Poor Professor Attahiru Jega. Sometime last year, the INEC chairman addressed our media forum in Abuja on what he was doing to make our elections this year free, fair and credible.
This was not long after the governorship election in Ekiti State in which the poultry farmer shocked the nation by beating the scholar. We now know how it was done, thanks to Captain Sagir Koli.
As he talked about the level of the commission’s preparedness I was truly impressed by Jega’s passion for and commitment to the one national assignment that might define his place in our political history.
He seemed painfully but honestly aware of that. I do not think he needed anyone to tell him that if the elections end with a confetti of question marks, he would find himself in the company of professors who had been on that chair before him and seen their names and integrity dragged into our national political Golgotha.
It is a fate I had hoped no one would wish on Jega, if only because he seemed so determined to make relatively rigging-free elections a culture, not an aberration.
From his briefing, I came away convinced that Jega had systematically taken every conceivable and possible step to tackle the monster that has ruined our elections: rigging. I could picture the end of the monster.
In the Osun State governorship election, for instance, Jega introduced something new. The commission used colour-coded ballot papers at the different polling booths. It stopped those who planned to vote multiple times in their tracks and raised the bar in the performance of the commission.
I believe the latest weapon in his anti-rigging arsenal is this new, near rigging proof gadget called the card reader.
I believe Jega intends it as his ultimate weapon against rigging – and his true legacy in our quest for democracy and political pluralism. The politicians are frightened by the power of this little gadget.
The PDP chieftains and their basket mouths are leading the charge against its use in the forthcoming elections. They have assailed it in every way they can. They gadget laughs at their antics.
They now insist that if Jega insists on using it for the March 28 and April 11 elections, then he must go. The stones are homing in on Jega’s head. He has committed the mortal sin of trying to free us from those who are bent on bending democracy for all time in our country.
This should tell you something about the depth of political depravity in our country today.
Every Nigerian politician is willing to swear on the grave of his father that he abhors election rigging and supports every reasonable measure taken to get rid of it. Yet it is difficult to find a Nigerian politician who is not prepared to rig elections.
With this sort of corrosive national ambivalence towards election rigging, it takes a man with the courage of Professor Attahiru Jega to say, enough. Jega is strengthened by his personal conviction that the card reader would draw the line between the past, the present and future elections in our country on stone. You have to spare some kind thoughts for him.
His head is in a nest of wasps. His current problem with the politicians, men and women of little minds who think more of themselves and their mess of political pottage and much less of Nigeria, the Nigerians and their future, has nothing to do with question marks on his competence or integrity but ironically on his courage and determination to do right by the country by conducting free, fair, credible and transparent national elections. I thought that was not a crime. I forgot this was Nigeria.
I sympathise with Jega for at least two reasons. Firstly, he may be the victim of his competence, courage and integrity. Were he dirty, corrupt and pliable, he would be their man, their darling in whom they would be so well pleased.
From his first day on the job, Jega left no one in any doubts that he intended to give it all he had and at the end of his tenure, leave the office with his head high. Sadly, his passion, commitment, honesty and integrity count for very little among the politicians. Only the politically naïve would be surprised that the politicians have made him an issue in their election mago-mago and wuru-wuru.
His removal from office is the new mantra of the PDP chieftains. They have not told us why but we know why. They want him out because his presence in the commission is considered inimical to their well-laid plans to turn all election victories in their favour by hook or by crook. They forget, and this is truly tragic, that the moral responsibility for the peaceful and successful conduct of these elections rests with their party because it is the ruling party.
Secondly, if the politicians cannot manipulate him or bend him to do their bidding in their desperation to capture power rather than win elections, a hundred angels swearing that Jega is an honest and honourable and incorruptible man would make no difference to what the politicians think of him. Those who should share his passion for this delicate but important national assignment, not for his sake but for sake of our K-legged country, are busy tearing him down.
Good work has never saved the reputation of our public officers. Indeed, destroying good men has become our national passion, thanks to the little men and women walking the corridors of power and who think they are gods and goddesses. They are only gods and goddesses with feet of clay. Sooner than later, their clay feet will crumble.
I find this latest campaign of calumny led by the PDP against Jega quite offensive. It is an insult on us as a nation. It seems to me that we are giving up our rights to be governed in accordance with best practices in democracy. Yes, PDP chieftains succeeded in postponing the elections for six weeks. Now they smell blood.
We have virtually become helpless onlooker of the incipient dictatorship of the party chieftains who believe they have the right and the power to do as they wish, including the right to toy with our future as a nation. These people, despite their enormous wealth and power, do not own us.
If we let them sink Jega and plant a pliable chairman willing to do their bidding at the commission, they will achieve their ultimate objective of giving the forthcoming elections a kiss of the cobra. The thought and the prospects should chill you.
