackmail it was understandably
difficult for the president to retain the man and eventually
had to yield ground to the opposition by bringing in one of
their own—a radical and noted critic of government’s
policies and performance, especially in the education
sector, where he cut his teeth.
That profile and persona was what Jega brought to
the table and nothing more. Was that enough? Hardly enough,
but it was obviously enough for our delusional opposition.
And all of a sudden the tempest in Nigeria’s political sea
gave way to calm and soothing breeze that soon lulled
everyone into slumber. The Redeemer of our electoral faith
had arrived with the magic wand in his right hand as he went
about featuring on talk shows pontificating and
proselytizing about how he would deliver credible voter
register and free and fair elections where every vote would
count, all of which was sweet music to the ears of his
captive audience.
However, while he was singing his lullabies to
mesmerized politicians that soon fell asleep on him, by the
time they woke up Jega had, pronto, made away with N87.7bn
supposedly for updating INEC’s Voter Register that was
already in the process of being tidied up by Iwu, which he
promptly dismissed as not worthy of its name and he needed a
fresh start. That amounted to throwing away the baby with
the bathwater. A new Voter Register, the nation was told,
would cost her a whooping N87bn easily making Nigeria’s
Voter Register a candidate for the Guinness Book of Record
for no other nation even comes close to it.And when some
nosy and pesky Nigerians like yours truly began to ask
questions Jega shut them up by claiming that the amount
would put 70million Nigerians on the Voter Register that Iwu
supposedly left out in his wretched, discredited paperwork
that supposedly gave us a failed election. How much would
that translate to per voter? Grab your calculator and do the
math. I’m not a math guru but I guarantee it will run into
tens of millions of naira per voter with Nigeria’s present
population of 150 million. And don’t forget, not all the
150million Nigerians are eligible for registration. At best
only 70 million of them Jega promised to register, roughly
half of the population. Not bad for a nation gushing with
petrodollars that she could afford to throw away while
millions are going without food on their tables and making
do with under $1 a day? Is that an acceptable proposition?
You be the judge.
What would be the total for the entire elections
proper? Don’t even go there yet. That would be getting ahead
of ourselves because the N87.7bn we have been told falls
short of what is required to put 70million Nigerians on the
Voter Register. But if you must know it will cost the nation
a whopper in the region of N100bn, the new request of N6bn
inclusive to organize the April elections because like the
Oliver Twist that he has become, Jega is asking for
additional N6bn to complete the job. But the question is how
many Nigerians has he been able to put on the Voter Register
with the N87.7bn since the voter registration exercise began
more than a week ago? The answer to this question is
absolutely critical because his performance will be judged
not by the billions he spent but by the number of Nigerians
securely placed on the electronic Voter Register. He cannot
just be throwing good money at bad machines and untrained
and incompetent personnel. Now, here is the answer directly
from the man himself not me as reported by ThisDayOnline
012711 edition:
“...by two days ago, we have
registered 28.5 million Nigerians, on an average of 4.3
million per day and things are improving, that average is
going up, and by our own estimation by Saturday, January 29,
when we close, we would have registered between 23 and 25
million Nigerians. If we get an additional extension of
seven days still using that projection of 4.3 million per
day, by the end of that one week, we will be able to
register more than 65 million Nigerians.”
There you had it, not from
me, but straight from the horse’s mouth telling you that at
the end of the timeframe allotted for the two-week exercise,
which is Janunary 29, 2011, a day before this write up was
sent out for publication, he would have registered only
between 23 and 25 million Nigerians out of the 70millions he
collected N87.7bn for.
Please don’t ask him what
happened to the remainder 45million Nigerians? If you do
Jega has figured out an answer for that question ahead of
time in case some pesky, nosy pecker decided to bug him.
Here is the answer again straight from the horse’s mouth: “I
don’t think there will be any problem, as even the 70
million registrable figure we are talking about is just a
mere projection based on what we had on the old register
which has been variously described as not credible”.
Did you get that? I
understood him perfectly. Jega is telling us that he could
not even attain the record of 70million voters found in
Iwu’s Voter Register he had discredited which was produced
with just N11bn! Just imagine this for a second before
proceeding any further: In 2006 Iwu produced Voter Register
containing the names of 70million Nigerians literarily with
bare hands and in 2011 his loudmouthed, boastful successor
could barely produce a Voter Register containing the names
of 25million Nigerians with hundreds of thousands of DDC
machines at the cost of N87.7bn and still counting! And as
if that was not enough it has been alleged by the “Senators’
Forum” comprised of both serving and former senators, which
parades such big names as former Senate Presidents, Chief
Pius Anyim, Ken Nnamani,
Abubakar Sodangi Abubakar Sodangi,
Abubakar Girei and others as reported by The Guardian
012811 edition, that local communities have virtually
assumed responsibility for providing registration and
logistical materials for INEC.
