Off-Cycle Elections in a Snatch& Run Democracy: COURTocracy or INECracy or INCUMBENTocracy? - Ik Muo, PhD.
On Saturday
with the very remarkable date, 11.11.23, INEC, under Mahmood Yakubu organised
off-cycle elections in Bayelsa, Imo and
Kogi (BIK)States. It is the same Yakubu we all know, the one who finished N300bn+ on a
technology he would not use, the one who lied to Nigerians about the BVAS et
al, the one who willingly authored the
electoral guidelines and bold facedly refused to abide by those same
guidelines, the one who announced the
results like a thief in the night (Mt,24:42;1Thes,5:2); the INDEPENDENT umpire who took sides with
a party and its candidate. In other
climes, he would be wearing a prison uniform and other appurtenances of imprisonment.
But this is Nigeria. Our people say that when the moon is at its peak, a
hard-hearted thief usually becomes ashamed of his profession. But not Yakubu!
He repeated ALL the promises he made to
us in February about transparency, integrity and optimisation of technology. Nobody believed
him, except perhaps, himself. Anyway, I did not even remember that the election
was holding that day until I started seeing and hearing of the signs and
wonders happening in those places, with each State APC and APCians,
trying to outdo the other in the snatch & run elections. Using my globally acclaimed FPA
method (Front Page Analysis), I will share with you the stirep in the evening of 11/11/23. I will neither
moralise about the weird happenings nor
will I bet my keyboard about the 100% accuracy of these stories, but let’s go
through the headlines and reports in brief.
‘INEC officials carrying materials for Wards11,12,13 boarded some boats in Nembe Bassambri, took
photographs but were offloaded and diverted to the following locations James
Japhet House( octopus) and Chief Isere House( at Sandfield) and Sylvas unfinished building and made to do the
biddings of APC’ . ‘Materials for Ward 4
Southern Ijaw LGA have been hijacked by
unknown gunmen’. ‘Nembe Constituency 3
materials hijacked as PDP calls for cancellation’. ‘Hon Basil Kembo,
leader of PDP Ward 4 escapes death while trying to protect some sensitive
materials from being hijacked by
military personnel’. ‘Arrest of Lawmaker Hon A Amadi representing Mbaitoli
Ikeduru Federal Constituency for use of thugs, violence and hijack of INEC
materials; Materials recovered by security operatives’. ‘INEC staff abducted in
Bayelsa, electoral materials lost as boat capsizes’. ‘Bayelsa: Suspected thugs
invade polling units in Southern Ijaw, Sagbama, hijack materials’. ‘Another
case of prefilled results sheet in PU 020, Eika/Ohizenyi, Okehi LGA of Kogi
state’ . ‘Uniformed security men forcefully divert electoral materials in Imo’,
‘Driver to Imo State PDP governorship candidate, Samuel Anyanwu has been
attacked and shot by armed men suspected to be working for APC’ ‘Placid Njoku’s
vehicle burnt beyond recognition! ‘Yahaya Bello’s loyalist and LGA chairman,
thugs apprehended with ammunition, cash’ ‘INEC staff camped by Yahaya Bello
write results to favour him’…
‘Kogi
residents protest, INEC cancels election in LGAs as officials arrive PUs with
pre-recorded result-sheets’. INEC Officials
caught with pre-recorded result sheets in favour of APC ‘ ‘PDP Deputy
Governorship Candidate in Imo , James Oyereri shot and arrested for snatching
ballot boxes at Owerre Nkowrji ward’ ‘EFCC arrests 14 for vote buying in BIK
states, intercepts N11.04m; ‘ICPC
arrests 6 vote buyers in Imo State. ‘We
will NOT and we can NOT arrest vote buyers unless authorised by electoral
officials;’- Police PRO; Chukwuma
Ekomaru, SAN, led security operatives and thugs to snatch ballot papers
and beat up Stanley Onyea, a Ward
collation officer’; Orlu on fire as youths vow to destroy areas that are not beacons
of hope; no voting in Orsu LGA of Imo state; what is happening in
Ideato North is nothing but a show of force; Corper missing with
BVAS and election results, Jonah Daumie, a media aid to Joshua Maclaver, Deputy Governorship
candidate of APC in Bayelsa caught (pants down) with arms and ammunitions....
This Jonah would have imitated his forbearer, jumped into the ship and be
swallowed by a whale instead of engaging in
what has turned out to be a show
of shame!
