 Published
May 4th, 2010
"I am convinced that
the present INEC can conduct free and credible elections.” ---Ag President Goodluck Jonathan.
Oh,
really, Mr. Ag President? Well, it turned out Jonathan
already had Iwu’s sack order in his presidential briefcase
in Washington, DC, while engaging in doublespeak publicly.
“Yet
I’m not so naïve as to think that the presidential
endorsement of Iwu would automatically save his job. That
may not have been its intendment. On the contrary it might
actually have been designed to provide a soft landing for
Iwu. This is election time and the Ag President might be
compelled by other weighty political considerations to
quietly ease out the INEC chairman and some of his
subordinate commissioners in the pending review promised by
the Ag President.”---Franklin
Otorofani.
Right on the money! This writer clearly saw through the smokescreen of
Jonathan’s gratuitous profession of faith in INEC and let it
out prime time ahead of the bombshell when no one else did.
Talk about foresight!
Before
Yar’Adua’s prolonged indisposition suddenly thrust Jonathan
into national limelight, not much was publicly known about
the Jonathan persona very much like his reclusive boss
before he became president. Although the hermitic Yar’Adua
was not terribly visible himself publicly, preferring to
hole up in his presidential monastery buried deep inside the
famed Aso Rock, Jonathan’s face was completely blotted out
of the radar screen neither to be seen nor heard. Thus since
2007, Nigeria has been the first nation on earth to operate
an invisible presidency. That must have qualified her for
the Guinness Book of Records. It’s a feat that only Nigeria
could perform.
But how did
Nigeria get into this dark-age and got herself sucked into
this leadership eclipse? The election year 2007 springs to
mind. Both colorless, self-effacing men were dark horses
drafted by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to assume the
center stage of national leadership. It has turned out not
to be the best decision OBJ has made in his public life and
one could imagine him ruing over it. The dark horse from
Katsina remained a dark even in power refusing to take his
place among his peers in the world stage. It didn’t come as
a surprise therefore that the Yar’Adua administration was
(is) just as colorless as its head. And although Ag
President Jonathan would much rather prefer to create and
lead his own administration to be properly recognized and
chronicled as the “Jonathan administration,” he’s
constitutionally yoked to the “Yar’Adua administration” from
which he cannot free himself unless and until he becomes the
substantive president, which has since been foreclosed for
reasons that are anything but constitutional. Technically,
therefore, Yar’Adua is still in power and Jonathan is
currently holding forth for him while he recuperates (?) in
his monastery attended to by an assortment of imported
clerics seemingly on spiritual services contracts with the
Federal Government.
They’re now
offering round-the-clock intercessory prayers for the
president’s quick return to office to enable him return
Jonathan to his former invisible status so that the nation
can move forward (?) or move backward, depending on your
point of view. The reader’s guess is as good as mine. So
far, though, the nation has yet to be briefed whether or not
she’s getting value for the money being generously paid to
the clerics for their nocturnal visits to the seat of power.
In law every contract must have valuable consideration and
the one with the clerics cannot be different. What is the
consideration or is it pro-bono? Someone owes the nation an
answer. Jonathan needs to update the nation on that because
it’s tax payers’ money that’s being thrown at some
opportunists trading in the name of God. But he seems to
have imbibed the Yar’Adua code of silence which offends the
notion of transparency and accountability of the government
to the people.
But that’s
where the comparison ends. Jonathan has cut an enigmatic
profile of one who’s ready to stoop to conquer, unlike his
predecessor, former VP Abubakar Atiku, who neither stoops
nor conquers, but conquered. Jonathan commands and projects
a disarming aura of simplicity and innocence that masks his
tall political ambition and granite determination to
actualize it. And he seems to have some Machiavellian
streaks in his constitution—of the end justifying the means.