“As a result of these, even where registration had taken
place minimally, the role of INEC has been passed to the
various communities which had been overburdened or overtaxed
by making funds available to provide generating sets, fuel,
ink pads or food to the members of staff for the exercise.
“As a result, we are afraid that millions of Nigeria would
be disenfranchised,” lamented the forum’s Chairman, Senator
Khairat Gwadabe, at media briefing.
These are weighty allegations
and they are coming from respectable individuals. In plain
language these leaders are alleging that INEC had abdicated
its responsibility to villagers to provide registration
materials as well as logistics. If this is indeed the case
then something has got to be terribly wrong somewhere. It
sounds to me this is turning out to be the biggest swindle
that has yet come out the 419 industry in Nigeria. It’s
increasingly looking like someone is out there playing
Father Christmas to Youth Corp members and junk machines
suppliers for doing nothing and supplying refurbished
electronic scrap metals in the name of DDC machines at the
nation’s expense. Like the nation’s lawmakers in the
National Assembly everybody is seeking his own shares of the
so-called “Democracy Dividends”. And so my question is: Is
this some Democracy Dividends for our jobless youth Corp
members? I have no against that in particular, I just want
an honest answer from Jega and his INEC. That’s all, because
even Youth Corp members are entitled to the dividends of
democracy, not only lawmakers and ministers and politicians.
They are Nigerians too. I wonder though when the ordinary
man in the street will get his own democracy dividends.
Maybe during the elections proper in April when they too are
hired and become private militias for crooked politicians to
rubbish the elections!
We have been receiving an
avalanche of complaints about the quality of machines
supplied by INEC’s greedy contractors many of which
supposedly “new” machines inexplicably have dead batteries
and malfunctioning electronics. How come that is the case
for supposedly brand new machines? Jega owes the nation an
explanation about the status of the machines supplied by its
contractors at such scandalously high prices. It is not
enough to admit hiccups encountered with the machines. The
nation deserves to know the truth about those machines, the
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And on its
part, it is not enough for the National Assembly, which has
oversight responsibility for INEC to seek assurance from
Jega about the ultimate success of the exercise. It has the
responsibility of probing the source and quality of the
machines supplied to INEC, and bring to book those involved
in procuring for INEC malfunctioning machines to defraud the
nation of such huge sums. Not only that, since INEC
officials are busy heaping blames on Youth Corp members
handling the machines, the nation would want to know what
kind of training was given to them many of whom may not have
seen or used a computer before they were handed one for an
important exercise like this. The National Assembly ought to
find out whether or not INEC simply handed them so-called
“training modules” and sent them to the wolves just like
that or they were given real-world drills before they were
deployed to the field to face the real world. The probe can
wait until INEC is through with the registration. It should
not be rushed now so as to avoid giving INEC yet another
excuse for its failures. Right now Jega is shopping for
excuses and never seems to run out of them.
But just think of this: If
brand new machines cannot perform the first time they are
deployed for this exercise there is no reason to expect them
to perform in subsequent voter registration or update
exercises down the road. Or are the DDC machines disposables
and not meant to be used for subsequent election cycles?
Will the nation be forced to cough out another N96bn to
purchase yet another set of scrap metals in the name of DDC
machines in subsequent elections? Or am I getting ahead of
myself here? No, I’m not, because even if they’re eventually
fixed and used today, none of those dead machines will be
available in 2015 for the general elections, because by 2015
they would have all been stolen from INEC’s warehouseS and
later resold to the same INEC for N96bn! And that’s why
Nigeria is making so much progress with INEC and election!
Even as Jega bristles with
optimism that he would achieve 65 million voter registration
figure in the end if only he was granted a 7-day extension
by the National Assembly and given additional funds, there
is no guarantee that his projection based on field reports
from his men whom the Senate President David Mark had
appropriately cautioned him not to overly rely upon, that
the contents of his Voter Register would be credible and
pass the test of time. It has become abundantly clear that
Jega is not up to the job. A chief executive who is always
falling short in his projections as to timeframes, materials
and funding requirements is a disaster waiting to happen.
