Mariam Mariam
After months of careful preparation. With sleepless nights of learning the lines and movements; testing the fittingness of the costume; performing in front of the mirror and a selection of party barons, the ruling PDP, finally unveiled to the Nigerian public, its new in house court jester: Baba Sala and Papalolo rolled into one! 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 parts 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 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 lead 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 crating instability in 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 ro divert attention from the join PDP/INEC rigging-to-be, of the so-called re-election in Cross River state. The plan had been finalized to return Liyel Imoke as the governor of Cross Rover. 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 characterized 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 that 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?
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 Gneral 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!
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 allocation 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 county”. Alkali made the deduction that such a call for an interim government has no place in the constitution and “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 f 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 Nigerian 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 reveiled public institutions in Nigeria today (Congrats Maurice Iwu’s INEC for allocating less than 800,000 votes this time)! On a final note, I thing we should give it to hime; Professor Rufai Ahmed Alkali tried to play his jester role with some talent, but he will still have to go into motor parts around the country, on attachement with the real Ppalolos, 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 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!