Since Jonathan cautiously and tepidly stepped into
Yar’Adua’s presidential shoes as Ag President, courtesy of
the Doctrine of Necessity, he has left no one in doubt that
he’s anything but Yar’Adua in the decisive manner he has
handled thorny issues assailing the polity. From the
demotion of former AGF Aondoakaa to the un-fancied, obscure
Ministry of Special Duties, to the firing of the former
National Security Adviser, and thereafter to the dissolution
and reconstitution of the Federal Executive Cabinet, coupled
with the revamped war on corruption, Jonathan has
demonstrated that he needs no executive tutorials in the use
of power. He appears to have mastered the art of power in
the deft and decisive manner he has wielded and deployed it
to devastating effects. Part of his decisive use of power,
however, has to do with his understandable desire to make an
impact within the limited timeframe available to him before
the next election, tentatively slated for January, 2011, for
which he has not altogether ruled himself out.
He has my
unflinching support, if indeed he desires the office as I
had put out in a previous article, because I believe and
rightly so, that he has the right to vie for any office in
the land like every other Nigerian if only to rubbish the
notion that the presidency of the nation could be zoned to a
particular section of the country to the total exclusion of
other sections. The nation is not privy to that unwritten,
private code. I don’t believe in the anachronism of
turn-by-turn or so-called rotational presidency. And he has
precedents to guide him should he decide to contest. Late
Abubakar Rimi was opposed to the PDP zoning formula and
contested against OBJ in 2003 in the party’s primaries. The
PDP didn’t stop him.
At this
moment Jonathan is riding on a rollercoaster of popularity
on his job performance. And if he were to contest election
against his boss at this point in time, he would coast to
victory effortlessly over Yar’Adua all things being equal.
But the honeymoon will not last. It never does anyway. If in
doubt, he should ask the United States President, Barack
Obama, whose popularity was in the stratosphere at his
inauguration, where his job approval ratings are at the
moment. As productive as Obama is, his job approval ratings
are currently in the low thirties at the moment—one of the
lowest in recent memories. And if he were to go for
re-election today, he would be roundly trounced by his
opponent. The once invincible Obama aura has worn thin
within his first year in office. And every election
candidate Obama endorsed and campaigned for has lost an
election from senatorial race in New Hampshire for the bye
election to fill the vacancy caused by the death of
Democratic icon, Ted Kennedy, to gubernatorial race in
Virginia, and even to New York’s mayoral race in a city
where the Democrats outnumber Republicans almost three to
one. He has gone to the state of Nevada to campaign for the
embattled Harry Reid and the augury is not pretty for the
Senate Majority Leader. He has also gone to the state of
California to campaign for the beleaguered senator Barbara
Boxer and the augury is not flattering either. All of a
sudden the once magical name “Obama” while still hugely
popular abroad, has become a huge political liability in the
United States and the surest way to lose an election is to
have President Obama campaign for the candidate—all because
he has sought to please every fringe group in the country by
pursuing what appears to be populist policies the same way
Jonathan appears to be doing. Well it turns out the people
are not impressed after all! Obama has miscalculated. That
should serve as poignant lesson for Jonathan—that it is not
altogether a wise thing to want to please everybody by
taking actions that are seemingly designed to curry favors
and score cheap political points. Leadership is not a
popularity contest and the earlier Jonathan gets that into
his mind the better for him.
His
bombshell on Iwu on his arrival from the United States has
all the trappings of a patronizing and embarrassing
afterthought, which gave him away not as someone who was
ready to lead on this issue, but willing to be led by the
nose by the forces opposed to Iwu at home and abroad. More
pointedly, however, Jonathan has cut an image of someone who
is ready to sacrifice others to achieve his political
ambition. Piece by piece the real Jonathan in the Jonathan
that we see but knew little about is beginning to reveal
itself in interesting dimensions. He seems ready to break
skulls to get his way and goes out of his way to curry
political support from critical constituencies that happen
to be anti-Iwu. His hot pursuit of ex-Delta State Governor,
James Ibori, and the PDP Chairman, Victor Ogbulafor, coupled
with his summary ouster of Maurice Iwu while at the same
time taking steps to rehabilitate el-Rufai and Nuhu Ribadu
are clear pointers of the Jonathan game plan. How far he is
prepared to go is still up in the air. But sooner rather
than later, Jonathan will find out that those anti-Iwu
opposition elements whose support and approval he is out to
court to actualize his political ambition will be the first
to turn on him and undermine his political ambition when it
matters most, not Iwu. He will come to learn that bitter
lesson in politics that the present honeymoon with the
opposition is nothing but fleeting sunshine that will soon
be replaced with dark clouds. The very notion of placating
the opposition in politics is not only naïve but
counter-productive as President Obama has since found out
with the Republicans in the United States who are doing
everything to undermine his presidency and ensure his
failure as president so that they could regain power. While
it might sound wicked, it’s the duty of the opposition to
unseat the government formed by an opposing party. Jonathan
has a rude awakening ahead of him from the AC and the CNPP
and, indeed, the NLC, all of which he’s out to please and to
whose leaders he has now naively and timidly offered Iwu as
sacrificial lamb.
