The Vote or the Fire This Time!
by Ogaga Ifowodo

A week to the first leg of General Olusegun Obasanjo's do-or-die elections in which many have truly died while the do-ers look forward with glee to another four years of kleptomania, I wrote a piece for The Guardian entitled, "Will They Count the Votes?" Scheduling problems prevented it from being published before what Obasanjo, against the bloody evidence, deigns to call "fairly free" polls. On reading the accounts of the massive rigging and announcements of phantom results that have once again given the PDP a landslide victory, my first thought was that the views I expressed in that article have now been overtaken by events. On second thoughts, however, I'm convinced that they speak even more directly to the aftermath of Saturday, 14 April. Moreover, it was always clear that Obasanjo, savouring his Power Drunk Party's landslide victory and as stiff-necked as ever, would not flatter democracy and cancel the state election, let alone postpone the presidential stanza slated for 21 April. In the light of the anger that currently sweeps the land in response to the blood-curdling impunity of Obasanjo's PDP and Maurice Iwu's INEC, I present below my original piece in a slightly redacted version with a brief concluding comment.

Suddenly there was a rash of praises for Maurice Iwu's INEC. With just about a week to the elections, an urgent need seemed to have arisen for INEC to be certified as ready, able and willing to conduct free and fair elections. Going by the endorsements INEC garnered immediately before the electoral mayhem of 14 April, it would appear the Nigerian people, including its representatives in the National Assembly, had all along been diabolically cruel to Iwu. For even Ken Nnamani, president of a senate that had cause to summon the professor for explanations and reassurances a few times, found reason after a guided tour of  INEC's facilities to give a glowing testimonial. Indeed, in the view of the Accord Party and 15 other unnamed registered political parties, the unrelenting criticism Nnamani's senate and many anxious Nigerians subjected Iwu to, including the call for his resignation, had by then become "selfish, wicked and undemocratic."

Reading the tributes to INEC, you would think that there wasn't a pending crisis over the release of the voter's register, distribution of permanent voter cards, and designation of polling stations, among a myriad other catastrophes. The well-orchestrated visit of the National Council of State to INEC on 4 April set the stage for an endorsement that Iwu couldn't have hoped for even in his most prayerful moment. The most prized approval rating came from Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, presidential candidate and bitter critic of the electoral commission, who declared that he was "impressed with INEC's preparation." The same Buhari who fought a fruitless legal battle to overturn INEC's results for the 2003 presidential election!  He wasn't done either, as he added, "The visit has given us a lot of hope." In vain did he seek to keep the back door open by a crack so he could let himself out of INEC's house of hope should it prove the most unwelcoming place for him after the results of the 2007 presidential elections were returned. So he said, "We hope that those in the field will be able to perform." As it happened, he didn't have to wait that long to lose hope!

The truth is that the trouble with elections in our country has never been as much with the adequacy of material resources as with a cabalistic and malevolent will to fix the results. This is why the question on everyone's lips whenever the military stays in the barracks long enough for an "election" to take place has always been, Will they count the votes? By "They" the electorate means the powers that be; the hardly invisible hands that have thwarted every effort at having the popular will determine the government of the day in post-independence Nigeria. "They" have achieved this obnoxious end at every turn in our bleak march towards nationhood through what every Nigerian old enough to count knows as RIGGING.  For members of my generation, the shameful achievements of "They" at rigging elections were unforgettably ingrained in our consciousness by the media phase of it known as Verdict 83. It was the show that announced landslide victories so massive the ballots of the winning candidate often outstripped the number of voters, and sometimes of every living person in the constituency.

Buhari's hope was that INEC's field officers would observe the electoral rules to the letter and return accurate tallies of the ballots at each polling station. But crucial as they are, polling stations have never been the major crime scenes of electoral fraud. Rather, it is precisely at the very headquarters of the electoral commission that false results are either accepted or concocted and declared. Machines and office equipment do not on their own alter, or declare false, results. In plain terms, the winning candidates, mostly from the favoured party or party in power, are pre-determined and awarded the votes to guarantee their victory. In essence, then, the question, Will they count the votes? is really, "Will they let us vote? Will they declare the true will of the electorate?" And because the people cannot be trusted to vote against their own best interest, Obasanjo and "They" returned us fullscale to the old Verdict 83 tricks of landslide victories made possible only by a scornful disregard of the votes.

We discern the unshakable will to win-or-die in the sentiments expressed by Lucky Igbinedion, Edo State governor and chairman of the Governors' Forum, a day after his NCS visit to INEC. In the report, "Presidency: Igbinedion demands apology from South South governors" in the Vanguard of 6 April, the governor attributed his belief that the PDP would win the election in Edo State to factors quite distant from the state of preparedness of INEC. The PDP, he said, would win in Edo State "because all the big wigs in the state are in PDP and we have all the council chairmen so the chances of the party are very bright." Just what the public feared! It is the undeclared things that "big wigs and council chairmen" do to make their party win landslide or narrow but improbable victories that constitute the tragedy of our efforts at credible elections. And it is what makes the people ask again and again: will they count the votes? For the sake of our country, our pride as a people, and our future, we must implore "they" to count the votes and declare the popular will.

And the comment. So Christopher Alao-Akala won Oyo State while Adams Oshiomole lost in Edo State? And "Dr" Andy Uba is the man of the people in Anambra State? Given this outright provocation by the PDP through its grand theft of sovereignty for the third time in eight years, we must insist on enforcing our sovereign will, even if it returns us to Operation Wetie days. In plain terms, every thief of power must be prevented from enjoying the fruits of electoral crime. Let the country be rendered ungovernable for the Power Drunk Party. Since the philosophy of the PDP is "No retreat, No surrender" in its quest for self-perpetuation at the cost of the nation, let the people too borrow a leaf from that book. It is clearly a do-or-die affair now for the soul of Nigeria. If the thief will not take a tuber or two at a time from the neighbour's barn but will come with a push-cart to empty an entire wall, then he must be shown the full ire of the owner of the yams whose labour he seeks to appropriate to himself and of the community he desecrates. The elections of 14 and 21 April are a monumental fraud, a rank corruption of our moral and social health. They make Nigeria, once again, the laughing stock of the world. Even more painful, Obasanjo insists on rubbing our nose in the gore still seeping from the wounds of our collective disenfranchisement. The only morally acceptable thing to do is to cancel the elections and commence interim arrangements under the constitution for free and fair elections to ensure a democratic government by October 1, Nigeria's original independence day.

Robot  Villager

# 1 A week to the first leg of General Olusegun Obasanjo's do-or-die elections in which many have tru...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 22.04.2007 12:05

Knightofdelta  Villager

# 2 My brother from Niger Delta... well said, well said. It pains me to tell you that you have written exactly what only the literate Nigerians will understand. The fundamental issues go beyond the power of "They". Nigerians are tired of all these grand schemes carried out by these They but we are powerless to do anything. Who will lead the fight? Is it the other presidential candidates from AC, ANPP, AD? They were so selfish they could not even come together to form a viable opposition to the dictatorial ruling party. When there is no unity in Nigeria, what kind of fight are we going to lead. Abeg... let out boys in Niger delta continue The Knightrof Delta Posted by Knightofdelta| 22.04.2007 15:47