By Onwuasoanya FCC Jones
Professor Attahiru Jega is arguably Nigeria’s most celebrated public official in recent times. His success in retaining the confidence of a good number of Nigerians is especially interesting when you consider the enormity of controversies surrounding the kind of job he took up and held for five good years. He came in amidst celebrations from Nigerians who expressed confidence in his ability to deliver right before his appointment was made public. I can remember receiving a telephone call from my very dear friend and one of Africa’s most promising intellectuals, Mr. Ugoo Iwuji, the morning after Jega’s appointment was made public. My friend expressed confidence that considering Jega’s leftist political background and his history of non-compromise, transparency and efficiency as Vice Chancellor and earlier as the President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities gives hope that he will restore confidence in the Nigerian electoral system. I, like most other Nigerians shared in Ugoo’s optimism. Five years after that festival of belief and hope, I have little doubt that Professor Attahiru Jega is returning to his old duty post as a Professor, with shoulders held high. Should he?
By the 30th of June 2010, when former President Goodluck Jonathan inaugurated Jega as the Chairman of the Commission, INEC was already seen by not a few Nigerians as an internationally acclaimed election manipulator and a subsidiary of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Professor Maurice Iwu was so messed up in the media, that his unceremonious departure from INEC on the orders of the then acting President Goodluck Jonathan was seen as part of the factors that swelled Jonathan’s popularity among the Nigerians. Even the major beneficiary of the 2007 elections, in the person of Late President Umoru Yaradua made it clear that the elections were fraudulent, hence, Maurice Iwu was at the receiving end of an unprecedented public opprobrium. Taking over from such a badly battered man, Professor Jega needed no one to remind him that his job had been clearly cut out for him. He did not only need to conduct the affairs of the Commission more transparently than his predecessor did, but he also had the burden of convincing Nigerians that he did.
Though he took office less than one year before the 2011 elections, Jega knew that the real test of his efficiency lies in the conduct of that election, as Nigerians were not ready for any excuses. That he would achieve anything substantial in that election depended on how much he cooperated with his immediate predecessor, who laid the foundation for the conduct of that election. I am convinced that Professor Maurice Iwu was determined to use the 2011 elections as an opportunity to launder his image before the world by conducting a transparent election. It was Maurice Iwu who put in place most of the structures and equipment deployed by Professor Jega in the conduct of that 2011 elections, and election observers from across the world confirmed that lots of improvements were made from the previous elections.
Like Iwu, Professor Jega went to work immediately after the 2011 elections to prepare for the next general elections. Even with the pass mark, the 2011 elections got, there were still many people who felt, and rightly too, that INEC perpetrated fraud in that election. Jega left no one in doubt about his determination to ensure that he left the INEC job, with his popularity among Nigerians and the world, intact. It must not be lost to us that there is a big difference between achieving credibility in a process and making it look like credibility was achieved in a process. It is beyond argument that Professor Jega succeeded in making a substantial number of Nigerians believe that the 2015 elections were credible, what is debatable is whether they truly are.
A strong willed electoral umpire can conduct a credible, free and fair election without pandering to the whims of any group of people. A wily electoral umpire is tempted to the whims of a loud minority. In Nigeria, the Devil can be canonized as saint if he conducts an election in which the humongous and obstreperous Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) puts up a bad showing. The PDP was already building a name for itself as an invincible and indomitable political Party in Nigeria, and even the most vocal opposition Parties almost lost hope of heading the Federal Government. The opposition Parties were seen as marginalized and oppressed by the PDP, while the PDP was seen as an oppressor and power drunk electoral criminal, such that, any election won by the PDP is deemed manipulated, while elections won by the opposition, no matter the circumstances, is seen as a triumph for democracy. With this situation, an electoral umpire who is more interested in personal image laundering will not stress himself investing in achieving a credible election that may eventually produce the PDP as winners, but will rather concentrate on populist programmes and utterances that will portray him in good light before the people while working in cahoots with the opposition to sway victory their way.
