The All Progressives Congress (APC) seems the most vicious, vitriolic and destructive opposition to any government in power since Nigeria got her Independence in 1960. The political party, APC, combined hate speeches, religion, propaganda and bare-faced lies to dethrone Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as a ruling party. As PDP assumes the status of opposition party from May 29, 2015, the problem PDP will have is the inability to match or even surpass the level of opposition the APC wrought on the polity in the last two years. Alhaji Lai (lie) Mohammed, the National Publicity Secretary of APC has been at his destructive, abusive and insulting best to President Goodluck Jonathan and PDP’s government. This, he does on weekly and/or daily basis. President Jonathan lamented last year that he has been the most insulted and abused president in the history of Nigeria. Chief Olisa Metuh, if he continues as the National Publicity Secretary of PDP has said unequivocally, that he will not toe the line of Alhaji Lai Mohammed by resorting to abusive and destructive opposition to President Muhammadu Buhari.
The world on April 14, 2015 marked the first anniversary of the “Chibok girls abduction”.
Book Haram insurgency and Chibok girl’s saga were two veritable tools deployed by the APC to defeat President Jonathan and PDP at the polls. Former President of United States of America, George W. Bush Jnr sometime ago opined: “All terrorists are Muslims but not all Muslims are terrorists”. This statement is very instructive and thought provoking. In this world, we have so many religions like Christianity, Islam, Buddism, etc. In the world today, wherever you hear a terror disturbances, it is always associated with one religion. The September terror attack in USA (9/11), the Islamic State of Iran and Syria (ISIS), the activities of Boko Haram in Nigeria, the recent massacre of University students in Kenya, just to name a few. Does a particular religion connote terror and violence? Have anybody ever heard of Christian terrorist group? Did God intend that only Muslims should inhabit the earth? Islamic terrorist group have repeatedly said that their mission is to wipe out all other religions from the surface of the earth which they have termed infidels. If God intends that only Muslims should occupy the world, does he not have the ability to ensure that no “infidel” is given birth to?
I am a Christian because I was born in the Eastern part of Nigeria. I did not choose where to be born. You are a Muslim because you were born in the Northern part of Nigeria. You did not choose to be a Northerner either. Providence brought everybody into the world as it pleases him. If God wanted the world to be inhabited by Christians only, he had the ability to make it such in the beginning and he still has the ability. If he wanted the world to be for Muslims, he would have done so. Now that the world is mixed up with different religions, is it possible for one religion to exterminate other religions from the face of the earth through killings and terror activities? NO. Why then can we not live together peacefully and worship God without compulsion?
It is against this background, that the subject of this article which is the “Chibok girls abduction” is centred on. On April 14, 2014, the world woke up to hear that Boko Haram terrorists abducted 219 girls from a secondary school in Chibok town in Borno State. We were told that Boko Haram terrorists .abducted more than 219 girls from the schools who were billed to write their West African School Certificate Examination. But some of the girls escaped from the terrorists and returned to their parents. It is now alleged that the girls are camped inside the dreaded Sambissa Forest. And occasionally, some of the girls escape from forest into the waiting arms of their parents. For me, all these tales are hogwash! I do not believe that there was any abduction in the first place. All this hoopla that has attracted the world’s attention for the past one year has been a well choreographed activities of the opposition to paint President Jonathan and PDP in bad light before the world and gullible Nigerians so as to snatch power. I can wager that now that APC had achieved its aim of wresting power from PDP, one of the early feats, if not the first feat General Mohammadu Buhari led federal government will achieve is the release of the phantom Chibok girls. Since the identities of the Chibok girls are not known, I don’t think the APC led government will have any problem assembling some girls over the night and presenting them to the world in the morning as released Chibok girls. Chibok is a predominantly Christian town in Borno State. Now, what aroused my curiosity and doubt about the authenticity of the abduction is that, two months after the girls were allegedly abducted, Boko Haram released their video reciting Koran perfectly well having being converted to Muslims. In the said video recording, the girls looked calm, well composed reciting their Koran. How could they have learnt the Koran recitation under one or two months? How come they did not look agitated or harassed on the video? No matter the level of psychological therapy, could girls under abduction look that relaxed? How did some of them escape from the dreaded Sambissa Forest which is several kilometers away from Maidugiri, a feat our military is yet to achieve? When one of the girls was interviewed on Cables Network News (CNN), she could not speak English language, not even pidgin. Somebody who wanted to write WAEC before the abduction? Granted that northerners go to school late in life, especially the female ones, the pictures so far released as those of abducted Chibok Secondary School girls do not look like ages of real secondary school children. It is appalling that most people bought into the hoax of the abduction, especially otherwise enlightened people in the Bring Back Our Girls campaigners led by former minister of Education, Mrs. Obiageli Ezekwesili whose husband is a pastor in the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG). Now that APC threw everything into the mo achieve its aim of grabbing power, and it has achieved that aim, can Boko Haram please release the April fool stunt called Chibok Girls abduction so that we can unite and live as one people under God in Nigeria?
