Why Jega Should Resign and Why INEC will fail again!

/ Adeola / 3 Comments

By Adeola Aderounmu

Electoral failures in 1959, 1979, 1983, 1993 (shame on you IBB), 1999, 2003, 2007 AND we are making the same mistakes in 2011. I thought people learn from their mistakes or from history. What a country!

In several essays I have called for transformation of the electoral process in Nigeria. By now Mr. Jega obviously has seen that it is impossible to conduct credible elections in Nigeria under the prevailing arrangements and circumstances.

I am convinced that the cancellation or the postponement of elections in Nigeria can never be due to non-availability of materials as claimed by Jega.

I believe more in what Jega said prior to the election date and on April 1st that all was set and ready for the elections on April 2nd than all the lies he is proclaiming now. What a Liar!

He is not telling the truth which may be related to the impossibility to conduct elections in 2011 using the process that was used during the time of the biblical Herod when people went to their home towns to be counted. Nigerians should be asking why all their looting politicians usually return to their homelands during census and elections. Why?

Jega was either taken by fear and the reality of the impossible tasks before him and INEC or he is executing a PDP agenda. This is a man who had ordered that people should be counted and accredited before 12noon and that voting should start at 1230. But when the day of election arrived Jega and his ill-prepared team saw that the time-scheduled election of their imaginations is a far cry from realities or the PDP agenda was unfolded to his face. Whichever!

Jega should resign because of the money he has wasted. That money would have provided jobs for thousands of jobless Nigerians. His lies and inconsistencies are too heavy to be accepted. He’s another sycophant in the making.

Jega has no more tasks to do as the boss of INEC. INEC itself should be disbanded with immediate effect.

I saw a video clip of one voting center in Lagos. There were several people who formed a crowd around the electoral officers. This is primitive and archaic. This is what will be repeated in the coming weeks. The process is wrong, too wrong.

There is no way a process that is more than 2 000 years old will work for 70m voters in the 21st century, never!

I warned about these things but Nigerians chose to ignore me. They deleted my articles and stories about Nigeria. I said that those who think elections in 2011 would be a success needs to get their heads examined. Even 24 hours to the election date I was still shouting on my blog that these elections are unnecessary.

We are repeating what we have done since 1959 that has always resulted in failure. Why are we repeating the same process again?

It doesn’t matter when or how INEC carries out these electoral processes, the point is that they will NEVER be free, credible or satisfactory. This is the truth that Jega should use the last layer of his fading dignity to address. On that one, Nigerians will believe him.

I have made suggestions on how Nigeria can carry out credible elections. What I have not mentioned is that if the people in Nigeria cannot understand and carry out my suggestions, there are people abroad-yes we can hire Europeans like Swedish people- who can help us organize our lives since we have failed to do it right since 1959.

Using simple forensic details, we can hire expatriates to help us count Nigerians once and for all. This will establish an everlasting process that generations yet unborn will enjoy and be grateful for.

Everybody gets an identity card and a social security number. All these details will be over in less than 12 months. It is not a function for INEC but the National Population Commission. They need help now and this is my candid suggestion.

The Nigerian Government should pally with the Swedish Embassy in Abuja. They should ask for help on how to have a successful and perfect head count in Nigeria once and for all. We have tried and we have failed, let’s get help we can afford. All the monies we have wasted conducting stupid and useless elections would have been enough to pay for these services that will be forever.

If the Nigerian government does not ask for help, I am already in the process of initiating one. I am sure that I will contact the Swedish embassy in Abuja officially in the days ahead. I owe my country all the help it can get to stop this international embarassment.

If we develop our postal system parallel to the forensic head count under the same period of time, everybody can receive his/her identity card and voter card at home by post. Alternatively we can create collection centers at all the local government offices for the IDs. The New Electoral body that will be formed will send out the voting cards/papers. It’s too easy.

