By Abiodun Ladepo
Watching the Who-Is-Who of the newly-minted All Progressives Party (APC) revel in resplendent partying the other day as they unveiled their manifesto, I could not but wonder if all the back-slapping, fist-pumping and hugs would not amount to a grand exercise in futility come 2015. Did any of them read Okey Ndibe’s piece – The Shape of Things to Come – published on Saharareporters (http://saharareporters.com/column/shape-things-come-okey-ndibe) on February 3rd, 2014? If they did, are they losing any sleep over the fate of their manifesto in 2015? If you missed that article, I enjoin you to visit the website and read it. It is a mildly rendered frustration at what transpired during the January 11th, 2014 local government elections in Anambra State. The elections were supervised by the Anambra State Independent Electoral Commission. Ndibe quotes extensively from the Punch Newspapers’ report on what happened during the elections:
“… Violence broke out in some parts of Anambra State on Saturday during the election held to elect local government chairmen and councilors. At Nkwelle, Awka South Local Government Area, ballot materials were burnt when a fight broke out because polling officers failed to produce result sheets. It was a similar story at Igwebeze Primary School, Ifite-Awka where some party agents insisted that voting would not commence unless the result sheets were made available. The Presiding Officer for the Igwebeze polling unit 2, Mr. Jude Onwubiko, however pleaded with the agents and voters to let the voting process continue, explaining that the results sheets were being brought by the supervisory presiding officer. There was also violence at Igboukwu Town Hall, Fegge, Onitsha, where some youths protested against alleged thumb-printing by members of a particular political party. All the polling units visited by our correspondent did not have results sheets.
The absence of result sheets! This all-important piece of problem is buried at the end of the paragraph! There is no way the uninitiated; the non-discerning; the electoral fraud outsider would have thought about it! The absence of result sheets! A non-suspecting voter would not see anything wrong with the process if he sees a Presiding Officer and Polling Agents for each of the political parties hanging around at the polling station. The ballot boxes are there on time and the voters register is present. There may even be one or two police officers standing nearby to provide security and lend credence to the sanctity of the process. What more do you need to complete a voting station?
The result sheets, stupid! If results sheets with serial numbers are available, with enough certified copies for each party’s agent, the ability of any Presiding Officer to unilaterally alter the results will be greatly diminished. But where there are no result sheets, the only thing a crooked Presiding Officer needs to do is hand out a scrap of paper to all the party agents there with whatever result they all verified as having been obtained; the Presiding Officer can then retire to a hideout where he would enter into the result sheets whatever phony set of numbers his paymasters want him to announce. Aggrieved parties can stump their feet all day long and litigate the results till kingdom comes, they will have no legs on which to stand. Thus, the dream of the voter is callously macerated. The All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) used this tactic in Anambra and won 19 of the 20 local government seats there. The PDP used it in Offa (Kwara) last September and virtually swept the 12 wards there, winning the council’s chairmanship to the chagrin of the APC. And using this tactic in October 2011, the ACN remarkably won all 57 local government chairmanships in Lagos.
It used to be the case that election riggers went to the elaborate extent of printing their own ballot papers. They found someone…someone like the late Lamidi Adedibu of Ibadan with supine principles and atrophied understanding of what is good for the populace …someone who had at his beck and call all manners of people with varying degrees of needs and used them to thumbprint multiple ballots. Adedibu, with the support of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) drivers and mini-buses then drove from polling booth to polling booth to swap the ballot boxes. Of course, he would need the support of a malleable Police Commissioner like Baba Adisa Bolanta to provide security cover.
That was then. That was in the heydays of NPN/UPN/PRP/GNPP/NPP. That was 1979 – 1983. That was 1999 – 2007 when the PDP/AD/NPC/CPC and others held sway. That was eons ago when eyes were still located on your knees. Today, in 2014, who needs thugs risking their lives to snatch and swap ballot boxes when you can just, with a few strokes of the pen, alter the will of the electorate? Election rigging acumen is now in the stratosphere. It has now gotten more sophisticated, yet simpler. It has gone digital, like they say. All you need is artificial scarcity of result sheets and the ability to elope to another part of the state to announce whatever result you want.
This is why I worry that, in spite of their progressive-leaning manifesto and all the work they did cobbling together one of the most difficult alliances ever conceived in Nigerian politics, the APC bigwigs smiling and laughing in Abuja the other day have their job well cut out for them: how to unseat this behemoth that will do anything to retain power.
And the behemoth – GEJ – cool as cucumber, seems to know what is going to happen after the 2015 elections. Something tells me that with the confidence he now exudes…the aristocratic swagger…GEJ must have a master-plan that will surprise even his supporters. During his maladministration, he managed to squander Nigeria’s goodwill with the civilized section of the international community; he frittered away the foreign reserves his predecessors labored hard to accumulate; he re-inserted Nigeria into the club of debtor-countries. Under GEJ, power supply in most parts of Nigeria got worse as it got more expensive; tertiary institution students missed most of the academic session because their lecturers went on strike; universities’ infrastructure rotted unabated; teaching hospitals became places you went to die even as the cost of treatment sky-rocketed.
With Niger-Delta militants paid billions of naira to protect our refineries, oil output dropped precipitously due to broad daylight theft; the EFCC – the only good thing bequeathed to us by OBJ – became a toothless bulldog that no longer barked, let alone bit; government officials, especially ministers, operated as if they had carte blanche authorization to fleece the country to death; convicted thieves were rehabilitated; despotic former rulers were celebrated and adorned with garlands; the northeastern part of the country was essentially ceded to Boko Haram who killed Nigerians without let or hindrance. Under GEJ, the ruling party suffered fratricidal feuds and ended up being Balkanized.
Kai! When Shehu Shagari started to lose control of the ship early in 1980, at least he did not feign competence. He looked every bit nervous and scared. You knew he was clueless. But this man with a PhD knows how to feign competence. The swashbuckling…the smiles…the occasional looks of seriousness…the false show of power…the bravura of firing and hiring people…the aura of someone in complete control. Phew! I am not fooled.
He wants to be reelected. This Behemoth must know something the rest of us do not know; because, in a normal environment, a poor performer such as him would never be thinking about seeking reelection. In fact, he would have long been impeached.
And so I say to those APC stalwarts: I hope you know what you are doing. I hope you are spending everyday from now till Election Day to cover all the bases. GEJ and PDP have the financial wherewithal to buy INEC officials several times over. All INEC officials need to do is forget to bring result sheets to the polling stations. In so doing, your dreams of salvaging this country would be pulverized just like that…puff! And our country, already worth less today than she was under Yar’Adua, would continue in its moral and material retrogression. Let’s not say Okey Ndibe didn’t warn us.
Abiodun Ladepo
Los Angeles, California, USA
[email protected]
© CC BY-NC-ND 2014
