2015 Nigerian Elections: Jonathan Will Not Win!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

                                                      

It is my considered opinion that President Goodluck Jonathan will not win the February 14, 2015 presidential election. But then, he will NOT also lose. And if Jonathan is declared winner after the votes had been cast and counted, it would not be because the people voted massively for him. It would be that Nigerians trooped out to overwhelmingly vote against the All Progressive Congress (APC) candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari. 

*Jonathan

Although, President Jonathan has performed far better than his predecessors in office, especially, his arch-critic, former President Olusegun Obasanjo (who went all out to impoverish and ground the country despite the unprecedented earnings that poured into the treasury during his tenure from oil exports) and whose regime brazenly institutionalized corruption (thereby, proving that it was indeed possible to beat the solid record left by the Ibrahim Babangida military regime), what cannot be  denied is that Jonathan could have done far better than he has done. But, sadly, the APC whose candidate is Jonathan’s major challenger is just incapable of inspiring confidence. Although labouring to present themselves as the “face of change,” the APC people only succeed in making Jonathan more appealing to the people by the way they conduct themselves and their campaign.

And despite all the resources and efforts the party has deployed to market itself as an alternative to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it has only succeeded in solidifying the egregious impression that it is nothing other than the PDP’s dustbin, where mostly frustrated and disgruntled PDP members seek refuge and are heartily received no matter their past records.

Buhari Can Only Offer 'Tired Ideas, Provocative Utterances' - PDP

Press Statement

December 11, 2014

2015: PDP Welcomes Buhari To The Race, 

Insists Jonathan Is The Best 

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has welcomed the emergence of former Military Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari as the Presidential flagbearer of Bola Tinubu's All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 general elections.

*Buhari

This will be the fourth time General Buhari will be contesting in the presidential elections. On each of the three previous occasions, he failed to articulate a vision of the future that was acceptable to Nigerians. On each occasion his brand of politics was rejected across Nigeria. Apart from changing to a dinner suit, General Buhari, has not changed the tired ideas and provocative utterances that Nigerians rejected in previous elections.

We hope that this time round, General Buhari will conduct a campaign that is issue based and devoid of ethno-religious sentiments.

Ben Bruce: Heading For The Senate

By Banji Ojewale

As it is going to be with the next set of Senators of the United States of America, where new faces, the majority being the Republicans, are coming up, Nigeria in 2015 may witness a similar displacement of old hands in its Senate. I am not making any attempt to predict bloc party victory or defeat.

Ben Murray Bruce

(pix: thenewsnigeria)

There is always some tricky of impreciseness in it for analysts. In the case of the US, it was perhaps “easy” for the Cable News Network (CNN) to arrive  at its 246-Senate seat forecast for the Republicans in the November 2014 ballot because of the near-infallible opinion poll system in the country. CNN journalists and experts relied on such advanced sampling techniques as computer technology and sociological and psychological research.  

But it was not always so. The pollsters of the previous age plunged the US into trouble when their statistics misled the nation’s media. In the 1948 Presidential election, the “soothsayers” predicted victory for the Republican candidate Thomas Dewey. Now without waiting for the official count of the vote after the ballot, US newspapers declared in screaming headlines: Dewey defeats Truman.

Who Will Tame Fashola's Insufferable Arrogance?

By Dipo Abimbola

In a rare show of political vendetta, Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State was said to have spit venom on President Goodluck Jonathan recently. In a statement which was published in virtually all the existing newspapers in Nigeria on Tuesday November 4, 2014, Fashola was said to have derided a public advocacy organization,the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) on account of its robust defense of President Goodluck Jonathan's achievements and consequent endorsement of the President to contest for a second term in 2015. According to the report, Fashola who delivered an address as a Keynote speaker at the opening ceremony of Women in Business (Wimbiz) Conference held at the Eko Hotels on Victoria Island in Lagos, lampooned TAN for orchestrating the return of the Jonathan Administration through false claims, saying that Jonathan had nothing on ground to justify his more than three years in the saddle.

We Are Succeeding Against All Odds - Pres. Jonathan

Text of President Goodluck Jonathan's Speech Declaring his 
Intention to Run for the 2015 Presidential Elections under 
the  Platform  of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)

Eagle Square, Abuja

Tuesday 11^th November, 2014

Dear Compatriots:

Four years ago, precisely September 18, 2010, I stood in this Eagle Square, to offer myself for election as the President of our beloved country on the platform of our great party; the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

 Seven months after that declaration, you elected me to lead this country with overwhelming support from all parts of our Nation. I remain grateful for the trust you reposed in me to lead our Nation through uncommon challenges in our march of progress as a united and democratic country.

Over the years, the Almighty God has made it possible for me to develop a bond with you and I am grateful for your support and understanding in the difficult periods we have journeyed through. 

 Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, our stewardship has not been without challenges. We have had to deal with the wave of insurgency that has swept through some parts of our dear country. Only yesterday, Government Science Secondary School in Yobe State was bombed by insurgents, killing our promising young children who were seeking education to build the country and support their parents. Many Nigerians have lost their lives and property to these mindless killings. Let me crave the indulgence of all present here to stand up to observe a minutes silence in honour of these young lads who lost their lives. Clearly, this has cast a dark cloud on our Nation but we will surely win the war against terror. A number of young men and women have been kidnapped by these criminal elements including our daughters from Chibok. We will free our daughters and defeat terror.

 We are equipping the armed forces and deploying special forces to engage the terrorist and end this senseless war. We must protect our country. We must save our people. I will do everything humanly possible to end this criminal violence in our Nation. 

Buhari And APC’s N27.5 Million Nomination Forms

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Exactly two weeks ago (Thursday, October 16, 2014), the All Progressives Congress (APC) startled decent Nigerians when its national chairman, Mr. John Odigie-Oyegun, announced that the party put the cost of its expression of interest and nomination forms at the cost of N27.5 million in order “to separate the men from the boys.” Another way of saying this is: ‘to separate the wheat from the chaff!’

*Buhari

This statement which almost immediately reverberated across the nation through various blogs and television screens was widely reported in the papers the next day, Friday, October 17. As I write now (about 48 hours after it echoed in Abuja ), neither the APC nor its national chairman has even attempted to “clarify” the very unwholesome assertion or withdraw it in its entirety. This can only mean, therefore, that the party solidly stands by such an outrageous and unsettling statement by its topmost officer. What a sad, tragic development.

Now, to describe a grown man as a “boy” is to dismissively imply that he is immature, inexperienced, inadequate or, worse, irresponsible. And so, going by the statement of the APC chairman, the ability to roll out millions of naira is what qualifies somebody to be a “man” in the party. In other words, even if you are generously endowed with superlative moral, intellectual and managerial   abilities, as long as you are not a multi-millionaire or have multi-millionaire friends who can throw the millions on your behalf, you are in the “progressive” thinking of the APC a mere “boy” – immature and irresponsible, and, therefore, not qualified to contest a responsible position on the platform of the party! 

For a party that has unduly strained itself to persuade Nigerians that it represents a healthy alternative to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), this is indeed a most devastating disclosure and horrendous disappointment! What this, once again, demonstrates very clearly is that whereas the APC has deployed enormous efforts to tell Nigerians how bad the PDP is, it has been most unsuccessful in its attempt to allay growing fears (and conceal the stubbornly reoccurring indications) that it is, perhaps, even worse than the PDP.  

2007 Nigerian Elections: Why Maurice Iwu Failed

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

 

Last Saturday Prof Maurice Iwu and his “Independent” National Electoral Commission (INEC) went all out to shatter the expectations of Nigerians for orderly, free and fair elections in the country, by enthusiastically delivering to the nation a bundle of astounding failures and searing disappointments.


 Despite the revolting chest-beating presently going on in INEC quarters and the (unsurprising) vulgar commendations emanating from the dark covens of the People Democratic Party (PDP), everyone now knows that Iwu and his INEC were simply unprepared or unwilling (or both) to take Nigerians beyond the usual sad, discomforting stories that had attended the past elections in the country, especially, in 1999 and 2003.  
Indeed, last Saturday’s elections have been described as the worst in the history of the nation.  The open and transparent rigging was simply unprecedented. 







Prof Maurice Iwu


Obviously, INEC had another agenda, which it did not even attempt to hide. What Nigerians are therefore seeing as devastating failure is, in the skewed thinking of Iwu and his motley crowd at INEC, “an assignment well executed”. And if you look around you, you will see that those they unambiguously worked for are smothering them with superfluous praises, even in the face boundless failure, horrible malpractices and overwhelming gloom across the nation.   


Iwu’s abysmal failure should come as a surprise to no one who had keenly observed the untoward path INEC had treaded with unqualified glee. For several months, the commission left its own job and preoccupied itself with what should not be its business. It allocated an unfair share of its time and resources to ensuring that candidates whose faces were not liked in Aso Rock were roughly shoved aside, so the anointed ones could smile home with unearned victory. At one point, (I think at it was at the Appellate Court), the presiding judge had to ask INEC what its business was in a case of disqualification of candidates. 



Olusegun Obasanjo


Yet, the commission remained undeterred. Its loyalty, clearly, was not to the Nigerian people, but to a tiny cabal of unpatriotic characters who derive peculiar animation from seeing Nigeria remaining backward and chaotic. 
Despite several court rulings stating clearly that INEC had no powers to disqualify candidates, Iwu had continued to speak and act as if disqualification of candidates was the only job INEC was set up to perform. In fact, the commission got itself so distracted with this thankless, extraneous job that little or no time was left for it to prepare for the elections. 


 Perhaps, that was part of the script, to deliberately make the elections to fail, so that the crises that might possibly follow would create an enabling environment for the resuscitation of the obnoxious Third Term agenda. But, unfortunately, as has become clear, the Third Term stuff will never find a fertile ground in Nigeria again. It is dead and buried, and so Iwu is left alone now in the quadrangle of shame, to grapple with the failure caused by lack of preparations and insincerity of purpose, and be soaked with all the bashings and public odium for the massive charade that took place last Saturday.

