Like joke, like joke, as the Nigerian lingo goes, Professor Attahiru Jega, the Chairman of INEC has become enemy number one to the withering cabal in PDP and all those that invested in the continuation of the malfunctioning Goodluck Jonathan presidency and his endangered party, the PDP. The other day, PDP’s Rottweiler and paid jobber, Chukwuemeka Ezeife was threatening that there would be no election except Jega quits as INEC Chairman. He was simply re-echoing the views of a so called Southern Leaders Forum, a ringside front for supporters of PDP and Jonathan who, on the day the National Security Council met and vetted Jega’s preparedness for election, organized a press conference somewhere in Abuja and were demanding the sack and arrest of Jega. Like commissioned jobbers, these shadowy enablers of Jonathan/PDP did not advance any coherent crimes  Jega committed that warranted their extreme demand. At best, what they advanced were mere regurgitations of the disheveled afterthoughts the PDP hastily assembled against Jega and his INEC the moment they saw defeat starring them in the presidential election.
Since this commissioned group’s demand, the Jonathan presidency and the PDP have succeeded in forcing INEC to postpone the elections for six weeks on flimsy security concerns. They have proceeded to unfurl a series of moves aimed at either scuttling the election which they are expected to lose as well as other scorched earth moves to prevent, at all costs, the clearly expressed desires of the Nigerian masses to ensure that they democratically end the reign of ghouls and vandals which had exacerbated the problems of Nigerian nationhood, extended the bounds of corruption and impunity and invested ineptitude, cronyism, ethnic and sectarian rancor, bigotry, nepotism and avarice as principles of state policy especially in the last six years.
Since the Jonathan presidency and the PDP walked away with a gratuitous six weeks extension, it had embarked on a wild window shopping for measures that will vitiate their dwindling electoral prospects. Chief among these measures are targeted agains the electoral process and in their wild permutations, what they need to hang on to power is the removal of Jega and the removal by fiat of any credible impediment to the kind of ravaging electoral fraud which feeds the soul and body of PDP and its sixteen years dominance of power in Nigeria. See PDP’s roadmark to untrammeled power; remove Jega, stop the use of card readers and discard permanent voters card and possibly use the military and other security agencies to force down a forged result. PDP is not shameless to advance these as the ways to go In an election it is entering as an incumbent, having been in power for sixteen years! What should bother any decent mind is that the PDP does not betray any iota of shame making laughable cases for an electoral process that rests on their compromised whims and caprices
Back to Jega. Let us recall the electoral fiasco of 2011 and how Jega rode on the back of that electoral charade to become PDP’s poster boy for ‘free and fair election’. Let us recall that in 2011, Jega’s INEC, without qualms, announced electoral results where Jonathan and his PDP appropriated between 90 and 99 per cent of all registered voters in the entire South East and South South States and advanced a magical manipulation of result sheets in the North to get the required 25 per cent across the northern states where Buhari was immensely popular. Remember that when the then CPC went to the tribunal to challenge this confounding result, this same Jega was to make a stunning entry in his  defence at the tribunal that subjecting the results he claimed were actual votes to forensic examination, as CPC sought to do, amounts to endangering national security. The rest became history but suffice it to remind that the judge handling the case was removed midway into the case, retired and a pliant judge imposed to see through the wishes of the PDP at the tribunals. While Jega was approving thus deliberate larceny to favour the PDP, he was the best thing God created for mankind after pure water!
So what really has changed? Today, Jega is a marked man, being hounded by the poisonous darts of the PDP, the Jonathan presidency and their well oiled enablers who are commissioned to launch scurrilous attacks on Jega and his INEC as a way of forcing PDP back to power. You and I may ask; what really is Jega’s offence? What mortal sins did he commit so lately in the game that he must be sacrificed at the very injury time of a critical electoral process? Why must he be dragged to the market square, stripped naked and stoned to death so late in the life of the election and so close to his June 30 terminal date?
