|
|
|
Last Updated: Sep 8, 2008 - 9:09:50 AM |
Ladies and
gentlemen, put your hands together for Nigeria’s newest, but
unfortunately, most ill-fitting and incompetent jester. A certain
Professor Rufai Ahmed Alkali, the National Publicity Secretary of the
People’s Democratic Party (PDP); Africa’s most efficient vote-rigging
contraption but most incompetent ruling group!
Alkali was unveiled, still slightly shy and therefore unable to wear in
public, his Papalolo uniform, including the huge ikebe costume that his
more professional counterparts wear in motor parks all around Nigeria,
when they go about their business of selling fake or expired drugs!
Well, our able professor came into the public space last week, to sell
his own version of fake and expired drugs, when he alleged that the
rag-tag, opposition parties under the aegis of Nigerians United for
Democracy (NUD), were planning to topple the regime of Malam Umaru
Yar’adua. The call for “mass action and the setting up of an interim
government”, according to the PDP’s jester-in-chief, amounted to
“attempts to sabotage the government and scuttle democracy”. Borrowing
a leaf from the books of Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, Rufai
Ahmed Alkali, without presenting any proof whatsoever, accused NUD of
“working with foreign entities bent on creating instability in the
country to play down the growing influence of Nigeria in regional and
international affairs (“Influence”? HEAR, HEAR!!!)”
We will return to the issues raised by the PDP Publicity Secretary
later. But any student of POLITICAL SCIENCE 101 would know that the PDP
election riggers, like the old witch in the African proverb, who cried
in the night and a child was found dead the following morning, were
merely trying to divert attention from the join PDP/INEC rigging-to-be,
of the so-called re-election in Cross River state. The plan had been
finalised to return Liyel Imoke as the governor of Cross River. For
weeks, Umaru Yar’adua worked in cahoots with the leadership of the
House of Representatives to ensure that the power sector probe did not
see the light of day; a dubious recess was imposed, which made it
difficult to pursue the indictment of Liyel Imoke, a man who ordinarily
should be in jail for all the crimes he committed against the Nigerian
people during the years that he presided over the massive corruption
which characterised the power sector under Obasanjo. Not only is he
clearly unfit to hold public office in a sane society, that incompetent
but arrogant chap, was given the political cover by Umaru Yar’adua, to
ensure that he did not answer questions from the EFCC, to the chagrin
of the Nigerian people!
People are angry at the deep level of political and other forms of
corruption in the Nigerian system; the manner that the crooks who rule
the political space continue to cut deals and run political protection
rackets, anger and frustrate the people at the same time. I believe
that Umaru Yar’adua and his PDP henchmen must be aware that the
Nigerian people are becoming totally alienated from the political
process and do not have respect whatsoever, for the political elite
which runs and ruins our country. Those who thought that Malam Umaru
Yar’adua was going to be a breath of fresh air, must now be abandoning
their wishful thinking; President Yar’adua is proving as adept in the
art of deceiving people as his mentor, former President Olusegun
Obasanjo! And why should anyone be surprised about Yar’adua’s addiction
to election rigging, just like other PDP mandarins?
advertisement
If we examine President Yar’adua’s political track record, there are
interesting tell-tale signs; the president is an inveterate election
loser turned an unrepentant election rigger! It’s that simple. During
the political transition of the Babangida regime, Umaru Yar’adua as
candidate of the SDP was trounced by the NRC’s Alhaji Saidu Barda. In
1999, the people of Katsina voted in sympathy for the much loved
General Shehu Musa Yar’adua and Malam Umaru became the beneficiary. But
by 2003, so fed up were they with him that he lost to the ANPP’s
Engineer Nura Khalil but the Siamese alliance of PDP and INEC returned
Umaru Yar’adua. Of course, we all know what happened in the 2007
presidential election. Even Umaru Yar’adua himself found the modesty to
state that he was returned as Nigeria’s president on the basis of a
fraudulent electoral process! This background is important; he that has
never been the product of a free and fair electoral process can
therefore not be expected to husband one. It is equally not surprising
that the main public outings of President Yar’adua have been outings
designed to give an imprimatur to electoral fraud: he went to give
“covering fire” in Adamawa, Kogi and Bayelsa and was represented in
Calabar last week. So here is a president who has not visited any of
the problem areas of the Niger Delta, except to facilitate the rigging
of an election in Bayelsa!
advertisement
Why is the scenario the way it is? Again it is elementary Political
Science. The regime lacks political legitimacy and does not represent
the genuinely expressed wishes of the Nigerian people. It is therefore
impossible in the circumstance, to allow the people’s vote to count.