Pants down, arms,
amunition, cash and prerecorded result-sheets
Anyway,
Imo ended up remaining a beacon of Hope as the people Hopelessly await renewed
hope. Hope not only won the
whole 27 LGAs, including areas where there were no elections, he left only
26.4% of the votes to the two major
contenders and even obtained more than what the presidential candidates harvested in the last election. Then,
the 4 presidential candidates won a total of 458687 while Peter Obi with his
cultlike following and the massive turnout of voters scored 360495 in Imo State. However, the author and
finisher of Hopism scored 540817
in an election marred by apathy and unparalleled voter-intimidation. And the
result came out so early such that the deeply
Churcheous Hope was able to go for thanksgiving Mass, to thank the
Hopists the day after! I know that a thanksgiving Mass is usually pre-booked. I am not saying
that Hope booked his own in advance but in this era when politicians have
personal Priests and Spiritual Consultants, everything is possible! Results from other states were announced more
than 24 hours after that of Imo State, the state of Hopism! And boldened by the
electoral heist in Imo, the APC has promised to ‘capture’ more states in the South East. They did not mention
Anambra; neither does the Son of Man mention it!!! This is sure because the more you win in a
lottery, the more your are tempted to play more so as to win more! One Dr
Freda Ikpefua, an ICT Consultant to INEC,
has been ‘wailing’ that the frightening quantum of votes credited to the
Chief Hopist were not recognised by BVAS & IRev. Furthermore, some 8
busy-body and unknown CSOs accredited
by INEC to monitor Imo state elections, jointly called for the cancellation of the poll! But under BATiocracy, these are
pure balderdash and a waste of time;
The GTC (Go To Court) model has taken care of all that
Thanksgiving by the Chief Hopist Ododo Doballeing for his god
In Kogi State, the youth-Governor, quickly
recovered from the humiliating blow from the beautiful one, Natashi Akpoti,
and vengefully hit everyone and
everything below the belt. Thus, despite the arrest of his helmsmen with arms and
ammunition, massive merchandising of
votes and advanced-copies of the
results, some wrongly written, the
cancellation of supplementary elections already announced and the allegations
that INEC changed the figures after announcing the winner, his boy,
Ahmed Usman Ododo, a happily
married woman won massively. And to showcase his total obeisance, he
knelt down to present his CORe( Certificate of Return), the core of his
mandate, to Bello. Chief Executive indeed! So, it is Bello’s will, not the will
of the voters. Bello thus technically starts his third term. Anyway, let’s give
them 100days; just 100 days!
What
happened in the BIK elections was as it was on 25/2/23; it was a bold
and shameless display of the Snatch and Run strategy which is a prelude to snatch
and run democracy. The actors, a
good number on the payroll of the FGN were bold and shameless because as our
people usually say, a boy sent on a thieving operation by his father does
not do it stealthily because he knows who has his back. However beyond
my peoples’ sayings, it has been said globally that the best definition
of madness is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different outcomes.
Those who expected something different
may not be mad but something is not adding up in their thinking
faculties. They expected Yakubu and his gang, who conducted the wonder-full
elections of February this year to have a Damascus Road Experience, and offer a transparent process? And after the Supreme Cult has
shown that it is a waste of resources,
time and effort to challenge OBVIOUSLY floored electoral outcomes in the
courts?
Other electoral contenders, who eye-marked the snatch and run election of February have been weeping, pretending to have been taken unawares. I am surprised that they are surprised. PDP and LP rejected the results in Kogi and Imo while the candidates of APC and LP called for a review of the Bayelsa results. Dino, who has been a part of the electoral banditry over the years, suddenly boycotted the elections and declared that he has concrete evidences of overvoting and result manipulation in 17 (out of 21) Kogi LGAs. But he is a lawyer and the Supreme Cult has shown that it is easier for one of those his flashy cars to drive at 50kmph through the cratered roads of Igbo-Ukwu than for the Supreme Cult to accept those evidences. Afterall, cases are won on the basis of the law, not emotions! Anyway, he attended his own post-election church service where he turned into a singing Minister! Muritala Ajaka, the SDP Candidate in Kogi State is also wailing seriously : ‘what am I going to court to do when the same INEC that did this is coming to court to defend what it did? They gave me assurance that the election would be transparent; they allowed me to waste my time, spend my money, mobilise my people only for them to write the results’ Before nko? What was Ajaka expecting or is he the only stranger in Nigeria? As a slave who saw other slaves being buried alive, why and how did he think that his case would be different? He even had the time to storm INEC office with his supporters demanding the resignation of Prof Yakubu! And while PDP declared that the BIK elections were worse in ALL dimensions than the general elections, Diri of the same PDP praises the INEC for an exemplary performance! Sure, every politics is local!!!