And I’m afraid Jega is a disaster waiting to happen. And I’m
not just saying this because of what mess he has made of not
just the voter registration exercise but the mess he has
made of the entire electoral process right from the
beginning, including the endless requests for constitutional
amendments to accommodate his gross and endless
inefficiencies. Right now both the Senate and the House have
hurriedly re-amended the Electoral Act to accommodate this
new request for additional time.
Back on November 2nd
2010, I wrote an article titled, Jega: Promising
More—Delivering Less (PMDL) in which I had this to say
about the man. And I’ll leave it to the reader to determine
whether I have been proved right or wrong in the light of
the new developments:
“Rather than perfecting the
electoral process for which he was hired, Jega is busy
perfecting the art of blackmail at the nation’s expense and
preparing the nation for the ultimate failure of the 2011
general elections.
He has
succeeded in foisting on the nation a state of inertia where
it can neither move forward nor backward until a looming
disaster is upon it. He has held us all hostages to his
wiles and guiles by subjecting the electoral process to
unnecessary contortions, twists and turns.”
Note the phrase
“looming disaster” used in the above quote. That’s precisely
what has happened and may yet happen again in April. And
that makes it a disaster predicted and a prediction
fulfilled. The title of this piece is derived from the
above. I don’t know
about you but I would consider anyone who is handed N87.7bn
and given 5 to 6 solid months to prepare an ordinary voter
register and still came back short both in time and money a
disaster waiting to happen if, in fact, it has not already
happened.
And speaking directly to the
lack of technical and managerial expertise available to
Jega’s INEC to successfully deploy the DDC machines for the
Voter Registration exercise, this writer raised an alarm to
warn against what I saw back then as a disaster waiting to
happen in article titled,
Travails of Democracy in Nigeria (Part Two): The Looming
Election Fiasco—Digital Disenfranchisement of Nigerians at
the Polls
.
Again,
I seek the readers’ permission to reproduce parts of that
article as contained below:
“And you might want to ask:
where is the guarantee that the new voter register to be
delivered with the so-called Direct Data Capture (DDC)
machines will deliver as promised? Where is the guarantee
that a people who could not operate manually will be able to
operate mechanically and technologically.”
“In all probability, therefore vote
rigging at source is a foregone conclusion. Rigging will
simply go digital in Nigeria from manual and there is
nothing Professor Attahiru Jega can do about it! INEC has
neither the technological wherewithal nor the physical
control and management of these machines to ensure both
their functionality and integrity of their inputs and
outputs.”
“And what’s more: whatever security
measures put in place by INEC are not foolproof and can
never be 100% foolproof when it comes to technology. If the
mere award of contracts for these machines have presented
such a huge challenge for INEC how much more so will be
their actual operation and management! INEC should have
known better that electronic voter registers offer no
guarantees against rigging and that realization should have
advised an alternative approach. And the government and
political parties sold on this idea should have done due
diligence to verify its workability and integrity by
visiting and learning from other nations that have used them
rather than taking it all hook, line, and sinker. It’s
foolish to dive right into a river just because others have
done so without first learning of the dangers that might be
lurking right below the surface.” This passage speaks for
itself.
Finally, if it could be this
bad with ordinary voter registration one could only imagine
what it would look like with the elections proper. Absolute
calamity! Just thinking about it alone sends your adrenaline
going wild. While Jega needs all our prayers to succeed the
man himself needs a complete makeover. I would sincerely
advise him to get professionals to handle critical aspects
of the job not civil servants. He should consider using
trained teachers not complete greenhorns like youth Corp
members fresh from college with no field experience
whatsoever for the elections proper. And if Youth Corp
members must be used, they require long period of training
and sufficient field drills to properly acclimatize, because
the BIG ONE is ahead of us not BEHIND us. Buckle up Jega and
make the history books. You hold in your hands the history
of the 2011 elections. It’s for you to make or mar. The
choice is yours and excuses will not cut it this time
around. It is my hope that Jega will take all the criticisms
in good faith because they are borne out of genuine concern
and Nigerians of goodwill genuinely want him to succeed
because his success redounds to the success of the nation
and a source of pride for Nigerians everywhere. Therefore he
must take all the barbs in his strides. They come with the
territory. And if in doubt he should go ask his
predecessors, particularly Iwu. I’m sure he would have a
word or two for him. Or maybe not..!
From the stable of –Cutting-Edge Analytics—Where
News Meets the Intellect--
Franklin Otorofani is an Attorney and Public
Affairs Analyst.
Contacts:
mudiagaone@yahoo.com,
http://franklinotorofani.wordpress.com/
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