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Guardian September 15 2005
INEC and moral iniquity
By Okey Ndibe
WHEN Prof. Maurice Iwu was nominated by President Olusegun Obasanjo as the new chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, several commentators thought the nation's new electoral umpire was a deplorable choice. Iwu, some suggested, was a minion of the dynasty-minded Uba family, especially Andy Uba, Obasanjo's general factotum (also believed to desire the governorship of Anambra come 2007), and Chris Uba, the so-called political godfather whose gluttonous designs were thwarted by Governor Chris Ngige's revolt. Was Iwu's selection based, some wondered aloud, on his pliability index, his willingness to serve the agenda, however ruinous, of the president as well as of the Uba brothers?
That question, I suggest, has become ever more urgent. For if INEC's posture on the ongoing legal dispute over the 2003 Anambra gubernatorial election is anything to go by, then Nigerians have cause to worry about Iwu's independence and judgment. On August 12, the electoral tribunal ruled that Peter Obi, a candidate of APGA, was the rightful winner of the 2003 governorship elections. The incumbent, Dr. Chris Ngige, according to the tribunal, benefited from massive rigging perpetrated by the ruling People's Democratic Party. That judgment, as I contended elsewhere, was consistent with what most fair-minded residents of Anambra state would attest to be the outcome of the 2003 electoral contest.
The verdict was in my view sound, even as I know that the majority of Anambra residents hoped that Ngige (easily the best performing governor in road construction and prompt payment of salaries) would win. Ngige has gone ahead to appeal the tribunal's finding. I wish he hadn't. Yet, when I made that point in an earlier column, a friend of mine rang me up and ascribed my position to a deep naivety. Didn't I know, he asked, that Obasanjo and the Ubas were determined, one, to punish Ngige for divorcing his godfathers and, two, to recapture Anambra and its treasury, thus hurling its people back to the days when salaries went unpaid for many months? Did I not recognise, he further asked, that the ruling against Ngige was part of a scheme orchestrated by a leader who professes to fight corruption but plots day and night with agents of death to hijack a state's resources for the aggrandisement of a greedy few? Otherwise, he argued, why was Ngige being singled out as the sole PDP candidate whose election was rigged? Did Obasanjo win the hearts of more Anambrarians than APGA's presidential candidate, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu? My friend then dropped a bombshell: The president and his hirelings, he claimed, would never permit the victorious APGA candidate to assume office. Instead, they wangle for fresh elections and illegally enthrone one of their malleable satellites in office.
At the time, my friend's conjectures struck me as exaggerated even if not farfetched. There is no doubt in my mind (and, I'm willing to wager, none in Obasanjo's mind) that the president was roundly trounced by Ojukwu in 2003 in Anambra. Based on this certainty, I was amazed at the president's lack of shame when he publicly declared that Uba, in Ngige's presence, had confessed to rigging the governor into office. How could this sanctimonious president not reckon that, by implication, he also exposed himself as a beneficiary of Uba's rigging?
This background is important as one weighs the meaning and portents of INEC's baffling response to the tribunal's verdict. The ruling left INEC with two honourable choices. One, to affirm the tribunal's judgment, admitting that its officials colluded with Uba to put Ngige in an unearned office. Two, to persist with Ngige in calling the tribunal's verdict into question. Instead, the electoral commission opted for a bizarre move, pleading with an appelate court to set aside Obi's victory and order that a new election be held.
Whose, or what, agenda is INEC serving here? Obi's? The electorate's? The imperative of justice? Far from it. This strange, iniquitous manouevre bears the signature of the Uba-Aso Rock coalition. It is at once a devious but politically unintelligent enterprise, easy to unmask. Its final purpose is to further humiliate Anambra state by foisting on its people some mindless acolyte of Aso Rock's, one who also enjoys the imprimatur of the Uba clan. INEC's filthy scheme must be regarded as Iwu's coming-out party, an opportunity to earn the absolute confidence of those who hired him. The price would be yet another rape of a state's long-suffering poor. This impunity ought to be resisted by all Nigerians of moral insight and ethical acumen. Now is the best time to rein in INEC before the body and its new leader wreak havoc on the nation's fledging democracy.
Does Iwu seriously believe that the 2003 gubernatorial election was too massively rigged to sustain any outcome? If he does, then he must rouse himself to take some truly bold steps. First, he should discount all the elections, including that of the president and national as well as state legislators. Second, recognising that elections don't rig themselves but are rigged by people, he should fire all the electoral officials who facilitated the electoral malpractices. Then he should invite the police to arrest as well as prosecute the implicated officials.
Will Iwu consider taking these lofty steps? Don't hold your breath! His response to the tribunal's verdict raises disturbing questions about his agenda. Does he possess the disposition as well as moral muscle to actualise the independent appelation in his agency's name? Is he a marionette, less a leader than the led, a man in danger of becoming a pawn in the hands of dreadful forces? If Nigerians can't answer these questions in the affirmative, then the nation's democratic agents must start now to voice their fears about him. INEC's chairman must inspire wide confidence in his ability to act as a fair electoral arbiter.
I am not aware of any precedent for INEC's weird appeal of the tribunal's ruling. Not even after a federal court of appeal found that more "votes" were cast for Obasanjo in Ogun state than the combined roll of voters did the electoral body ask a court's leave to conduct fresh presidential and gubernatorial elections. So why is INEC now pulling out this trick from its hat?
Without question, it is the Obasanjo-Uba coalition that stands to profit from INEC's legal manipulations. Chris Uba has long strutted the stage as Anambra's omnipotent godfather, but many Nigerians view the president as the young man's grand godfather and patron. When historians come to consider this presidency, a dispensation rife with grave missteps, they may well conclude that Anambra state was the arena where the president played his worst political and (im)moral hand. The president may yet manage to weather the storm of accusations of financial misdeeds flung at him by Governor Orji Uzor Kalu of Abia. However, there can be no doubt that this government reeks of moral corruption. And Anambra state has witnessed some of this president's most brazen and fetid acts of moral corruption.
Obasanjo must know that the reason Uba duels with Ngige is the latter's refusal to turn over billions of naira of public funds to the self-deluded godfather. Yet, the president, in comment after revealing comment, has accused the governor of being "stubborn." On this score, the president can be charged with inconsistency. When Governor Chimaraoke Nnamani of Enugu made a sport of humiliating Jim Nwobodo, his former godfather, Obasanjo was never heard to chide the governor. Nwobodo was Obasanjo's foe, so Governor Nnamani was a hero in the president's eye. Nor has Obasanjo asked Governor Rashidi Ladoja of Oyo state to submit to Lamidi Adedibu, the state's fire-spitting, hectoring godfather. Only in Anambra state, and in the case of Ngige, has Obasanjo felt called upon to lambaste an unco-operative political godson. If Obasanjo were a true warrior for transparency, accountability and stellar performance, he would have praised, not censured, Ngige. For the governor has been insistent on, one, husbanding public funds and, two, holding off a small clique of wolves who in the past had raided the state treasury, and today want to continue their stealing ways.
Nigerians ought to curious why their president, in the long-running political drama of Anambra state, has chosen to keep the company of bare-faced bucanneers.
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