However,
the wailing that I am deeply concerned about is those from the voters as they
ask nobody in particular: Why did we take the stress to go a-voting?
Before the elections, they had dressed
in their battle gears,( election is WAR in Nigeria) marched to the INEC office
and asked Yakubu whether they should bother voting or go straight to court.
They had asked through Asukwo-B of BusinessDay (see the cartoon atop this
intervention). After the Shenanigans of 11-11, they are still asking ‘of what use is registration, card
collection, queuing in the sun and rain, and voting? The Economy is
another wailer, which is wailing silently
after coughing out at least N18bn to fund the electoral banditry of 11-11. How
can a bleeding economy waste its borrowed resources to fund exercises in
futility? So, for the last set of wailers, the voters and the economy, I am
restating my revolutionary
recommendation which I came up with after a painstaking research following the pains of
February 25. I had recommended that all
those who are interested in any post should declare their intentions and let
the courts determine the winner. No
cards, no votes, no stress, no campaigns, no violence. It is as simple
as that and we remove high-neck,
foreign observers, situation room from our lexicon and forget about NASS
oversight functions. Some people have also suggested that INEC should be
mandated by law to just appoint and announce the occupant of the positions. In
this case, we dismantle the INEC
behemoth since we would need only INEC Chair and his personal staff. But to
ensure that the lawyers and judge are
continuously in season, a hybrid option is suggested: INEC should
announce 2 candidates per post and the court will declare the winner.
However,
following the way things are going, we can also
go for INCUMBENTocracy; simply asking the incumbents to
anoint and swear-in their successors.
This is a patriotic model that saves us all the money, disruptions and
emotional turmoil. I suggest that the Supreme Cult be converted
into a Constituent Assembly to produce the details of these revolutionary
propositions within 48 hours so that it will be adopted in 2027. This is
important because Wike has already declared that NOBODY would defeat BAT in 2027. Why not work from
the answer to the question, instead
of wasting our time and resources in preparing for the next election, including
the consequential emotional and social turmoil? If you think that the time
granted to the Supreme Cult Judges is short, remember how LONG it took them to
write the presidential appeal judgement!
Abba:
going, going…. Gagdi: we
will know whom you know!
Meanwhile, as I was putting this together. a lot of interesting developments occurred. The Appeal Court sacked three opposition governors within 4 days, including Abba of Kano ( NNPP)and Muftwan of Plateau (PDP). What COURTocracy cannot do does not exist. If in doubt, check out the viral video of Yusuf Gagdi,an APC Rep from Plateau boasting in the public square that when we get to the supreme court, we will know whom they know and we will know whom they know! Mato Ibrahim has also regretted that law-teachers in Nigerian universities would find it difficult to teach law giving the nature of the judgments being passed by our electoral courts. It was Double Trouble for Samuel Anyanwu who was elbowed out of the Imo Governorship race and also lost out his PDP secretaryship!
The Liberian Duo!
However,
the star development was in Liberia, where President Weah ‘did
a Jonathan’, conceded defeat to Boakai, the elder. In the first election, it was 43.8%/43.4% in favour of the footballing
president while in the second round, it was50.89% /49/11 in favour of Boakai!
As you can see, the gap was so infinitesimal that one needs a microscope to see it but rather than ignoring it and
adopting the GTC model, Weah conceded, saying under my leadership, these
elections were organised with a promise: a promise of fairness, transparency
and credibility… the Liberian people have spoken and their choice will be
honoured and obeyed-… the National Electoral
Commission ( note that it is NOT independent) has earned the respect ALL Liberians, our foreign partners, int’l
observers and the world at large for completing this difficult task to the
satisfaction of all stakeholders including contesting parties. Neither
GMB nor BAT nor Uzodimma can say this
and the probability of saying it in future is dimming further and further. And
as one unknown Nigerian quipped. If it were in Nigeria, the
votes will be ‘brazenly’ manipulated by
the party in power and the opposition asked to GTC.
Finally, look at the above cartoon; what does
it tell you about our judicial operatives, the lawyers, judges and ancillary
staff? No be me talkam!
“Find a great mentor, someone who has already been through the many challenges of being an entrepreneur..” -Jodi Levine
Entrepreneurship in Practice: Cases, Challenges and Lessons By IK, MUO PHD is now available on Amazon, since 14/5/21. Click here to view Available for order +2348033026625 | Delivery : Worldwide
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