Sadly, the PDP, the Jonathan presidency and their soiled persuaders are not offering any convincing reason for calling for Jega’s head. At best, what we get from these people are a mish mash of fabrications, disoriented fables, stark lies, laughable drivers, infantile cocktails and pointed blackmail which are often grounded on the narrow props of fending off a gathering death verdict on the PDP and the Jonathan presidency. As is typical with the on going PDP campaign, all Nigerians get for the strident clamour by PDP and its apologists for the sack of Jega are hardly agreeing false stories targeting the emotional glans of PDP members and no serious indictment on the commitment of Jega to hold an election that will be worth its credibility before Nigerians and the outside world. When you are not hearing of how Jega has skewed the distribution of PVCs, you hear of how he had been consistently meeting and planning with nameless APC chieftains in Planet Mars on how to rig the election in favour of APC. Prodded to advance these cheap lies and desperate fabrications, mum becomes the word or at best, it becomes such shameful quaffs as that of a cash-and-carry Ezeife and his ilk; ‘Jega Must Go Or No Elections’.
Let us pause and ponder: when did PDP and its supporters discover that Jega was planning a fast one on them? Did they just happen on this few days to the election as it discovered it was running stiffly against the wishes and desires of Nigerians to end the debilitating scourge it is running as government? If it had discovered this earlier than now, why did it start its susceptible agitation at the very eleventh hour of the general election? Why did PDP leave the fact of Jega’s  alleged compromise till when it had exhausted every means to hoodwink Nigerians to support its continuity with devastating results? How come PDP suddenly discovered the Jega, the good boy of 2011, is now the only anathema between it and the power it so lusciously covets?
Let no one be fooled. Jega is neither a saint nor a sinner. Jega is a Nigerian, just like any other Nigerian. He has his faults, his weaknesses and his low points like any other Nigerian. Jega has no love for the APC greater than the one he has for the PDP. I have had cause to doubt Jega especially since the 2011 electoral merchandising that the PDP maximally reaped from. I still do but I know that somehow, he wouldn’t like to leave INEC a villain. This commitment must have made him to put in place a credible process that will ensure that the putrid electoral process is cleansed up and Nigerians get the leaders they actually voted for. This is to favour neither the PDP nor the APC but rather leave the process for the people and not the tricky hands of electoral fraudsters. For this, he had insisted on card readers to ensure those that are accredited to vote are the real registered voters and also the use of IT-compliant PVCs to ensure that the ghost millions of voters that are brought to swing every election in Nigeria are done away with. He believes these will sanitize a shoddy electoral system and return elected leaders actually voted for by the people. These are laudable innovations that will neither favour the APC nor the PDP.
For us to know why Jega had turned PDP’s mortal enemy, we have to ponder why PDP is desperately fighting against these innovations in the voting process.We must understand why PDP feels that at this stage, Nigeria should revert back to the same shambolic electoral process PDP had harvested from so as to place its present hatred and fear of Jega. We must wedge through the rejection by the PDP of the use of card readers and permanent voters card and Jega’s insistence that these harmless panacea to horrifying electoral roguery will be used to understand why PDP is fighting tooth and nail to remove Jega before the expiration of his legitimate tenure and possibly procure a pliable agent or member of the party to revert to the odious process that had so far, exclusively benefitted PDP and its notorious power barons. We must understand why PDP in desperation to revert the tumultuous demand for change feels no shame demanding that credible processes for free election be scuttled for it to walk away with another heist. It is Jega’s insistence on a clean electoral process that has exposed him to the venomous attack of a PDP that feels it cannot survive outside electoral rigging and such other criminal violation of the democratic process. It is Jega’s refusal to be used as a tool to scuttle the democratic demands of Nigerians once again that has pitted him against the ravenous PDP share reapers who predicate their contnued existence on short hanging the people through dubious electoral manipulation for their selfish interests. Nigerians must see in the insistent effort of the PDP to remove Jega by all means and pave way for another hair raising electoral fraud the   refusal of the PDP and the Jonathan government to accede to the demands of a free electoral process. In their instigated blackmail of Jega must be seen a government desperate to hang in to power by every vile means even when Nigerians have had enough of it. This should form the platform for a firm insistence that this regime must go to avail Nigerians to recover from years of ruinous governance that has taken a heavy toll on all Nigerians.