For one thing, I am and could never be a pessimist. By nature, education and training, I am bound to be an optimist. Even in all my writings, I display these attributes.
However, this does not mean that when the crowd is wrong, I should follow. Not at all. One must not be shy to point out that the last general elections in this country, from East to West and from North to South were sham. No matter how one looks at these elections, from newspaper reports and articles from social media, television etc. there was evidence of monumental irregularities which INEC under Jega overlooked. Unfortunately, Jega and his men and women appeared to pass the buck to the yet to be established tribunals.
So many reasons would show that this year’s elections would never come to pass. Before the tribunals were established, a plethora of cases have already lined up in lawyers chambers suffocating for action. Case upon case and in fact, cases. Some of these cases would have been trashed out by INEC at the polling centres, LGAs or even at state collation centres. Yet, INEC allowed most of these irregularities to stand knowing too well that many of them would not stand the just eyes of the Honourable Justices.
In a way, INEC is sharking its responsibilities for the judges of the tribunals. Otherwise, the number of cases we see at the tribunals would be overwhelming, particularly those of the governorship races. From Abia to Ebonyi, from Imo to Rivers, from Taraba to Kaduna etc. it will be a pyramid of cases. In the national assembly races, hundreds of those cases would be filed including those arising from state assembly contests.
In 2011, it was suggested that the elections should be held in such and at such date to enable all tribunal cases to be settled before swearing in of the so called winners. Jega was rather overtaken by his concern to ensure that a northern candidate won the Presidency. Because of this overwhelming consideration, he lost sight of other many pressing issues he could have handled.
The Presidential election was fundamentally and institutionally rigged in favour of Buhari because the northern politicians don’t want the power to remain in the south. There is no doubt that the President and his men equally planned to adopt some measures of rigging or at least to stop APC from winning through rigging but they were outsmarted because they did not know the extent of Jega’s determination and resolve to actualize their struggle for power to return to the north.
Right from the registration of voters, distribution of PVCs, even the printing of party symbols on the ballot papers, Jega and his men put their integrity on the line because one could see that the appearance of PDP symbol was carefully sandwiched, thus making it difficult for voters to identify the PDP symbol. Even when attempting to thumb print on PDP logo which is umbrella, one is bound to make mistakes. If properly examined, it will be discovered that most of the voided ballot papers rejected were those of PDP.
Furthermore, the use of card reader saw also elements of partiality because while electoral officials in the north were told from the word go, that in case the card reader does not work, they should resort to the manual process of identifying voters. On the other hand, electoral officials in the south were not given such instructions otherwise, when could have the electorate in Kano voted millions of votes within few hours? In Taraba, the rigging continued when under-aged children were lined up to vote for the APC candidate. Jega saw this himself in his own crow-crow eyes and instead of canceling the election, his interest was only in what was happening in Rivers.
There were evidences of rigging, violence, thus making the election incredible. Unfortunately, the so called European observers accepted that the election was credible. Election duties have become lucrative assignments to those elderly politicians in those European countries who would pay anything for peace no matter how it came.
Therefore, once the election tribunals begin their work, Nigerians would be astonished at what they are likely to hear on how massive electoral rigging was planned and executed to favour temporary victors. Then and then, unless the tribunal Justices behave like politicians, we shall in many instances bury our faces in shame at the magnitude of election riggings of different configurations.
To be honest, it will be for a long time before we hear the last of the type of riggings that were perpetuated during the last election. The only missing link would be that Jonathan would not have the opportunity to present his party’s case. That too would continue to be the sorry aspect of the election, accepting defeat in anger. That is not a way to be a good statesman or a leader. Of course, we have known it for a long time that President Goodluck Jonathan is not a possessive leader. That is the price that Nigerians were to pay for his weakness as a person not to talk of him as a leader. What else can we say?