Now, let’s
put matters in context. The first quote above was attributed
to Jonathan while he was in Washington, D.C., and the second
belongs to this writer taken from an article published
earlier this week titled: “Iwu: Changing Perceptions &
Presidential Absolution before His Crucifixion” that is
still running. Both quotes have been deliberately juxtaposed
to highlight two things. (1) That Jonathan is first and
foremost a politician and all politicians are given to
double-talk as their trademark even when statesmanship and
candor demand otherwise.
In general,
politicians are unable to remove the politician in them and
assert their statesmanship in matters of national
importance. When they’re boxed into a tight corner from
which they need to extricate themselves momentarily, they
quickly reach for their toolbox and pull out the tool named,
“Double-Speak” and use it to wriggle themselves out of an
embarrassing or uncomfortable position in which they find
themselves. Jonathan found himself in such a spot while
abroad. In his widely publicized interview by Christine
Anampour of the CNN during his recent visit to the United
States, Jonathan uttered the quote reproduced above. In that
quote, he clearly and unambiguously expressed his conviction
about the ability of INEC headed by Iwu to conduct free and
credible election in 2011. These are his own words not mine,
uttered, not privately at the ‘Ogogoro’ bar under the
influence, but soberly and publicly to a combined local and
international audience that was glued to every word that
came out of his mouth. Those words were uttered
deliberately, thoughtfully, prudently, and convincingly to
send a clear message about his disposition toward INEC. Yet
barely the presidential jet that brought him back from
Washington, DC, touched down at the Abuja International
Airport than Jonathan made a complete volte face and turned
tail. And he was in such a hurry to take back his words
that he couldn’t even wait for Iwu’s statutory tenure to
expire in June before he sent him packing! That is the way
of politicians not of statesmen. It would appear that
Jonathan was carrying Iwu’s sack order in a time bomb in his
presidential briefcase from Washington, DC, that needed to
be detonated fast before it exploded in his face! That would
perhaps explain the mad rush to drop the bombshell when the
man Iwu had only one month to go and be eased off quietly
without making this unnecessary splash and creating bad
blood.
The question
that naturally agitates the mind of all reasonable men
therefore, is why the rush? Why the complete volte face as
soon his presidential jet touched down in Abuja? Only
Jonathan can truly answer that question. But here is my
educated guess. While abroad and away from the intense
pressure at home, Jonathan considered himself a free man to
air his opinion candidly as he saw fit from the depth of his
soul, and that’s’ why he used the word “convinced”. The
statement on INEC credited to him while abroad could not
have been made in Nigeria without hell being let loose by
the anti-Iwu megaphones. He didn’t have the guts to make
such as statement considered sacrilegiously favorable to
INEC at home. However, by publicly voicing his conviction
that “the
present INEC can conduct free
and credible elections,”
Jonathan
had
boxed
himself into a tight corner from which he needed to
extricate himself fast before his own credibility was called
to question. And sure enough he got a tongue lash from the
AC loudmouth, Lai Mohammed, over his comments on INEC. As
soon as he got home it dawned on him that his candid and
forthright appraisal of Iwu’s INEC had inadvertently ruffled
some political feathers at home for which he needed to
recant and do damage control. So with Iwu’s tenure about to
end in June, why not cut him loose now to demonstrate that
he was serious with the electoral reform starting with
Maurice Iwu? It couldn’t have been any easier than that.
