INEC

Nigeria May Never Get Better

/ Adeola / 2 Comments

By Adeola Aderounmu

The just concluded fraudulent elections in Delta State confirmed my fears and argument that Nigeria is not ready for new elections. Change is not coming soon. In a previous article posted on my blog and on NVS I have stated that there are several fundamental issues that needed to be addressed before conducting new or rerun elections in Nigeria.

Until those issues are addressed Nigerians will never know what it means to have a free and fair electoral process. It will never happen in our life time unless the fundamental issues are addressed. As far as I am concerned Nigeria and Nigerians will never have free and fair elections in 2011 and not even in 2012. We are not just ready! We can’t keep expecting positive results or outcomes for things we are ill prepared for. It will not happen.

It is so sad because it appears that the third generations of Nigerians are already wasting away. We don’t seem to realise the seriousness of the issues at stake. When it comes to governance and our perception of politics Nigeria is a nation stuck in prehistoric time. We are so backward it is almost impossible to know where we belong to in the time machine.

The rerun election in Delta state, if used as an indicator of human intelligence, showed that majority of Nigerians are disorientated. The thing is people are counting on Jega. Jega is one man and he has no control over the stupidity of the general populace. Jega is a person and not an institution. INEC as an institution lacks the foundation and the majority of the Nigerian people are completely disorientated and malformed in their mentalities. So this gives you a tragedy that is convoluted. Nigeria is a rolling dilemma.

Several institutions are programmed to fail to suit the status quo of the useless and senseless Nigerian political class. The ignorance of the people doesn’t help in any way. Check out the celebration, parties and the drums beating all night in Delta State. Some millions of dollars that should have been used to develop the state and to provide essential services were wasted in one night for parties and stupid celebrations. The next day the people return to their lives of hopelessness and extreme poverty and penury.

A few beneficiaries of the controversial mandate will return to the state treasury and continue the looting process. Every four years different types of fools and sometimes the same incumbent nonentities return to power and keep the status quo. In general the states remain underdeveloped and the country at large gets closer to disintegration.

I am not afraid of disintegration. This country has never been united. A group of tropical gangsters have kept this country together for their own selfish gains. It pains that the rest of us have not been able to fathom how to break the chain of events. A few among us went in and joined the wagon. They promised to change things but they soon get mixed up in the entire dirty game.

Hope may be lost now because it appears that the rest of us are just waiting for our own opportunities to get crunches of the national cake. Nigerian young men who are in their 20s and 30s and even early 40s who have managed to become something in politics have not had any impact on the polity. What I know and heard is that they are also looting the treasuries wherever they find themselves. They do little and steal so much.

So the problems in Nigeria today are not only due to old and bad leadership. It has infected everything and everyone. Make I no chop my own? If na you you no go chop? Abeg I go support the man o, maybe something fit drop for me? We have all kinds of slogans and national disorientation that has left this country as a complete jungle where anything and everything is possible.

Nigeria is a completely lawless society where political thieves and looters get away. They live among us and they are our brothers and sisters. They are our uncles and aunts. It is Nigerians who destroyed Nigeria. We don’t question those who get rich overnight because “he don hit”. If we do, they say “you be bad belle”.

In general people live anyhow and do anything. The government does not function as the regulator of things. The government and the people are entirely disconnected. It is what I saw and something I’ve always known.

Anyone who is expressing disappointment about the rerun election in Delta State is either a fool or an idiot. And if anyone expects that the other elections in 2011 will get better, that person needs to go for a quick medical examination. Delta State is one state, Nigeria is 36 states plus Abuja, the scale of violence and rigging will be unimaginable when the time comes. Sporadic shootings will turn to massive shootings and bombings. The signs are ripe and too obvious to disregard.

The Nigerian government has closed all schools because of voters’ registration. Every time this type of anomaly occurs, my mind races to the intelligent question. Seriously you can’t get to the bottom of the abnormal mentalities of Nigerian rulers. What has the nearly extinct public schools and the [rich-parents, privileged-children private schools] got to do with registration of voters? Have they looked at all the options and that is the best solution? But don’t forget that the children of these useless politicians are not in Nigeria. They are abroad getting the best of education that they denied you and me.