The PDP, President Umaru Yar’adua and the whole lot, have to keep
living the perpetual lie, that they win all elections by massive
margins, aided by an unconscionable INEC. They reckon, I think quite
rightly, that an over-raped, Nigerian people have become too supine to
even bother about the electoral process. It is the combination of the
people’s apathy, and the desperate poverty which the political regime
has allowed to flower since 1999, that has facilitated the arrogance of
the PDP election rigging system; otherwise, how can a party that has
led the systematic underdevelopment of Nigeria since 1999, continue to
post the “impressive” electoral figures that Maurice Iwu’s INEC
regularly allocates to it around the country? And this is the heart of
the problem.
We can now return to the allegations from PDP’s Prof Rufai Ahmed
Alkali. The Papalolo of Wadata House was reported by the media as
describing the call for an interim government treasonable and then
sought the “security agencies to check what he called an attempt to
foist illegality on the country”. Alkali made the deduction that such a
call for an interim government has no place in the constitution and “is
therefore not only illegal, but also treasonable to the extent that it
calls for the overthrow of an established constitutional order”. The
spokesperson for a party of election riggers even had the temerity to
lecture us about democracy: “Nigerians, indeed the international
community have come to accept democracy as the only means for
socio-economic-development, the protection of human right and the
advancement of good governance and leadership rooted in accountability,
fairness and justice”. Alkali herein enumerates everything that his PDP
has deprived Nigeria since 1999. They have ensured the absence of
socio-economic development; they denied us good governance; the
leadership recruitment is fraudulent; there is no accountability; we do
not get fairness and they are deficient in their sense of justice,
therefore human rights protection suffers terribly in the hands of the
PDP!
Professor Alkali was not done in his pontification; “the PDP” he added,
“holds the view…that any political arrangement that alienates, or seeks
to alienate the people and reduce their participation in how they are
governed by whatever name is unacceptable”. Well, the good professor
resembles the absurd man in the proverb who is dressed in rags, but is
complaining that somebody else has a hole in his shirt! It is obvious
to all Nigerians, that it is the PDP and its modus operandi which
alienates the people from the political process: there is no inner
party democracy in the PDP; candidates are imposed; elections are
massively rigged and unpopular candidates or those with questionable
character are imposed in government houses around the country. Most of
these political crimes are committed by the PDP (of course the other
parties do so to a lesser degree, relative to their financial clout,
number of thugs, etc). It is therefore the PDP regime of massive
rigging that is endangering Nigeria’s deformed democratic process. If
Alkali doesn’t know it, Nigerians do not share his delusions about the
content of the political regime that his party presides over. As a
matter of fact Nigerians also know that a fractious, mercenary and
ineffective opposition abets the crimes of the PDP!
It is only a PDP-run Nigeria that can be as brazen in its deployments
of rigging as it has continued to do ever since. You will recall that
Liyel Imoke was allocated over 800,000 votes in 2007(far more than all
the registered voters!). The petition raised by opposition parties
succeeded on several grounds, including perjury. Yet that incompetent
chap was not only protected from prosecution by the “law and due
process” Umaru Yar’adua and the House of Representatives leadership; he
was returned by the PDP as governorship candidate and promptly rigged
back to power by Maurice Iwu’s INEC-one of the most compromised and
most reviled public institutions in Nigeria today (Congrats Maurice
Iwu’s INEC for allocating less than 800,000votes this time)! On a final
note, I think we should give it to him; Professor Rufai Ahmed Alkali
tried to play his jester role with some talent, but he will still have
to go into motor parks around the country, on attachment with the real
Papalolos, to improve his skills. But he should go along with his
costumes; because the jester without his ikebe costume is not properly
dressed for his performance!
LAST LINE:
In respect of the landmark decisions from the Court of Appeal in recent
times such as the contradictory Sokoto and Kebbi electoral petition
verdicts as well as David Mark’s “victory”; somebody observed that
justice seems to have become chuwa chuwa that can be purchased in BULK!
If you catch my drift, that is. Then there is the sound bite from the
Ekiti state chapter of the Action Congress (AC), after the Tribunal
nullified the “election” of the PDP impostor, Olusegun Agagu. “The yoke
of electoral burden imposed on Nigerians by the duopoly of INEC and PDP
is being eased…and in no distance time, the manacles that these Siamese
twins of PDP and INEC hung on the limbs of our democracy would be
loosened”. Well said!
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
Top of Page
|
|
|
|