BONN, Federal Republic of Germany. ‘Nigeria’s Presidential Election Was So Credible That Even Children Were Allowed To Vote (Conclusion)?’ By Temple Chima Ubochi.
The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election; the people who count the votes do (Joseph Stalin)
Leadership cannot be measured in a poll or even in the result of an election. It can only be truly seen with the benefit of time (Marco Rubio)
There never is a good time for tough decisions. There will always be an election or something else. You have to pick courage and do it. Governance is about taking tough, even unpopular, decisions (Jairam Ramesh)
The political process does not end on Election Day. Young people need to stay involved in the process by continuing to pay attention to the conversation and holding their leaders accountable for the decisions they make (Patrick Murphy)
INEC committed blunders, and should try to get its acts right, as it will be hurled to court by many contestants in different states where there were infringements. Even children were allowed to vote. Goodluck Jonathan has refused to kick, and we have respected that. We have moved on by accepting Buhari as the president-elect, but, that doesn’t mean that the election was free and fair. Nigeria’s previous elections were rigged, but, this time around, INEC moved up a notch by committing scientific rigging never seen in Nigerian history. Everything looked normal, but, behind the façade, a lot of atrocities were perpetrated, especially in the north, to foist Buhari on Nigerians. “A document entitled: “Let them know that we know” indicated alleged massive conspiracy that led to Jonathan’s ouster. The document read in part: “In a gradual process, we will say things the way they were, we will speak of the conspiracy that even the closest ally of President Jonathan entered into in the dark against our people. The document alleged that the result from Bauchi State was at a stage reading 457,786, for APC and 559,897 for the PDP but that when the anti-Jonathan agenda was allegedly ignited, the figures changed. It made similar allegation about Kano, indicating that the PDP had scored close to half a million votes and was closely trailing the APC before things purportedly changed”.
J.C. Lawal wrote: “Only mad men from southern part of Nigeria or elsewhere can see the recent Nigerian presidential election, conducted by Professor Jega, (the sole custodian of Nigerian register of voters) and smartly and smoothly rigged by him and his appointed collation officers with their pens in favor of Buhari as fair and credible election, whose falsified result was cleverly published on a show-off television facade of honesty and authenticity. While many Nigerians who don’t see beyond their noses acknowledge the purported victory of Buhari as a good omen for Nigeria, I, JC Lawal, see it as a tacit and masked recipe for Nigerian multiplier upheavals and impending doom. In Yoruba, we usually have these proverbs: When your neighbor’s horse falls into a pit, you should not rejoice at it, for your own child may fall into it too. When the door is closed, you must learn to slide across the crack of the sill. While Boko Haram militancy, which is a clear creation of Northern political elites to disorganize President Jonathan’s administration and to reclaim Born-to- Rule Northern hegemony, will soon slip into dormancy without anybody shooting any guns against it as its chief sponsors will soon assume the reins of Nigerian polity, another form of bloody uprising must seem to rear its head in another part of the country. Nobody is a repository of master planning and counter master planning. Only Nigerian cockroaches or mad men must see or foresee Nigerian unity, Nigerian development and Nigerian successful fight against corruption in a dungeon of unrelenting ethno-political domination and marginalization”.
Femi Aribisala said these excerpts: “As I said, I don’t believe the president lost the election and I don’t believe General Buhari won. What I know is that the General was declared the winner, and President Jonathan graciously agreed to accept the verdict in the interest of peace. I received the news with great amusement. I don’t have any personal stake in the president’s victory. I don’t work for him and he does not pay my salary. I copied down all the figures released and analysed them. So doing, I reached the conclusion that the result of the election was bogus. Buhari had won the election long before the election. He had been programmed by INEC to win it.Election results don’t change history. Neither do they convert the propaganda of the campaign into truths. My criticisms of Buhari were based on what I know about him. I challenge anyone to show me anything I said about Buhari that was false. On the question of how I feel, I am saddened that many Nigerians voted the way they are said to have done. I am waiting to see how General Buhari will make the naira equal to the dollar. We will see how he will unilaterally increase the international price of oil, as he said. We are waiting to see these miracles happen” Read the full interview below!