Could it? But I’ll tell you this: the electoral reforms will
start and end with the removal of Iwu!
And the
orgasmic reactions of this constituency to Iwu’s removal
from office bear eloquent testimony to the fact that
Jonathan has delivered on their number one agenda of Iwu’s
ouster. It doesn’t matter that in doing so, Jonathan may
have, in fact, broken the law since Iwu’s tenure expires on
June 13, and not April 28,
2010. As far
as the law is concerned, Iwu remains the substantive head of
INEC until his tenure expires on June 13, 2010! Iwu cannot
validly be removed from office except on the grounds
stipulated under the law and his purported removal is null
and void and of no effect whatsoever not having been
consummated under the law appointing him. Therefore, anyone
who purports to act as Chairman of INEC at the moment before
June 13, 2010, is acting ultra vires. Phillip Umeadi, who
purports to be the acting Chairman of INEC is acting in vain
and all his actions are complete nullity because the office
of the chairman is not lawfully vacant at the moment. As
such, no one can lawfully function in the position of INEC
Chairman until Iwu either resigns his office or is lawfully
removed from office in strict conformity with the statutory
provisions under which he was appointed. Under both labor
and administrative laws, an appointment with statutory
flavor must be made or terminated under the statutory
provisions and not by executive diktat. A nation of laws
should be governed under the law and not by the whims and
caprices of its leaders. I thought we’re operating under the
rule of law. Where has it all gone all of a sudden? Are we
back to square one or is this another Nuhu Ribadu saga all
over again? Lord, have mercy!
Anyway, I’ll
leave that to Iwu and his lawyers. For all he cares, he
might not be interested in pursuing this matter having
indicated earlier that he was prepared to quit if asked to.
Yet it would be nice to challenge the legality of his
premature ouster if only to delimit the boundaries of
presidential powers in the hiring and firing of INEC
helmsmen. It is important to do this because of the presumed
independence and importance of the office to the conduct of
free and fair election. Immunity of the office from
whimsical and capricious executive meddlesomeness and
threats of removal is germane to the independence of the
office and so is the funding of the agency. INEC is too
sensitive and important an agency for its head to operate
perpetually under the constant fear of removal by the
executive and Iwu’s premature ouster provides a veritable
opportunity to test the legality of Jonathan’s action in the
court of law, not the court of men. And as an indication of
the confusion that Jonathan’s hasty order on Iwu has
generated, a national newspaper reported the mess that has
since become the staple at INEC few months before the
general election. There is now power tussle going on at
INEC. Here is the report as presented by the Sun Newspaper
in its Sunday 050210 edition:
“A source in the Office of the
Secretary to the Government of the Federation said on
Saturday that the Presidency is not happy with the “seeming
power grab by Umeadi because the last thing the Acting
President would want now is a crisis of succession at INEC.
We don’t know on whose authority he is acting because as I
speak, nobody has written him any letter authorizing him to
act as INEC Chairman pending the appointment of a
substantive chairman.”
Reminded that the statement asking Iwu to proceed on
terminal leave requested him to hand over to the most senior
National Commissioner with immediate effect, our source
retorted; “The word immediate effect is a military language
which has no place in a democracy. In any case, what are the
criteria for determining the most senior? All of them are
National Commissioners and they are equal. Moreover, Iwu was
not sacked. Yes, he has proceeded on terminal leave and
won’t return as INEC Chairman, but he remains so until June
13 and should therefore decide who to hand over to unless
the government in its wisdom nominates an Acting Chairman.
But it is absurd for someone to nominate himself. I think
the Government has realized its mistake.”
Oh, so Iwu was not sacked after all? Why wasn’t that made
clear in the statement issued by the government? The
impression has been created by the government hasty and
untidy handling of this matter that Iwu had been fired, when
in fact he couldn’t be fired under the law and he was not!
Oh, so the government has now realized its mistake? Great!
How about putting out another statement to set the records
straight which is to the effect that Prof. Maurice Iwu who
is currently on vacation is still the substantive head of
INEC and remains so until June 13, 2010!