I stand firm on my argument that Nigerians do not need any elections in 2011. We have been a laughing stock among comity of nations. We are the country that doesn’t know how to count and add numbers. It’s so tragic. Nigerians can’t line up to be counted on a simple electoral queue. And we know why. It is partly because the winner takes it all, as in the loot and the money to be stolen from government.

Until the fundamental issue of census is taken care of, we are wasting our time. They say Kano residents are more than Lagos residents and one of my best friends concluded that by implication, Lagos residents are probably about 30m. Seriously you get confused in this fooling game.

Forensic and computing technologies must be up and running before any successful elections can hold in Nigeria. These are among the suggestions I made in previous essays that are available on the Nigeria Village square. (How to count Nigerians and Nigerians don’t need elections in 2011).

There are more voters in riverine delta than urban delta in Nigeria. This simple but crazy deduction by INEC would have been checked by proper census and forensic evidence. Let’s go on with our foolishness as a country and we will always return to square one. Nonsense!

Let us not also forget that proper election is one thing, accountability and seriously sending looters to jail is another thing that can be used to check the nonsense called Nigerian politics. It’s hard to find a starting or turning point since all the key players in Nigerian politics have been and remain thieves and looters. Start from the presidency and take it down, in a normal country these people will be answering for crimes against humanity because of their involvement in politics that has destroyed Nigeria and Nigerian lives.

Again, it’s always hard to discuss Nigeria and I never know where and how to cut the arguments. Nigerian children are at home because of election matters; this is what the incompetent Jonathan administration wants people to believe. But we know that Jos is boiling and in fact boiling over, -a revelation of Nigeria as a failed country and a society on the brink of collapse.

Foreign influences are now in control in Nigeria. Since we couldn’t get our acts together, we have allowed terror groups and counter groups to find niches in our territory. We ordered the mayhem and it has been given to us in dozen-folds. One day they will tell us the truth-that our children are at home, not because of electoral matters but because of the massive bomb threats across the nation.

This is where public looting, useless elections, useless anticorruption agencies, useless government, extremely bad rulership, senseless followership, corruption itself and useless national character has landed us.

What a failed country..!

Who will save our souls?

Why Nigeria Needs No Elections In 2011

/ Adeola / 11 Comments

By Adeola Aderounmu

Nigerians must insist of credible elections. It is the first prerequisite for the turning point that we continue to seek for.

We know that corruption, stupidity, senselessness and outright madness dominate Nigerian politics but credible elections remains the most single important avenue to start re-addressing our national woes.

Next in line is the scrapping of the EFCC and its replacement with a genuine, transparent, efficient and neutral body that will zealously pursue investigations and prosecutions of political criminals, looters, fraudsters and others who mismanage public/private funds. The new body must be able to arrest or prosecute anyone irrespective of their positions in the government or society.

When our elections are good and when any kind of political thief at all is sent to locations like kirikiri maximum prison, discipline and sanity will return to our lives. The future will be ready for our children.

However I don’t think Nigeria should have any elections in 2011.

Come September the 19th 2010 I will vote again in the Swedish Elections. I voted 4 years ago as well.

My voting card has been sent to me by post. I can actually vote before September 19 at some designated centres. But if I wait until the 19th, there will be a lot of people and I must cast my vote latest 1800hr.

Nigeria should probably avoid elections in 2011.

If Elections are conducted in Nigeria in 2011 under the present arrangements of things, political assassinations and kidnappings will rise to new heights. Many saints and lambs will be slaughtered in the survival game of Nigerian do-or-die politics.

Any election that will be conducted in Nigeria must meet international and acceptable standards. Anything short of that must be avoided. The time on our hand between now and when INEC planned to conduct new elections (January-April 2011) is likely too short for Nigeria to achieve the prerequisites for credible elections.

As I write I am convinced that all the political parties are already planning how to stuff ballot boxes with fake election materials. Plans are in top gears in Nigeria to ensure multiple registrations and multiple voting among many other electoral vices.

In 2007, across Nigeria from the Deep Delta to the Hot Deserts of northern Nigeria, PDP chairmen, godfathers, touts and thugs across Nigeria sat in secret locations thumbing on electoral materials. Other political parties fought hard too in this useless game of dirty politics but the machinery of the PDP was too sophisticated in these cheating games plus having Maurice Iwu doing the deeds of the most wicked ones. See how people were sweating in secret locations heavily guarded by men with sophisticated weapons of war and even cutlasses!