While Professor Jega is receiving more encomiums for the conduct of the 2015 elections, any unbiased analyst will agree with me that the 2011 elections with all their imperfections were more credible than the 2015 elections. But, even international observers were hoodwinked into rating the 2015 elections highly because of the high level propaganda that preceded that election. The strategy of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was simple, reach some understanding with the top men in INEC, and criminalize the PDP, accusing them of grand designs to manipulate the electoral process, then, go ahead and rig the election. With that strategy, only very few people will bat an eyelid over any real or suspected fraud in the process. After all, most of the times, International and domestic election observers base their reports on their own understanding of popular opinion. They fail to understand that popular noise is different from popular choice.
The primary criterion for determining a credible election is that it must be reflective of the will of the people. Elections are necessary to ensure that the greatest number of the people express their preferences on whom they want to rule them for a particular period of time. Election is an empirical procedure that is different from the guesstimation inspired opinion polls. If opinion polls are enough to decide who wins an election, then, there will be no need wasting the enormous resources expended to conduct elections. There have actually been occasions when candidates who enjoy massive lead in opinion polls are shellacked in actual elections. This is why it is necessary for electoral umpires to invest serious efforts in delivering credible elections. The 2015 elections in Nigeria may have been written boldly in books as credible, but evidences abound that the peoples wills were thwarted, at least to a reasonable extent. The Attahiru Jega led INEC consciously disenfranchised a large chunk of Southern voters by denying them their PVCs and also ensuring that more than sixty percent of them did not vote in the elections.
The plan to manipulate the 2015 elections was obvious to many observers several months before the election took place. The card reader is seen by many as one of Jega’s best strategies towards delivering a free and election, but a deeper analysis into how the card reader and the PVC were deployed will convince anyone with a clear mind that the PVC and card readers, while good innovations on their own, were deployed effectively to gift undue advantage to one political Party and a section of the country against the other.
Some people will not want to hear anything contrary to Jega being a hero of our democracy, because according to them; “Even President Obama of America has recognized him for delivering a credible election and international election observers applauded the 2015 elections as one of the best Nigeria has conducted in recent times.” President Obama is not a Nigerian, has never been to Nigeria and does not know how Nigeria operates, international election observers like I said earlier mostly make their conclusions based on their own understanding of popular sentiment. This does not remove the fact that the 2015 general elections in Nigeria, remain one of the most scientifically rigged elections in Nigerian history.
Professor Jega would have been forgiven if it can be proven that the manipulations that were witnessed in that election were mistakes that he couldn’t avoid, but realities of that election make it impossible for anyone to exonerate Professor Jega from the well orchestrated fraud that marred the 2015 elections. For instance, there cannot be any justification for Jega’s insistence on experimenting with these new devices of Permanent Voters Cards and the Card Reading Machines in a general election where about 68 million eligible voters were expected to vote, when he had opportunities of test running these new inventions with smaller elections that took place before 2015. This can be likened to a tailor allowing a groom to test his wedding dress on the day of his wedding, or worst still a mother buying Christmas clothes for her children many weeks before Christmas, but only bringing these clothes for her children to test on Christmas. The fact that some people voted with the card readers and their PVCs while others didn’t because of the ‘malfunction’ of majority of the card readers during the presidential and National Assembly elections is an indictment on Jega as a compromised umpire.
While I joined in condemning Elder Godsday Orubebe for his shameful display before the whole world at the National Collation Center, I cannot lose sight of the fact that the former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs has some points in his protestations. We must not allow our disapproval of Orubebe’s rascality before the world media to becloud our good sense of judgement. Like Orubebe rightly pointed out; how is it that Professor Jega was fast in sending an investigative team to Rivers State to verify the allegations of manipulations raised by the APC, while he did not as much as utter a single word over PDP’s complaints concerning about nine States of the North, where mind-rending electoral fraud was suspected to have taken place? Is it not possible that Professor Jega dispatched that team led by INEC’s Secretary to Rivers State, to ensure that the announcement of results was delayed till he is sure that the 1.4 million votes returned from Rivers will not affect APC’s victory? It is questionable that Professor Jega went ahead to announce results from Kano, Kebbi, Jigawa and other Northern States where PDP protested the results, but delayed the announcement of Rivers result for over twenty four hours, till he was sure that General Buhari of the PC had recorded unassailable lead with results coming from the North?
Jega may have succeeded in deceiving a significant number of Nigerians into believing that he actually had the will to deliver credible elections to Nigerians, but not a few Nigerians are aware that he was just a wily gentleman who played on our collective intelligence, while we applauded.