Peter Claver Oparah Ikeja, Lagos. [myad]

President Goodluck Jonathan left no one in doubt about the type of campaign he wanted to run when he picked well known loose cannon with no modicum of decency, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, as his campaign spokesperson. Fani-Kayode had earlier styled himself as a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), when he was actually never one, not having being recognized as such by APC leadership when he was in the party, and not on record to have been found worthy of being invited for APC meetings, according to APC spokesperson, Lai Mohammed.

Known for throwing decency to the gutters with toxic Facebook posts, and error-ridden newspaper articles, the Osun State-born law graduate had conducted himself in the last few years in a manner that makes one wonder if the globally respected Cambridge University will ever be proud of such a product. Or how else do you think of someone that goes around writing on the number of women he had slept with as contribution to debates on the legality and morality of “deportation” of destitute of certain origin from Lagos?

It is only in Nigeria that someone of Fani-Kayode’s standing, someone having a money laundering case before the courts, will be appointed by a President as campaign spokesperson. In countries where choices of candidates by citizens are scientific, not based on religious and ethnic sentiments as exploited here, such faux pas is enough to cost candidates elections.

Fani-Kayode has since discharged his duty to type – daily regaling us with tissues of lies to demonize the candidacy of General Muhammadu Buhari and his party, the APC. First, he sold to the media the non-issue of Buhari’s certificate, and even when the Katsina school where General Buhari had his secondary education, released the statement of result of the general and the masterlist issued by Cambridge University which conducted the exam in 1961, he declared it fake. It did not occur to him that Cambridge would have come out to disclaim the result if it never originated from it. How anyone would attribute a fake document to Cambridge – of all paces – in this age, and some gullible Nigerians bought it, is beyond me. In any case, all the misattributions to Cambridge by the PDP, including that Hausa language was not offered in 1961, have already been shredded and dumped into the waste bin where they belonged, with the school’s external assessment body issuing a statement on its website, confirming that they indeed set Hausa language in Northern Nigeria in 1961. I wonder whether the same Cambridge would not have disowned the circulated Buhari’s grades if they never originated from them, which would have been criminal.

Fani-Kayode and his Social Media hirelings have thrown everything – including the kitchen sink – in the direction of the General. They have forged medical reports in the name on a non-existent “Ahmadu Bello Teaching Hospital” to declare Buhari as having prostate cancer, they have circulated “minutes” of imaginary meetings to say Jega met with Northern elders in Kaduna  (in other reports, Dubai) on rigging elections, they have hired commercial protesters to embarrass General Buhari in London. They have paid millions of naira to put up adverts in national dailies in the name of a fictitious “Muslim” group in the South West endorsing Buhari because “they wanted Islamization of the South West”.  I have seen SMS messages being circulated by unfortunately educated folks including a chartered accountant friend from the South South, that a vote for Jonathan means four more years of non-payment of annual subscription of OIC (Organization of Islamic Conference) which is in its sixth year now and which means Nigeria will be expunged from OIC when the non-payment reaches ten years – as a reason to vote Jonathan. It does not occur to these vendors of fictions that Jonathan was the first Nigerian president to attend OIC meeting since the country’s return to civil rule.  Their fiction factory keeps churning out lies every other day. The country has never gone so low.

Fani-Kayode was yet again at his lying best when he addressed the press few days ago accusing APC of having made their vice presidential candidate, Yemi Osinbajo,  to take an oath to resign after six months in office. It is more unfortunate that the press which should have by now been familiar with the wicked fabrications of Fani-Kayode, gave this hogwash an undeserved prominence. This allegation started from some vendors of misinformation on the social media, where some of us that are equally social media-savvy proved beyond reasonable doubt that this was not true;  it is therefore very unfortunate that President Jonathan’s official campaign  latched on to this beer parlour gist.

I will try and shed light on this for those who have open minds. The first bearer of the disinformation on the social media had made reference to Tunde Bakare’s statement in 2011 that the ACN/CPC last minute alliance collapsed principally because ACN requested for a slot in the ticket, which was fair, as ACN had more national spread than CPC. This being politics, no one would have expected ACN to submit its structure to CPC without a commitment to play a major part in the government. It is like two companies merging and one (ACN) bringing sixty per cent equity, it is only natural that the company will be significantly represented on the board (ticket).  While Buhari and Bakare were coming from CPC and the ticket cannot be altered again being few days to election, it is not out of place for ACN to put forward an equitable proposal to have the VP slot when the government comes on board. This is a basic principle of negotiation.  That was 2011, and there was no secrecy about it as newspapers reported it and I remember Femi Adesina of Daily Sun also making it the subject of his column the week after. In any case the proposal was not even accepted by Buhari and Bakare, and the alliance collapsed.

Between 2011 and 2015, the two parties, alongside a faction of APGA, ANPP, DPP, and the new PDP, formed the APC. Now, both the old CPC and the ACN have representatives on the ticket with Buhari coming from CPC and Osinbajo coming from ACN. This has automatically ruled out the 2011-type proposed negotiation for alteration in ticket on assumption of office. This is what Fani-Kayode is twisting to further demonise the APC.  Any enlightened follower of political developments in Nigeria should know this. In any case, even if Tinubu comes on board along the way (which is only a figment of their imagination), Tinubu is by far a better administrator than Jonathan.  I’m not a fan of Tinubu, but I will pick him over Jonathan as President. Between 1999-2007 when Nigeria was afflicted with probably the worst set of non-performing governors in its history, Tinubu stood tall as a decent performer in Lagos – even when the man at the helms in the center withheld the state’s allocations. His political recruitment strategy is also top-notch as those he backed for power, from Aregbesola to Amosun and Ajimobi, are testament to this.  I may not be comfortable with his records on anti-graft scale, but I believe we have seen the worst under the current Federal Government. This is by no means a validation of this fabrication, but only playing in their own court.

If General Buhari did not accept this proposal in 2011, there is no way he could have accepted it in 2015, just as Osinbanjo, a pastor like Bakare, would not have accepted the arrangement. The whole thing is just another figment of Fani-Kayode’s warped imagination.

The election is less than four weeks, and I know Fani-Kayode’s fiction machine is still being oiled to produce more between now and the election date, if they ever allow the election to hold.  However, some of us will also not stop setting the records straight. The task of extricating Nigeria from these fiction vendors and setting it on the path of progress is the business of every patriotic Nigerian.

Mr. Oyewale, an accountant and blogger, wrote in from in Ajah, Lagos. [myad]