(2) That
some of us were not taken in by Jonathan’s effusive
endorsement of INEC in Washington, DC. The quote reproduced
above clearly shows that this writer already had the inkling
that Jonathan might have been engaged in double-speak and
his expression of conviction about the present INEC to
conduct free and credible election should be taken with a
pinch of salt. And that informed the title of my previous
article referenced above, which correctly predicted the turn
of events and bade farewell to Maurice Iwu while pleading
still for his retention for a second term, nonetheless.
While
Jonathan may have endeared himself to the anti-Iwu forces,
he has dealt his own credibility a huge blow which will take
a while to repair. A leader cannot go back on his words so
cavalierly and expects to be trusted thereafter. Trust must
be earned not awarded on the cheap. A leader’s words must be
his bond and Jonathan has signally failed to live up to that
standard in his handling of Iwu’s removal. And all the
self-serving praise he’s getting from the anti-Iwu quarters
cannot even begin to repair the damage he has inflicted on
his own reputation. There are millions of Nigerians who are
silently asking the question today, why Iwu and why the
rush? By pitching his tent with the vocal minority, Jonathan
has alienated himself from the silent majority whose
publicly adopted position in favor of Iwu has been so
flagrantly ignored.
A section of
the Nigerian press always prefers to go to Iwu bashers to
seek their reactions to his removal as if it doesn’t already
know what their reactions would be. Yet it would not seek
out the reactions of those in support of Iwu’s retention
because it’s out to project only one point of view that is
decidedly anti-Iwu in order to create the illusion that his
removal is in accord with popular sentiments. Yet no one has
conducted any credible opinion polls on the matter to
correctly gauge or ascertain the disposition of the public
toward Iwu’s tenure and continued stay. That is not a very
difficult thing for the press to do but it prefers to act as
the megaphones and amplifier of the anti-Iwu forces. All we
hear is either AC’s Lai Mohammed bashing Iwu or the NLC and
some so-called civil society groups bellyaching about INEC.
That doesn’t necessarily represent in any shape or form,
public opinion on Iwu, and I stand to be corrected by the
numbers.
Yet we know
that there have been public demonstrations in favor of Iwu’s
retention. We know that several civic organizations have
openly come out in support of Iwu’s retention. We are aware
that nearly all the governors and members of the
legislatures are in support of Iwu’s retention. We know that
several notable individuals have written in support of Iwu’s
retention. But the Nigerian press would not go to them to
seek out their views about Jonathan’s hasty action. That is
the manipulation of public opinion that I had dealt with
extensively in my previous article alluded to above in which
a certain point of view is relentlessly projected to the
public consciousness through propaganda as to assume the
semblance of public opinion calculated to influence public
policy.
Well-worn
Pathway
However, the
point must be made that Iwu’s removal, far from being
exceptional, follows a familiar pattern. Jonathan is only
following the precedents that he inherited from past
Nigerian leaders. We’ve gone down that road before, not
once, not twice, but always. Haven’t we? In fact, it has
turned out to be the only path we know as a nation. We’re
acting like the proverbial carpenter who sees every nail as
a problem and the hammer as the only solution. In Nigeria,
we have come to view all institutional problems as a nail
and the solution as the hammer. Whenever any institution is
grappling with challenges, we quickly reach for the machete
and savagely hack off the head of the institution like over
excited cannibals and then go back to business as usual.
That’s what is currently happening at NNPC whose head is
chopped off every twelve months or so on the average and the
results is an NNPC that cannot compete with its peers in
other parts of the oil producing world. And yet we keep
asking ourselves, why are we not growing? And we keep
wondering aloud, why is our nation not stable? And we keep
complaining about our weak and fragile institutions? Give me
a break!
Who is going
to build them? Is it the new man who is unsure of his tenure
and busy helping himself to whatever he can grab while the
party lasts or the one who has left with his loot? Please
show me who is going to build and grow our national
institutions to maturity? Is it another Nuhu Ribadu or
el-Rufai who would be thrown out and hounded into exile on
trumped up charges? Or is it another Professor Charles
Solubo who would be thrown out and disgraced in his home
state as the NPN did to Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu who was set up
by his own party to be defeated by unknown quantity in his
home state in the 1983 senatorial election? Give me a break,
please! It’s not going to happen and we must continue to
wobble and fumble along as a nation because Nigerians are
not institutional builders but institutional destroyers.