I am convinced that citizen orientation and improved police and judicial institutions are necessary ingredients to the successful implementation of my suggestions. If criminals go to jail or get punished for wrong doings irrespective of how small or big the crimes are, a lot of things will be easier in Nigeria.

For the past 4 years I have written series of articles on how to count Nigerians and how to conduct credible elections.

Unless these things are done, Nigeria will NEVER have credible elections.

When it is season of election, the voting process should be flexible and people should be able to send in their votes by post. People should be able to go to voting centers even one month before the last day of voting. All these nonsense overcrowding on the days of election are archaic and primitive.

And on the last day of general voting all voting centers should be open between 8am and 6pm.

I have seen credible elections in Sweden as I have seen in several parts of the world. What is wrong with Nigeria and Nigerians? Are we daft?

The last counter argument I want to hear or read is that we are not matured for this process. Are we less intelligent than people who live in countries where peaceful elections are conducted? No!

Nigeria is using a voting process that is more than 2 000 years old.

Jega has fooled a whole country made up of over 150m people, an aggregation of the largest population of black people in the world. He should resign! He should also be ashamed of telling lies. I am so angry I can’t express my feelings about people like Jega.

If Jega is man enough, let him resign. Let him tell Nigerians the truth-that the elections will not be credible and that we need to go back to the drawing boards and find a more realistic way to conduct our elections so that we can have true democracy say 2 or 3 years from now.

Jega must not leave his position without apologizing to Nigerians. He fooled himself and he fooled us. Apparently this failure is not just about Jega, it is about a failed system. But an intellectual person like Jega owes us the truth.

Jega should give a full statement of accounts of how he has spent all the billons of naira that he has wasted in the last couple months. As much as possible he should refund to the national coffers whatever amount he can gather from everywhere he has wasted these funds. Someone somewhere in Nigeria must start doing something right. Why not Jega, a man whom much has been given in such a short time?

The greater challenge lies before all Nigerians. Is this how we want to continue with our lives? PDP is fooling us; the wicked party is fooling our family members, our friends and even our neighbours. In other parts of the world, a party like PDP would have been thrown into the dustbin. For how long will our consciences be bought with porridge and stolen funds?

No amount of postponements can solve the problems of elections in Nigeria. Without radical electoral reforms and a voting system based on credible processes that are supported by forensic facts and figures, Nigerians will continue to scream foul play for ever and ever.

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Nigeria needs no election in 2011

A Big Liar Called Jega and A Country Without Shame

/ Adeola / 6 Comments

Adeola Aderounmu

24 Hours before Nigeria’s Parliamentary Elections Jega came out to tell the world that all is set and ready.

The Elections schedule for April 2 2011 has now been cancelled. Jega said that it will now hold on Monday the 4th.

Jega is now singing a new tune that Election materials did not arrive. The same song that Maurice Iwu sang in 2007. We have now gone from wuruwuru to jagajaga. But why didn’t he say that the day before? Why did he wait until Nigerians have trooped out to election centers and some voters have even been accredited and were waiting to cast their votes?

In 2007 election materials did not arrive from South Africa. The Natural disaster in Japan has now been blamed for the man-made disaster in Nigeria. Japanese will be shocked and probably angry to know that the natural disaster that put them in mourning is the song on the lips of INEC and Jega.

One of my friends said he is investigating the real cause of the postponement. I am sure this postponement is connected to fraudulent activities. With time the bigger picture will emerge.

I argued in august 2010 that Nigeria does not need any elections in 2011. I stand firmly by my opinions in that article that we still don’t need any election in 2011. Anyone who wants to know what we need should read the article.

By the way, how foolish are the Nigerian government and INEC? Why can’t Election papers be printed in Nigeria?

That is just one question out of the thousands of questions that we are now asking.

Nigeria: Elections or A state of War?

/ Adeola / 1 Comment

Adeola Aderounmu

240 000 policemen will roam the length and breadth of Nigeria this April as Nigeria sets for elections to usher in a new dispensation in the faulty democratic process.

