Ever since the macabre charade called the April 2007 elections was visited on the country, a lot of water, as they say, has passed under the bridge but what is yet to change is the existence of the dirty racketeering ring in the Independent National Electoral Commission, who for the lust for lucre, decided to trifle with an opportunity to set the country on the rights paths of progress.

As the entire world still reels in shock and awe at how an institution that should serve all was shamelessly diverted to serve the cabalistic interests of just a few mandarins in a country neighing for progress, there is a near total unanimity of opinion that the characters that visited that electoral mayhem on the rest of the country need be put away lest they stand to corrupt men’s souls into thinking that Nigerians are incapable of doing anything outside fraud and deliberate brigandage.

Tongue in cheek, the sly fellow, Olusegun Obasanjo, who commissioned the soulless agents that delivered that fraud has admitted that there were some imperfections here and there. He was forced to admit after initially lauding the bestial handiwork of his hands as the best thing that would happen to a country such as Nigeria. The grand beneficiary of that electoral heist, Umar Yar’Adua has also admitted that the manner of his emergence rankles and he had gone further to empanel a commission to ensure that such grand parody is not visited on the country again.

But Maurice Iwu, the pawn used for the fraud and his choirmaster, Phillip Umeadi and possibly David Mark, who won elections conducted in Benue State in Abuja and went ahead to become the president of the senate, are the only people in the world who delude themselves that by repeating falsehood so many times, the world would come to accept such as truth. The rest of the choristers are paid hirelings, courtiers and hungry subalterns that ogle for a living in any slight opportunity that flees by. Driven ragged by the nonsensical content of their wry and empty logic, they lead the battle for a possible acceptance of the grand fallacy that this unfortunate country is incapable of a better showing than the bizarre shenanigan of April 2007.

Even when they fail to convince themselves, they resort to a banal invocation of a history they fraudulently doctored to satisfy their hungry appetite for self-enrichment and satisfy the disastrous urge of their master to hew unto himself a successor that would not look into his many transgressions. Iwu succeeded, or so it seems, to deliver the hatchet job he was scripted to deliver but he has murdered his own right to sleep and lives in the self-delusive fantasy that he would wish away a self-imposed crucible by the awkward way he goes about attacking the entire world for rejecting his attempt to insinuate that Nigeria is not capable of anything saner and more decent than the horrible concoctions he wrought in April 2007.

Iwu had taken his watery war to the United States where he intruded into a meeting of Imo indigenes there with tales of how he was the best thing God created for Nigeria after pure water but his kinsmen, who should proudly own him were he hewn of a sterner stuff than a gutless pawn and a shameless racketeer, walked out on him for disgracing them in April and he was left with an empty hall to talk to himself. But Iwu did not stop at that.

He is a poor blackmailer who is hanging on because the war against corruption is just being employed to persecute those that disagree with the Nebuchadnezer that commissioned him for the dirty job he did for him in April and not to go after the real felons like him. When the last senate, petrified by the colossal volume of corruption perpetrated by Iwu, Umeadi and their cohorts in the guise of conducting an election that was intentionally programmed for the anti-climactic photo finish it was ran into, he went to town with a stupid, yellow, and unsubstantiable blackmail that he gave the former Senate President, Ken Nnamani a N50 contract in the unholy bazaar he carried out in INEC.

When he was challenged by a livid Nnamani to come forward and prove his case, he developed stomach but then, with an anti-corruption fighter like Ribadu, Iwu never had any skin pain because he worked with Ribadu in delivering that national scandal. When a section of the international community raised doubts over the conduct of what is referred worldwide as the worst ever election to be recorded in human history, Iwu went berserk and threatened that in God-knows-when, he would come out with stories of how international observers rigged elections in Nigeria. Simply, Iwu was hovering on the very brinks of insanity. But discerning Nigerians saw it coming. They saw the macabre electoral fraud coming and warned that Iwu was incapable of delivering an election that may claim a smattering of credibility.