Under the present circumstances in Nigeria this feat will repeat itself in 2011. PDP will once again use the machinery of the government to outwit the others. Political madness will continue and Jega will be helpless. He will cook lies like the actors before him who occupied the seat. The problem will not be Jega.

We fail to see that the system in Nigeria have turned all good men and women to vultures and stupid liars. In today’s Nigeria I have no living hero. I am standing alone on my belief and principles of do it well or get out the way! Don’t ignite my anger by reminding me of your favourite internet-popular czar because Obasanjo, Andy Uba and the jet loads of prostitutes and raw dollars are still flying.

The malpractices associated with our elections must be tackled before new elections. The scenario of stuffing ballot boxes, multiple voting, voting at secret locations, intimidation, assassination connected to elections and as a matter of fact the simultaneous eradication of corruption and the eventual delivery of the dividends of democracy are tied to one thing: credible elections where votes are counted to elect public officers knowing that the votes will be re-counted every 4 years.

If a politician knows that his position is jeopardised if he doesn’t deliver in office, he or she will start to perform before the next voting season. We must ensure at any future election that votes are what bring people into offices and can be used to sweep them away. Until then the intimidation, kidnapping and even assassinations of political opponents and genuine reporters of political affairs will rise and we won’t have performances in offices. Organised corruption will remain our hallmark.

Since we can have a new face for our anticorruption agency after a fine electoral process, then those who loot even after being voted into offices must face judgment. Hopefully the useless immunity clause will be removed by emerging revolutionary minds in our society. Let everyone go to judgement irrespective of their positions.

Nigerians must insist on the removal of the immunity clause after a viable financial corruption agency is established. EFCC is not on my mind. That is just a toothless bulldog whose activities where ruined since Obasanjo’s yeye 3rd third bid. EFCC died with the 3rd term agenda. Wake up gullible people!

What then do we need in 2011?

In 2011 the Ministry of Internal Affairs must step in. That Ministry must work hand in hand with all other public and private institutions in Nigeria to ensure that it makes an appropriate list of Nigerians. The Ministry of Internal Affairs must ensure that every living Nigeria carries an identity card with each person having a specific number. That number will be a key number for the electoral commission.

We must find everyone living in Nigeria and ensure that they carry an identity card. In everyway possible double or multiple registrations must be avoided and punishable with long-term imprisonment. I recommend 15 years minimum.

In 2011 Nigeria must gather together her computer gurus, forensic experts and statisticians who know what figures and numbers represent. This group of people are part of our sources of the hope for the future.

Look around, see the computer gurus in Nigeria. Get the technology, train them if necessary and give them the incentives to allow them face the task without fear or favour. Computer experts and statisticians in Nigeria must rally round the Internal Affairs Ministry and INEC. They should propagate these ideas. They are experts and they know what to do.

Between now and the end of 2011, they must work round the clock to make those missions possible and they must report to the appropriate authorities when some idiots start to rare their ugly heads in multiple registrations.

In 2011 Nigerians must ensure that one major thing happen. This is the radiation of both truth and trust among the citizens-that we can make it if we work together. Our collective aim will be to ensure that this process work. This process will establish everlasting sanity when it comes to identification of individuals and the eventual benefits in elections and other endeavours of life.

I am tired of people saying this is impossible in Nigeria. If this is impossible then it means the black man is not intelligent. It means that he is so foolish that he doesn’t even know what he needs to get himself a decent life and to make his society better for his own benefits. Are we stupid? Are we retarded?

Impossible is nothing! Candidly from my perspective, Nigerians should forget about elections in 2011. I tell you all these assassination will cease. Political violence will vanish once those illiterates, thugs, educated morons and daredevil politicians know that something is on ground to computerise the system-something that will checkmate their atrocities before, during and after elections. They will simmer down. Political manifestos and reasoning can prevail again in Nigeria.

Let each person carry an identity card with peculiar numbers. At the end of 2011 or whatever time our geniuses have finished with the identity card registration processes, INEC should send out voting cards that tally with the identity cards. When a person cast his or her votes, the system automatically records it. And since we have put our geniuses in place at the beginning to avoid double registrations, attempts by people (some will beat the system anyway) to vote twice will be minimal.