I have argued in several essays that Nigeria needs to become a truly democratic country and that she needs several radical reforms and citizen orientation to genuinely position herself as the giant of Africa.

It will be extremely sad- say in 2015, if Nigeria survived up to that point- to have the repetition of this system that will bring 240 000 policemen and an unknown number of military personnel to the streets to supervise another kangaroo process.

If you have 240 000 policemen/women supervising a process as simple as casting and counting votes then the implications are too severe to be ignored.

It partly implies that the people who are engineering the process and the people for whom it is made have very questionable levels of cognitive reasoning. It is as if the process is made for animals that need to be guided around a farm area or by nomads around undefined zones.

I want to always stand on the side of reason under these circumstances.

What is so complicated in casting a vote, going back home or to your business and trusting that the system works for you and for itself as a matter of fact?

Why is it impossible to create a system that works in Nigeria? Why does it have to be so hard?

There are uncountable arrangements and de-arrangements for these April elections in Nigeria. The Inspector General of Police will say one thing today and deny it tomorrow. The Minister of Police Affairs will state one thing now and change the tone at the next briefing. The Minister of Internal Affairs will issue a press release from nowhere to add to the mountains of confusion.

Wait, INEC will appear from the blues to say all what has been stated and corrected are wrong. That only two policemen out of the 6 500 per state will be at each polling booth. INEC has done at least 2 press briefings to state that military personnel will only be on stand-by.

From the charge and bail system that I know in Nigeria, I am too convinced that the Nigerian police and military personnel will create a number of fracases where there are none.

The National Security Adviser in Nigeria has said that people don’t need to defend any vote. He said it is only the party representatives that have reasons to stay at the polling stations.

Under the INEC arrangement, Nigeria is like “No Country For Old Men (and women)”. People are lining up before 12 and counted and so on. The procedures invariable have excluded the old and the weak. People who have other form of hindrances may as well forget about the elections altogether.

An electoral process that does not allow you to vote by walking in and out of voting centers is bound to fail.
In developed countries you can send your votes by post. The intelligence gap is not the only thing getting wider. Trust, accountability, reliability, probity and the pursuit of Common Good are light years apart when you compare the developed countries to pretentious continental giants like Nigeria.

My arguments are simplified further. Stupid people have no business in governance. Nigeria and indeed Africa must learn to entrust the affairs of their nations in capable hands through genuine democratic means. Nigeria needs functional democracy which can only be achieved by electoral reforms.

In Nigeria rulers must be replaced by leaders. Dictators must be replaced by civil people. Indeed the road to recovery for Nigeria on the political scene is not only long but extremely convoluted. The damage done has been farfetched and almost irredeemable. But hope must not be excluded from our undertakings.

There is no common sense in Nigeria’s political terrain. We must find it and make it a hallmark.

I don’t know if we need a miracle or an uncommon and yet to be defined radical change to transform the collective deformed mentalities and thinking faculties of Nigerians. Our views of politics are lost somewhere in the B.C years. Some of the things that emerge from Nigeria have not helped the perception of Africa from overseas.

People have already killed one another during campaigns, why should we expect less on election days? Even Jega does not even know how far the electorates should stay after casing their votes. He has now said that we should leave the decision in the hands of the security agents. Lawyers are arguing for the 300m provided by law. What a useless law?

That law is unnecessary if people use their senses and leave criminal attitudes for the socially misfits who are always negligible and easily taken care of by the law in normal civilized societies. Unfortunately poverty and ignorance have sent Nigerians on errands of slavery within their own very domain. Shame!

Nigerians must demand electoral reforms immediately after this useless electoral process is concluded. This nonsense situation must not be with us in 2015. If it does this country will never make it, never!

aderounmu@gmail.com

These Must Never Happen Again

/ Adeola / 1 Comment

By Adeola Aderounmu

In 1999, 2003 and 2007 PDP rigged elections in Nigeria. 2007 was the worst of them all. I have presented these facts before but it is election time and I should remind Nigerians that these things must never happen again.