Let’s hope that the mess we witnessed during these elections would be avoided during subsequent elections in the years to come. Think of what would have happened if the presidential election was conducted on February 14, as earlier planned. INEC got six weeks extension and still failed to get things right. The idea of the card readers was good but the deployment was bad. A lot of things went wrong, and INEC should know that only a person like Goodluck Jonathan can accept to go quietly without a fight. A law teacher, Mr. Gbenga Ojo, urged INEC to perfect the use of the card readers, adding that the inability of the machine to read the fingerprints of the president was a huge embarrassment. In his words: “No other president will accept going to his polling unit and the machine will fail to accredit him. But this man stood patiently and appealed to Nigerians to be calm”. INEC should reprimand, re-deploy or sack many of its states’ resident commissioners who were compromised, who thwarted the will of the people of many states. Prof. Selina Oko, the REC for Abia State, is one of those who should go, for showing partisan tendencies during the Abia State governorship and house of assembly elections on April 11, 2015. This woman, who also caused political havoc during the 2011 gubernatorial election in Imo State, where she was deployed then before Alex Otti influenced her re-deployment to Abia State in order to perfect the rigging of Abia State’s governorship election in favor of APGA, has overstepped her bounds and should be fired or be recalled to INEC headquarters in Abuja, as she’s not worth being a resident commissioner in any state anymore. The point is that INEC should re-examine the conduct of its resident electoral commissioners and returning officers, all over Nigeria, in order to fish out the bad eggs within them, and there should be consequences for bad acts, so that other would-be-offenders will learn a lesson from them. What happened in many states of Nigeria, during these elections, were charade, and didn’t reflect the people’s choice. The system was rigged, rigged from the get-go. It is not the voters who choose the victor. But, let’s leave it at that, for “peace” to reign.
Although Buhari, as president, must perform deeds of derring-do to win my love, but, I have congratulated him and wished him well. But, some people still feel that he will not be upto the job of the president of a modern day Nigeria. The jury is still out there. Somebody from Niger Delta refused to congratulate Buhari, and he has his points, I understand them, but, I will not follow suit with such words. A Special Report posted by elombah.com has it thus:
“I will not congratulate General Buhari for winning an election that was more of a gang-rape of President Jonathan and my people. NO, I won’t congratulate General Buhari for winning an election that was won by lies, deceit and hypnotism. I won’t congratulate General Buhari for winning an election that was won by turning the north against my people. Not in an election that President Jonathan’s foot-path was washed by all the Water Board’s waters of Daura. I shall not congratulate General Buhari in an elections he won by inciting hate amongst my people. NO, I WILL NOT CONGRATULATE GENERAL BUHARI OR THE APC. I have too many people to congratulate than waste my congratulations on fraud, deceit and hate. Rather, we shall await General Buhari to stabilize the price of crude oil in my Backyard; we shall congratulate Buhari when he changes the value of Naira to be same with that of a Dollar. We shall congratulate Buhari when he stabilizes the Nigerian economy. We shall Congratulate Buhari when corruption ceases to exist in Nigeria. We shall congratulate Buhari when there is stability in power even though we have done 75% of the process. We shall congratulate Buhari when every Nigerian youth receives N5, 000 allowances as he promised. We shall congratulate Buhari when all the Nigerian Children receive free meals per day. Until then, I will continue to see the victory of the APC in Nigeria as the biggest rape, corruption and fraud that happened to Nigeria. I will particularly take offence if my request for the aforementioned is seen as criticism. I will take offence if anybody or object in power tries to stop Nigerians from talking”.
The words above are very strong ones. And on that note, I end this serial. Thanks for your time!
Finally, May I use this opportunity to thank all the readers who sent me feedbacks, in support of or against, any of my articles that dwelt on the 2015 presidential election. I appreciate you all. Most of all, your points, whether for or against, have been noted. No matter your point, we all want the best for Nigeria nonetheless. My apologies to those I was unable to reply; they shouldn’t take it personal, it wasn’t snubbing, only that there are a lot to do within a very limited time. I implore all, those for and those against, to always let me know what they think of my subsequent articles, as that will help keep me in line. Till then, have a good one, anywhere you are!