But I tell you with the simple finger print technology and dedicated statisticians and forensic experts on ground, there may never be anything called double or multiple registrations. This is where the rule of law, its effectiveness and application come into play.

We must not forget that if we fail in our next election, the black race failed, again! We are then simply dumb and foolish. We will then not be able to protest that we are not intelligent enough to carve our activities and carry them out successfully. If we fail it will go a long way to show that colonisation of the black race was far better!

If we fail like we did in 1959, 1979, 1983, 1993, 1999, 2003, 2007, then take it or leave it Nigerians are very bad species of the black race. If we fail again, then there is something wrong with our cognitive abilities. A thorough anthropological research will be required to verify why we allow the few thoughtless people among us to continue to dictate the pattern and emergence of our political structures. We know that our political display and the outcomes reflected by extreme poverty and diseases for examples have been used as the benchmark to “judge” who we are and how we think.

The turning point for Nigeria is now or never! We have had enough of stupid and useless elections since 1959! Haba ! Ki lo deee!!

Did we pay mugun fees? To whom? Let’s get the ID card scheme and elections right jooo!

My suggestions may not be the most appropriates especially against the backdrop of our extreme diversities of opinions. Our views of life, essence of living and the way we see relationships between humanity, public service and our interplay with nature are too diverse that we have always failed to find common grounds. It’s a dilemma.

Yet I’m convinced there are ways to pursue and execute credible elections that will neutralise all the electoral failures since 1959. We are 140m but democratic successes have been recorded in India where you’ll find more than 1b people.

INEC must ensure that all Nigerian voters are registered not only on paper but on the computer system in all your offices across the nation.

Please don’t give us the excuse that Nigeria is not yet that developed. We are sensible and we must begin to do things in compliance with the present age and technological advancements.

Credible elections after 50 years of waste and hopelessness must happen now or we will never have them.

Postpone those elections until the initial things are done right! Why the rush? Where are we heading with stupid elections?

Put everyone on the database and ensure that the compilations, distribution/collection of voter’s card tally with the finger prints or any other forensic/character recognition feature.

Nigerians should be able to vote even before the election dates to avoid crowding at the voting centres and late voting on the last day.

Apart from the voting centres or tents on the streets, open up the post offices and other special centres for pre voting.

Men and women above 80 years old and people with disabilities should vote before the actual election day if they so wished. Send them special forms with your staff and party representatives in attendance. Provide credible witnesses when these categories of people cast their votes at home or at the hospitals. Don’t tell us you don’t have the possibilities to serve everybody, unless you mean that INEC can’t think of how to solve problems or face tough challenges.

The Electoral Commission must ensure that the election materials are available several weeks in advance. As suggested earlier, let our pre-voting period span at least 2 weeks before the actual voting day.

Once a vote is casted, that person’s name is ticked on the database as “having voted”. Therefore an individual cannot vote twice. INEC’s staff members must be well educated and trusted. Those found wanting should be dismissed immediately or prosecuted if they engaged in criminal manipulations.

When the final count is made, the cumulative total of votes casted must tally with the ticks on the central database in your establishment or at your headquarters.

INEC must function not as a Jega-entity but as an organisation with structures that any dude can mange with minimal intellectual capacity.

INEC must avoid half-baked elections or do-or-die elections just because we must have elections. In 2007 we became a laughing stock in the comity of nations in the name of power transfer. It was one of the biggest shames I’d faced in my life. The black man was reduced to “incapable” to do the right thing. In addition to outstanding stigmatizations, he became the one who can’t count and add.

We want to get it right this time and we don’t want any excuse.

The people should know how the electoral commission is collaborating with the various ministries especially the Internal Affairs’ Ministry.

Tell us how the postal agencies can work with you to ensure that voting cards or papers are delivered to the right persons from age 18 when the time comes.

If it will take 2 years to get everything perfect, please start now. Provide a timeline of what it would take and how Nigerians can have credible elections.

In our next elections, everything associated with violence and stuffing of ballot boxes must be made irrelevant and worthless.

Stuffing of ballot boxes and printing of fake electoral materials will be useless if a person’s number is ticked on the database after casting his or her votes.

Please don’t tell us that we don’t have the technology. We have the money for anything in this country. We can afford 10 presidential jets if we so desire. What is computer technology for Nigeria? Piece of cake!