That is our national character laid bare!
It’s been
nearly three years since Justice Mohammad Uwais submitted
its Electoral Reform Report to the present administration
but nothing concrete has been done with that report. Yet
even under the old order the maturing INEC under Iwu had
conducted three successful elections widely acknowledged to
be credible, free and fair by all reasonable men and women.
And just when the nation was getting used to this breather
and settling down for a better electoral outing in the midst
of the preparations for the forthcoming general elections,
we have yet again, like a cursed people, reached for the
machete and chopped off the head of INEC. And like the
savages that we are, we’re jubilating over the demise of the
head of INEC. But what are they jubilating over? Is it the
crude and abrupt disruption of the preparations for the
forthcoming general elections or display of sadism over the
fall of an arch enemy? It is Nigeria’s progress that has
been rudely set back, not Maurice Iwu’s whose tenure is all
but expired anyway.
We know for
a fact that the hand of the clock has been turned back not
forward over the preparations for the next election. It will
take at least three months for a new man who has not even
been appointed yet to settle down to business in an election
that is less than seven months away. What has the nation
gained from the fall of Iwu? The wise tell us that a bird in
hand is worth more than a thousand in the bush. What is the
guarantee that Iwu’s replacement will be better than Iwu?
This is how Nigerians were clamoring for OBJ to go only to
be replaced with a worse leader who couldn’t implement a
single program and moved Nigeria two, some might say, three
steps backward. We may yet witness a similar outcome with
the ouster of the INEC Chairman unless his replacement comes
directly from heaven. But even so Nigerians will still
complain of rigged elections because no defeated candidate
accepts his defeat in Nigeria. It will be a miracle indeed
if Iwu’s ouster changes this negative national condition
regarding our elections.
But how
would the government of a more stable nation have handled a
matter like this. There are so many examples that would
serve to enlighten us on how such issues of perceived
institutional failures could be more responsibly and
profitably handled by the government of the day. However,
recent examples in the United States would suffice if only
because Nigeria is operating a similar system of government.
In recent memory there have been several cases of gross
institutional failures that have caused the United States
terrible embarrassment including damages to lives and
property. The first that readily comes to mind is the 2000
presidential election fiasco that put the nation on edge.
Remember the Florida electoral debacle with the “hanging
chards” in the voter cards that disenfranchised millions of
voters, especially African Americans, thus causing candidate
Al-Gore to lose the election to GW Bush? You remember that,
don’t you? Well, that was caused by institutional failure
and the US Government responded not by firing anybody in
Florida but with a law to reform the electoral system. It’s
called the Voting Rights Act (VRA). And how could we not
remember the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Prisons scandals!
Both were caused by institutional failures that caused the
United States huge embarrassment. Yet not a single head
rolled! Rather the system was fixed by the US Government.
America’s underbelly was exposed by the devastating Katrina
Hurricane that flattened an entire city of New Orleans
resulting in deaths and dislocations that still hunt the
city to this day. That too was caused by institutional
failures at all levels. Yet the US Government did not fire a
single official. Rather it mobilized men and materials in
one of the biggest operations in American humanitarian
history and fixed the problem. Not a single individual lost
his/her job on account of the institutional failures. What
about 911 terrorist attacks on World Trade Center, New York,
and the Pentagon in Washington, DC? Institutional failures
were blamed for the attacks just like the attempted suicide
attack on an American Airline by Nigeria’s Abdul Muttallab,
which was similarly blamed on institutional failures. Yet
not a single head rolled! Not even President Obama who had
promised to hold people accountable for the “systemic
failures” could raise his hand against any official because
it is un-American to look for scapegoats. What did the US
Government do instead? As in the rest, it moved to fix the
problems. Where loopholes were discovered, the government
moved to plug them. Where weaknesses were discovered, the
government moved to strengthen and toughen the system. Where
resources proved inadequate, the government provided them.