Recently, the European Union, the biggest international observers of that process and one of the biggest contributors of the over N60billion heist Iwu cleaned out in INEC in the name of conducting the 2007 elections released its report, which was unsparing of the electoral body’s role in delivering the legendary electoral scam of April 2007. One report had it that at the formal presentation of the report to INEC, Iwu was so unsettled and so exasperated that he interrupted the speech of the EU chief and you can safely guess what he said.

That he weathered so many obstacles to deliver a free and fair election, that no other party prepared for election except the PDP hence they won his shambolic charade, that he and his master, Obasanjo were the only men in Nigeria who wanted the election to succeed, that the EU wants to destroy Nigeria and such other disoriented effusions of a drowning man that dug his own grave. Of course these pranks, as bare and predictable as they are, were not strong enough to dissuade the EU from publicly presenting their reports and since then, Iwu and his racketeering gangsters have been firing tepid blind shots at the EU and ‘unveiling grand designs to destabilize Nigeria’ by God-knows-whom. What a shame!

If you listen to INEC and its men in recent times, you would think the country is back to the Abacha years but then, with the epoch that brought forth Iwu, Nigeria regressed below the Abacha years. Iwu’s ichabod and partner in scavenging, Phillip Umeadi, has shelled out from the self-imposed cocoon he retreated into after the 2007 national fraud. Prior to that grand electoral larceny, Umeadi was so intrusive in the nation’s polity with his obtuse defense of the very many embarrassing precursors to electoral fraud INEC committed in the period and process leading to the grand act itself.

In fact, many Nigerians swore than the garrulous INEC image-maker made his last public show after the incredulous self-driven tanker bomb story, that was interred after the harm was done by those that ostensibly masterminded that jeremiad to divert attention from the worldwide darts thrown at INEC’s dubious conduct of the earlier elections in April. With the gale of worldwide condemnation attending the sham delivery of the 2007, this ichabod, retreated to his bunkers, ostensibly to enjoy his share of the INEC loot, only to shell out after the EU report and today, yes, after more than eight years of democratic practice in Nigeria, this country is being embellished with such Abacha-like stories and devilish contrivances of how the EU, from whom Iwu and Umeadi conned several millions of dollars for electoral conduct, is plotting to destabilize Nigeria and we are all keeping quiet while these shameless mongers pit us against the entire world.

I that Nigerians should rise up with one voice to demand that Iwu, Umeadi and their cohorts be put in the gallows lest they stand to cause maximum injury to this country’s interests, in their bid to defend the indefensible. We should demand for a full probe of the financial scandals that rocked INEC for jobs that were never done nor were they intended to be done. We should demand for the full account of the N60billion that was looted in INEC by the cartel that ran that agency. There is no gainsaying that the ends of anti-corruption and transparency would be best served if the perpetrators of the electoral and financial scandals that talispinned into the electoral charade of 2007 were dealt with.

Umar Yar’Adua may think that he is protecting the very fountain from where his illegitimate government sprouted by shielding Iwu and his cohorts from justice but he should note that any day he dilly dallies on prosecuting Iwu and cleaning the dirty stables of INEC worsens his legitimacy crisis. He should note that he would convince no one of his intentions for electoral reforms if he goes along to tolerate the annoying nuisance Iwu and his cult of dupes in INEC have become.

Has Yar’Adua now elected to migrate to the gutters to fight credible institutions like EU, as the posturing of Iwu and his INEC gang portends? If he has, he should be prepared for the worst because a government that lacks legitimacy is not the very best to fight a war of attrition with institutions and nations that have well gone past the adult racketeering Iwu and his tendencies thrive here in Nigeria and the entire world that has refused to sip from Iwu’s polluted chalice knows this fact. He would be sending a stronger message to the entire world if he sacks Iwu, chains him and makes him to account for the huge resources wasted on his INEC.

Most of that money belongs to the EU and other international donor agencies that have dissociated themselves from the shameful actions of Iwu and I believe Yar’Adua is not deceived into believing that the world is oblivious of the financial and electoral scam Iwu is desperately trying to shovel under the nation’s rich under belly of plots and tragedies of which Iwu’s show of shame in April 2007 remains a very poignant instance.

Robot  Villager

# 1 Ever since the macab...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 26.08.2007 17:58