Nigeria and Nigerians must not go ahead with any crude voting methods. All the political parties are probably now scheming on how to surpass one another with the ballot stuffing. Kidnapping and all forms of madness associated with elections will be reduced or eliminated if the eventual playing field becomes open, clear and non-surmountable by evil machinations now dominant in Nigerian politics.

PDP was dominant in 2007 because they had more access to INEC and the instruments of governance. The order of things must change and the scheming of INEC is the biggest source of checkmate. Nigeria must for once give Africa an example worth emulating.

A neutral INEC with computer based analyses of voting and results by applying state of the art technology will make sure that all those planning to rig are wasting their time and energy.

My arguments about the 2011 elections can be expanded beyond this scope. The bottom line is that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well. In history nearly has never caught a bird.

Please and please no more primitive elections in Nigeria. No more procrastination on the application of computer, information and communication technology in our elections.

If we must shift our elections to make room for the application of the latest technology to ensure that our votes are counted, so be it. We have wasted 50 years of our lives and two generations. This ingredient-a credible election-is a needed stepping stone for the turning point.

It is about time our voted are counted. INEC has an obligation to fulfil one of the things that give us our sense of dignity. The realisation of our fundamental human rights to vote and be voted for since 1959 is back in INEC’s court. Let time not be a hindrance.

The time for wishful thinking should be over. Somehow all the genuine advocates of true democracy and trusted agencies responsible for the protection of human rights and democratic principles must work hand in hand in unity and trust to carry the citizenry along on the need for transparency and accountability in the on going electoral processes.

We have been through wuruwuru, please let us not see jagajaga.

If we fail again this time, I will come back to the intelligence question: how intelligent are we really in solving our problems and taking stands for the essence of our lives?

The solutions to Nigeria’s problems lie on our hands, how we think, how we act. The solutions are collective responsibilities and are multi-faceted. We can rekindle the dead hope of Nigeria.

I am convinced beyond reasonable doubts that a credible and acceptable electoral process is the single most important step forward in healing Nigeria. The entire healing processes are cumbersome and extremely long but results can be achieved when my children’s children arrive if we start now.

aderounmu@gmail.com

The Campaign Against Maurice Iwu: it took so long.

/ Adeola / 2 Comments

By Adeola Aderounmu

The campaign against Mr. Iwu the fraudulent and corrupt chairman of the Nigerian Electoral Commission (INEC) must be sustained. To be sure, Mr. Iwu is not the problem with Nigeria. The problems are huge, numerous and enormous. However Iwu symbolizes evil and wickedness. He has been used as a tool to totally destroy the meaning of election in Nigeria. Mr. Iwu has taken rigging, corruption and recklessness of the electoral system to an irredeemable stratum.

Corrupt and Inefficient Iwu Maurice

Image from Nigerian Guardian Newspaper

I’m wondering why it took so long for this campaign to take form and shape. What is important now is that this campaign must be sustained and the eventual removal of Iwu must be achieved. If not, his activities will destroy more lives and souls.

In December 2007 I published the article below in the Nigerianmuse and on the Nigeria Village Square. I also published here on my blog and I’m just going to re-post it again exactly the way it was.
My views about Iwu are the same and I think the man should be facing the court of law by now. His former boss Mr Obasanjo should join him in trial. The crimes they both committed/perpetrated should not go unpunished. Removing Iwu is one thing, making him and his masters pay for their crimes is a bigger issue that should not be swept under the carpet-which is usual for the lazy and inherently corrupt successive governments in Nigeria.

A Persistent Resident Evil in the Aisle

Adeola Aderounmu
Written on Dec 11 2007

If we don’t do away with Iwu in our public arena and let him be HEARD NO MORE, someone will wake up tomorrow to tell us that Iwu is a hero. At that time, the likes of Babangida, Obasanjo and Atiku would have become saints and ordinary Nigerians would have been totally converted to their footstools. Iwu must go now!

Nigerians should not get tired of reading about one man or one incident day in day out. It is imperative that all of us who feel genuinely concerned should continue to echo our thoughts and actions where necessary until we rid our society of evil and atrocities. Mr. More-rice Iwu is one man we must continue to elaborate on until he is gone. He MUST go! He was quoted immensely by a recent report (10th Dec 2007) in This Day Newspaper

He stated that the conduct of the elections was far better than the June 12, 1993 election which is generally regarded as the freest and fairest in the history of Nigeria. Apart from confirmed madness, I tried in vain to find any other rational reason why any entity would make this kind of reckless and thoughtless statement. Would any sane person compare the worst election in human history with the best election ever held in Nigerian since 1959?

