I hear that the professor of fraud, Maurice Iwu is touring the world to show them how he conducted the best election in human history. As he is doing this, his students in the various PDP states are in a frenzied haste to concoct and roll out phantom election results to the local councils in their states and these are the foundations on which democracy would be expected to thrive so as to usher Nigeria into the mythical world economic power club by 2020. The people are getting increasingly frustrated as the prospects of an election with minimal free and fair content wane so fast. As I am writing this, Iwu has been reported to have visited his arranged audience made up of some Nigerians, perhaps PDP partisans in London where he told them that from his clairvoyant instincts, he knew that either Buhari and Atiku would not have won the sham charade he fangled in April. That must have informed his decision not to bother Nigerians with any election at all but to just post result that were on the Internet days before his shameful conduct. His next port of call is the United States where he would regal all who care to know of how he had been vilified by being the most patriotic Nigerian, possibly after the master that exhumed him from deprecating penury through the ‘patriotic’ advice of presidential valet, Andy Uba by conducting the type of wonderful election his name honours in April 2007. 

I hear that the shameless professor, with a contestable academic record, has as his chaperon, one Musa Sarkin Adar, a supposed (dis) honourable member and the chairman of the house of representatives (house of rapes?) committee on electoral matters. I am sure this fellow was one of the Etteh charioteers that made a road show of supporting a virtual fraud the other day. This is to show you the interface between electoral and economic fraud; twin evils that eat deep into the fabric of Nigerian society and peaked as the devastating Obasanjo pestilence happened. Their task is to convince a shocked and awed world that electoral fraud, and by extension, corruption, is in sync with the character of the Nigerian and that we all should cease to be amazed by what happened in April because Nigerians are not capable of a better showing. Truth is that despite his funny, very awkward and bizarre attempt to hide the moon with his bare palms, going by the stupid and very annoying way he and the dozens of hacks he had hired for that dirty purpose have gone so far to defend the scam of April 2007, Iwu may have genuinely believed they gave their best by the shoddy manner he handled the elections, which tells of the capacity of the scum that wrote the thesis from which all perpetrators of electoral fraud in the world would draw as newer ways are   

However, my concern presently is not on the collective embarrassment Iwu and his cohorts presently constitute to Nigerians. My concern is not on the criminal decision of Yar’Adua to retain Iwu, who should be in prison, answering for political and economic crimes in the vain hope that he would manage to combine the contradictory attributes of a virtuous president and one that sustains the rotten fountain of his illegitimate mandate. My present concern is that gradually, democracy has been redefined, re-chiseled and re-paneled in Nigeria to remove the people from that essential form of government. It is being remoulded into a deadly art for fiends, cabals and ghoulish cannibals who have the means and resources to force down cooked and invented figures on others and employ this as a license to plunder the public resources. I am concerned that the last eight years of the Obasanjo devastating pestilence succeeded in ensuring that a deadly cabal is promoted to seize the nation’s politics and control it in such a way that de-emphasizes the essence and contribution of the people in the process. I am concerned and really afraid that Obasanjo and his evil cahoots have succeeded in forcing pure, untainted and uncensored electoral fraud on Nigerians such that arresting the present drift to the worst variant of dictatorship is becoming an elusive task. I am concerned that what Iwu is being allowed to do presently by the unsure and tentative Yar’Adua is the institutionalization of fraud in the electoral system to such an extent that the so-called electoral reform would eventually turn out to be a sham in the long run. One is tempted to ask what would be the effect of an electoral reform when the perpetrator of the monumental electoral fraud of last April is still being retained and being funded to gallivant all over the globe with a nonsensical gospel that insults the intelligence of Nigerians and that of the entire world. One wonders what would come out of an electoral reform panel put in place by a government that fights shy of the need to attack the vestige of electoral corruption but is playing games while the fangs of dubious elections deepen by the day. 

I am concerned that the country is made to chase a wild goose; of the type that illegitimate governments set up to buy time while the unrepentant apostles of electoral fraud deepen their hold on our collective resources by each passing day. The big question is how a government that is committed to electoral reform allow the type of abhorrent charade the PDP perpetrated in many states last weekend and is still committed to the reform of the electoral process? Please, someone should tell me. An Igbo proverb says that it is from the smell of the fart that one can decipher the taste of the human entrails and if this is so, why would a Yar’Adua that has made a mantra of electoral reform allow his partymen to tow the same infamous paths of electoral perfidy that has brought so much shame and dishonour to the country? Why would a president that is sold to doing things right allow the continuation of the same electoral brigandage that has been brought by his predecessor to rob Nigerians of the inalienable rights to elect their leaders and hold them accountable to their misdemeanors? These point to the fact that the Yar’Adua presidency is one born from contradictions and which sees the retention of these contradictions as the path to tow to chart its wearied ways through the mines of mistrust and suspicion Nigerians have laid for it. 

But the most important implication of the present deft effort to sustain and enforce electoral fraud through various guises by the Yar’Adua government, the PDP, Iwu and the beneficiaries of the electoral heist of April is what happens in the immediate and remote future as the beneficiaries perfect the game of fraud in the electoral system and employ same to perpetuate themselves in power. This was what led to the charade of last weekend and this can get worse with the days. Let us imagine the multiplier effect of retaining the present culture of electoral impunity, which reached a bestial height during the Obasanjo years. Let us imagine its ripple effects on leaders that are never elected by the people, who do not believe they are accountable to the people and who defer to their godfathers and such shameless electoral fraudsters like Iwu than to the people. This is the source of my concern as I write and ruminate over yet another round of horrific conduct of elections last weekend, the mad effort by Iwu to make us all fools and the curious decision of Yar’Adua to retain and sustain him for the reckless job he is doing presently as well as his paradoxical vow to reform the electoral process, our worsening fate with dubious leaders and their cronies and our powerlessness to decide or control who governs us, I am left with no option to question whence our help will come from. On the other hand, all these brazen cases of impunity and the desperate effort to fool all us and deepen the vices that have impoverished, suggest a faint picture that is as real as the capacity of our traducers to think they can do anything to us and get away with it. I feel, rather strangely, and even if faintly that something must definitely give way and rescue us from this strange situation. I am almost certain that this same feeling were there before the historic events of January 15, 1965 and April 22, 1990 took place. My instincts will never disappoint me and it is our collective choice to act now or go for it. 
 

Peter Claver Oparah.

Ikeja, Lagos. 
 

Robot  Villager

# 1 var sbtitle6095=encodeURIComponent(As Fraudule...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 17.12.2007 16:50

NWANZA  Villager

# 2 Let us imagine the multiplier effect of retaining the present culture of electoral impunity, which reached a bestial height during the Obasanjo years. Let us imagine its ripple effects on leaders that are never elected by the people, who do not believe they are accountable to the people and who defer to their godfathers and such shameless electoral fraudsters like Iwu than to the people. This is the source of my concern as I write and ruminate over yet another round of horrific conduct of elections last weekend, the mad effort by Iwu to make us all fools and the curious decision of Yar’Adua to retain and sustain him for the reckless job he is doing presently as well as his paradoxical vow to reform the electoral process, our worsening fate with dubious leaders and their cronies and our powerlessness to decide or control who governs us, I am left with no option to question whence our help will come from. Revolution is beginning to sound like the only solution, when PDP achieve 100% landslide. It means that Nigerian people are totally disenfranchised by the process. I don't think that Yar'Adua can call his party in order when OBJ is still the Chairman BOT PDP. For them, it is play time as all positions are now maned by the team that report to Mr. Cabal. Revolution is the only solution my friends! Posted by NWANZA| 17.12.2007 20:31