In 2007 PDP chairmen in each state of Nigeria and in all the local governments across Nigeria supervised the biggest election scandal in the history of man.

PDP thugs and party members across Nigeria were armed to the teeth and they watched as the chairmen supervised the biggest and the most massive illegal thumb printing processes ever seen on planet earth.

These events took place across the length and breadth of Nigeria. It was the biggest charade known to man.

You can understand the frustration of Obasanjo that despite all the billions of naira spent on Lagos, the PDP lost to ACN.

Jonathan is the one now wasting federal funds just to capture Lagos.

ACN has also vowed that PDP will not capture Lagos for the next 50 years the same way that PDP boasted that it will be in power at the center for the next 60 years. Invariably this means that PDP has no intention of conceding power to any opposition party. Lagos and ACN is not going to do the same.

These acts of boasting put INEC on the spotlight. Just a few hours away, Nigerians will vote and history will have it on record if the votes tallied with the number of accredited voters or not. It will also be worthwhile if the votes counted are genuine.

We will see what it takes to protect our votes, blood or common civility.

The evil of 2007 perpetrated by Iwu, Ibori, and Obasanjo that brought in the third successive illegal civilian regimes now headed by Jonathan must be resisted by whatever means possible.

Nigerian Union of Teachers, Another Useless Organisation?

/ Adeola / 4 Comments

Adeola Aderounmu

Michael Olukoya took a great risk on behalf of NUT. Along with 120 others he spoke of Jonathan’s reign post-April 2011.

An educated person should never make such a stupid mistake.

It is wrong for one man or 120 people to sell the reputation of the Nigerian Union of Teachers for a few plates of porridge.

I challenged all Nigerian Teachers to come out and openly denounce the support that Michael Olukoya has given to Jonathan.

What are the bases of this support? Olukoya spoke of what Jonathan has done in the education sector? What are these things? In relation to what are we talking about here?

Have Nigerians stop trooping to Ghana for education?

A typical School in Nigeria (Photo By Atinuke Mary Abumere)

A typical School in Nigeria (Photo By Atinuke Mary Abumere)

Has Jonathan started, completed or resuscitated any Federal University or even secondary school in Nigeria?
What exactly has Jonathan done that Olukoya would like the rest of us to know? We are now listening.

One day in December 2010 I heard Jonathan saying that we need to bring back the culture of reading and that people should be encouraged to go to the library.

This is the hallmark of Nigerian politicians. They talk like drums and act like snails or not at all.

Why don’t you build the libraries and stock them with books and see if Nigerians will read or not. We like to read and we want to read. Mr. Jonathan, please which library should I visit?

I hate people talking and making promises-and these are the main characteristics of Nigerian looting politicians and policy makers. Since December 2010 when Mr. Jonathan talked about the culture of reading, can he point to the libraries that have been built, or rehabilitated and if books have been supplied, or bought to fill the shelves?

Education in Nigeria is totally collapsed saved for private institutions where rich people now educate their children. The poor can go to hell.

In the days ahead I plan to write about the state of education in Nigeria. I blame the State and Local government as well for the total collapse of education in Nigeria. Nigerian Public schools are TOTALLY DEAD!

Public education is dead in Nigeria. This is why the useless endorsement that Mr. Olukoya and his gang gave to Jonathan is questionable.

No association of the learned should endorse or affiliate with any political groups in Nigeria. They should instead maintain their autonomy and ensure that the standard of education is improved and that our glory days are returned.

Endorsing corruption and ineptitude is a sign of defective and inferior mentalities on the part of the National Union of Teachers.

I observed that Mr. Olukoya was careful with his words but trust NTA to filter the parts that really sold out the NUT totally.

I am awaiting a rejoinder from the NUT stating their full side of the story and if the union as a whole does not reject the endorsement they should know that history will not forget or forgive them for being part of the evil that took away the future of the Nigerian children.

aderounmu@gmail.com