Iwu went further: Nigeria was able to transit from one civilian regime to another for the first time in the history of the country. This is a very, very useless line of argument. What is the value of a history that promotes shame, ridicule, lawlessness and executive madness? The significance of any election is not in the transfer of power; it is in the meaning that it adds to life. The significance also lies in the realization of the wish of the people, the need for a proper and appropriate change where necessary and the hope for a greater tomorrow. I will repeat that the 2007 selections in Nigeria were nothing short of a farce. It is a slap on the face of the intelligent minds that abound in Nigeria and those abroad.

Nigeria is fond of setting bad examples to other African countries and it is a big shame. It appears to me that Nigeria has not made any progress democratically despite the mistakes and shortcomings of the past. We repeat history and never learn from them. It was very stupid of us all as Nigerians to accept the outcome of the useless 2007 selections in the name of civilian to civilian transition.

After the 29th of May 2007, we still couldn’t bundle into jails all those who squandered our future. I am really disappointed that people like Obasanjo and Iwu and the others who have contributed to the demeaning of Nigeria are not investigated or placed on trial. We need to take control of our lives, our destinies and our future. It must start from someone, from somewhere. Yet it seems that we are wasting this opportunity which is still very fresh.

The INEC chief said in spite of the odds against the smooth conduct of the 2007 general elections, INEC was able to organize free and fair elections that produced winners from state assemblies to the office of the president. This is a classical example of what Fela termed “Animal talk don start again, hear o another animal talk”. I feel so enraged each time I read comments from Iwu. Who do I blame? I blame a system where people worship idiots like him. This is a man that should by now be facing the full wrath of the law. Where is due process and where is the so called ruse of law? Where are our investigative police and judiciary in all of these messes? AG nko?

The jargons that keep coming from Iwu went on: “It was a sad moment to say that 2007 elections was the worst elections when we knew what was happening in other parts of the world.” What does this mean? Which other parts of the world? Is it Sierra Leone that just emerged from a civil war and yet managed to conduct more credible elections? Is it France that conducted their elections a few weeks after the scandal in Nigeria? Is it South Africa from where he imported electoral materials days after the pre-prepared results have emerged?

Is it Ghana that had been reaping the dividends of democracy such that Nigerians are now relocating to Ghana? Which other parts of the world was Iwu talking about? Why do we even have to look at any other part of the world? We are talking about madness and lawlessness in Nigeria and he wants us to look for greater madness to see how blessed we are.

At a public forum last week, Iwu mentioned that politicians wanted coup in April 2007. What a cheap blackmail? Which coup in the history of man will ever surpass the one masterminded by Obasanjo and executed by Iwu himself? Why have we done this to ourselves in Nigeria or why are we permitting this kind of persistent shame?

Are we normal in Nigeria? Is this what it means that Africans are less intelligent? I don’t know what more to ask. Really it is very annoying and frustrating. I mean we went to school in Nigeria and we knew how intelligent our teachers and lecturers are. So, why do we get all these nonsense from those parading our public life? It is hard to understand but if this is what the outside world will hear in order to judge us, then where is the intelligence? Where is the non-fraudulent mind if one of it exists in Nigeria public arena? Help me!
Just when I thought I have read all the nonsense that Iwu had to say, he dropped another line of lunaticism.

He said:
“The 2007 elections we agreed were not perfect, it was a human undertaking. It won’t have been perfect. But I still maintain to the annoyance of some people that the 2007 elections were free and fair.” Yes Mr. More-rice Iwu, I am seriously annoyed and if I was a lawyer, I would dedicate the rest of my life to your prosecution until it shall comes to pass. Free and fair? Is this man normal? Iwu said that he is resolute in actualizing his missions of reforming the country’s electoral reforms, in line with what was obtainable in other developed countries. This is ridiculous.

That takes me to Yar Adua who has been talking about electoral reform. Is it the same reform that Iwu is referring to? Is the anticipated electoral reform Yar Adua’s project or Iwu’s mission? Iwu’s mission remains evil in nature and will never achieve any good or positive results. He will only end up setting more tasks for the judiciary who will continue to annul and rule in favour of re-election or resuscitation of proper candidates.