That is what the US government is dealing with at this very
moment with the 2008 financial meltdown which was yet again
blamed on regulatory failures. Yet not a single head rolled.
Yes the same
US that literarily ordered Jonathan to fire Iwu would
protects its own public officials implicated in
institutional failures because no single individual would be
made a fall guy for a systemic failures unless a clear case
of sabotage is established against him. A nation of laws
follows due process. And the US and European powers would
not even make a case for the change of electoral chiefs in
Afghanistan and Iraq either, who by all accounts, conducted
sham elections in their respective countries that would make
Nigeria’s polls a showcase of best practices. Who is
fooling who then? How many more examples do we need in order
for us to begin to act responsibly as a nation rather than
reaching for machete all the time and hacking off the heads
of underfunded, under resourced, and failing institutions?
What have we gained from this endless game of musical
chairs?
Now, if all
we know is the beheading of heads of failing public
institutions, why don’t we chop off the heads of the
Nigerian Police Force, the IGP with Nigeria currently under
siege by criminals? Has he performed better than the head of
INEC? Why is the boss of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS)
still in office with contrabands taking over the nation’s
economy? Has he performed better than the head of INEC? And
why do we still keep our Vice Chancellors of Federal
Universities and Provosts of Teaching Hospitals in Nigeria
with every sick public office holder travelling abroad to
receive treatment for common ailments at huge costs to the
nation? Are they performing much better than the head of
INEC? And come to think of it, why do we keep our president
who could not implement a single budget year in year out and
failed to deliver on his promise of stable power supply at
the end of 2009? Did he do much better than the head of
INEC? What about those who keep federal roads in permanent
state of disrepair all over the country and the nation
perpetually in darkness? Have they too performed better than
the head of INEC? What about the president himself who has
refused to prosecute the perpetrators of electoral crimes
since 2007? Has he performed better than Iwu? Tell me about
the politicians and their political parties who spend more
time planning for rigging than canvassing votes, what
happens to them and their leaders? What happens to the PDP
leaders that allegedly rigged the 2007 elections? Have they
been handed a clean bill of health and better than Iwu?
Where do we begin and where do we stop in cleansing the
Augean stable? Or is Iwu responsible for all of their
failings? Where is our collective conscience and sense of
justice and fair-play? These things will come back to hunt
us all in future.
I could go
on and on ad infinitum because there is hardly any
performing public institution in Nigeria! Yet their heads
have not received the kind of treatment reserved for Maurice
Iwu and his subordinates in INEC. If a policy of zero
tolerance for institutional failures is to be implemented it
is patently unfair to single out some for public humiliation
and leave the others to carry on business as usual. It must
be across the board and every institution made to feel the
heat equally. And it is no excuse that INEC is an electoral
agency that is crucial to our democracy. Every governmental
institution is crucial to the survival of our democracy
whether it is the National Assembly, the presidency, the
police, and the even the military. There is more to the
firing of Maurice Iwu than meets the eyes. This is not about
the sins of the 2007 elections. It’s about calculations for
2011 and Jonathan knows it! Watch out for further
developments in the polity that will make this assertion
prophetic. As the Americans would put it, it isn’t over
until it’s over! But the good news is that there is no more
Maurice Iwu to crucify. Jonathan must therefore move quickly
and provide the professional agitators with someone else to
carry the cross because Maurice Iwu can only be crucified
once and never again. And delay could be dangerous as INEC
is already falling apart.
But even as
Iwu prepares to hand over to the most senior INEC official
later in the week, concerned Nigerians must be asking what
exactly are the sins committed by Iwu to have suffered
crucifixion in the hands of the Nigerian Pharisees? What
exactly are the charges against Maurice Iwu? No one has told
us thus far beyond the blanket condemnation of “flawed
election,” with no particulars attached. But readers will
have the opportunity of having the charges laid out for the
first time. You’ve got yourself a date!
Watch out
for the “Trial of Maurice Iwu”—coming next! You won’t want
to miss it!
Franklin Otorofani, Esq. writes from the
United States
Contact:
mudiagaone@yahoo.com
 Iwu: Changing Perceptions & Presidential Absolution before His Crucifixion. |