That will also plunge Nigeria into deeper crises. Similarly, if the power to appoint the chairman of INEC still resides with the presidency, then it looks like Umaru is going to leave Iwu to continue with the imaginary reforms he has been talking about. It would be a nice way to pay back Iwu who presented the certificate of office to Umaru when everyone was still shouting foul play. Anyhow, Umaru Yar Adua lacks the foundation to orchestrate an electoral reform as the battle for the soul of the presidency remains undecided. So, Iwu’s reform or Yar Adua’s reform, Nigerians loose either way. What a tragedy!

When Iwu mentioned that … when we knew what was happening in other parts of the world and then…… in line with what was obtainable in other developed countries. I knew for sure that he was absent minded. This is a man who said that we should be happy with our election by comparing it to other parts of the world and at the same forum saying that he wants to make electoral reforms that would compared to what is obtainable in other developed countries. So, the developed countries are in another planet or what? Truth is constant, it is not malleable. Inconsistency and heresy are clear symptoms of a die-hard liar. Iwu is a hardcore liar!

What are the terms governing the operations of INEC? Can the National Assembly do something about it? Apart from an unwillingly and a slow presidency, who else can we turn to for the removal of this cankerworm called Iwu? What about the Integrity Group? This man MUST go! The removal of Iwu is one of the steps we must take to move Nigeria forward. Let us rise up against all the evils in our society and their platforms.

If we don’t probe and try the previous and serving administrations and their key players, we will be taking steps that will only reveal that we are not destined for greatness. We need to stop thieves and deceivers like Iwu in high and low places and put everybody on alert for national revamping. Making Nigeria great is not going to be a day’s job. It will be a collective duty on virtually on frontiers of our lives. But Nigeria will never be great if we don’t resolve to take the first step. Many more generations will be wasted and people will continue to wallow in poverty despite the wealth of the nation. My heart has been bleeding for Nigeria, a rich country where values are not placed on human existence but which instead has become a place for the glorification of sycophants.

Let us not coat evil with honey. Nigeria must do away with Iwu, he is the resident evil, the remnant of the 2 dream killers who disenfranchised 140m people in a world record scandal and farce called election in April 2007. Let us continue to make all the sincere and necessary inputs that are needed to salvage Nigeria even if we have to do that a million times on the same issue.

We are living with many evils in Nigeria, from Babangida to Obasanjo, and the rest of them. One of these evils is very much at large and for as long as he remains relevant and influential in the order of things in Nigeria, this country will know no peace and the disappearance of the entity called Nigeria can be catalytically enhanced by such a fellow. If Iwu remains in charge of elections or electoral reforms, Nigeria’s doom day is surely at hand.

Nigeria: An Elusive Electoral Reform

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By Adeola Aderounmu

After spending weeks and months touring the country in search of a genuine and workable electoral process, the electoral reform committee had their most important proposal overturn by the FEC-Federal Executive Committee.

A sitting president in Nigeria wants to keep the constitutional right to appoint the head of the Electoral committee. This overturn is not actually to suit Yar Adua. It is meant to suit anyone who finds himself in that maximum position.

Nigeria is ruled by a cabal and they are the ones that have actually rejected that proposal. They are making it clear that an incumbent (legally or illegally bundled into power) should hold on to the most viable source of self-perpetration.

True, it is the constitutional right of the president but who says that the constitutional cannot be amended? And what is even wrong for once to abandon such an ego-boosting function and allow a free flowing form of democracy? Everything is wrong with that in my country where the winners of political offices are the men and women with most money to spend and much more to loot.

And after listening to the views of some political gladiators I know that democracy is far from Nigeria. Nigerian politicians are ever selfish and those controlling the instrument of governance are the least people in search of change.

There is nothing wrong, to hand over the process leading to the emergence of the electoral chairman, to the National Judiciary Commission. If the NJC is controlled by the presidency, then the control should be removed. Nigeria and Nigerians must allow institutions to work.

Nigeria will not work until the institutions start to function. We must eliminate the reliance on people and leaders-they have all failed and that is why probably 40% of Nigerians are unemployed and more than 90m people are living desperately on less than 1 dollar per day.