Umar Musa Yar'Adua


INEC’s obsession with the disqualification of candidates that stood in the way of Aso Rock’s anointed candidates was most pronounced in Anambra State, aside the obvious (prominent) Atiku case, which was pursued to a most ridiculous extent. While the commission eagerly accepted a court order it claimed was quietly served it by the Chekwas Okorie faction of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) to not accord recognition to the Victor Umeh-led faction of APGA (which had fielded the incumbent governor, Peter Obi, as its candidate), it blatantly refused to honour another court ruling which held that Dr. Chris Ngige, the former Governor of Anambra State, whose tenure Anambra people still remember with immense relish and refreshing nostalgia, is eligible to contest the gubernatorial elections. 


By preferring one court ruling to the other, INEC was only betraying its desperation and doggedness to execute what looks like an unambiguous mandate from Aso Rock to ensure that all formidable oppositions in the race are shoved aside in order for “Dr” Andy Ubah, Aso Rock’s own candidate, to be imposed on Anambra people. 


 And now, that Igbo leaders of thought, under a better-focused and independent-minded Ohaneze-Ndigbo have made it clear that no election took place in Anambra, let’s see whether Iwu and his masters can afford to ignore them, or dream up another strategy to weather the challenge.   



PDP Logo




It does seem that Iwu’s troubles are increasing as his task becomes more complicated. Last Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that INEC lacks the power to disqualify candidates, and that Vice President Atiku Abubakar, whom the commission has deployed every energy and resources to hound out of the presidential race is eligible to contest. 
Who now will  Iwu obey? The Supreme Court or his “Supreme leader” in Aso Rock? What is the implication of this ruling to the case of other candidates, which INEC stopped from contesting last Saturday’s elections? Is there nothing that could be legally done to redress the injustice meted out to them, by an electoral commission that cared less if unwanted and unworthy candidates are imposed on the people? 


I think that further interpretation should be sought from the Supreme Court on the fate of these candidates. The Supreme Court must realize that the judiciary is fast acquitting itself as the only credible arm of government in Nigeria today, and so must save the people from the trauma of being governed by those they did not elect. By this ruling, the Supreme Court has endorsed the popular sentiment that the issue of disqualification candidates is so profound and strategic a matter to be left to the whims of an administrative body like INEC. Or else, we will continue to witness this kind of very repulsive abuse to which such a provision was subjected by the Obasanjo/Iwu mob! 
By the way, I thought this was supposed to be a “computerized” election?


So, why was the whole exercise dominated by papers, as of old? Why did it turn out that several people whose names had been fed into Iwu’s magic computers could not find their names in the badly arranged registers on election day?  The names were not even arranged in alphabetical order. What kind of computers were incapable of doing something as simple as that? Sometimes, it took the poorly trained INEC officials a lot of time to find the names of voters. This caused so much frustrations.  


In many places voting could not take place. Election materials in several cases arrived so late or did not at all. Many Nigerians were disenfranchised including Ikemba Nnewi, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Senate President, Ken Nnamani, Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State, Action Congress (AC) Vice Presidential Candidate, Edwin Umeh-Ezeoke, President-General of Ohaneze-Ndigbo, Dr. Dozie Ikedife, Emmanuel Ibeshi, AC Gubernatorial Candidate in Cross River State, and many others, because voting did not take place in their wards. INEC would have to look for better liars to try to convince us that this was not deliberate, to put some candidates at a disadvantage. So, in spite of  all the noise about INEC’s state of preparedness, this was what Nigerians got after all. So unfortunate. 
Again, despite all the stern-looking, gun-wielding soldiers unleashed into the streets to intimidate everyone, ballot boxes were still stolen, and stuffed with already thumped ballot papers. Were these perpetrated by privileged hoodlums?


By the way, I thought Iwu had promised us that his computers would detect multiple-voting?  How many of such were detected last Saturday? We surely would like to know, because so much time and energy was wasted on this Data Capture machine stuff (or whatever they called it), and Iwu had stubbornly insisted on using them despite the position of many Nigerians and the National Assembly on it. He must be willing to tell us the advantage that has accrued to the process as a result of their usage. 


Well, I have heard it mentioned here and there that the only consolation for the very disappointing elections held last Saturday is the realization that no matter the outcome of the overly fraudulent exercise, President Olusegun Obasanjo would certainly show Nigerians his back on May 29. The belief is that foundations for a new and progressive Nigeria can only be successfully laid at his back. 


Indeed, there is an ever growing consensus that the most outstanding legacy of the outgoing regime in Abuja, apart from institutionalization of corruption, glamorization of incompetence and failure, and extreme lawlessness, is, perhaps, our gradual graduation from massive rigging of elections to no elections at all. It is most unfortunate, and what Nigerians must insist on is that such a satanic practice must go with the regime that instituted it. 
After massively rigging the elections, Obasanjo has flooded the streets with gun-wielding, stern-faced soldiers to intimidate everyone into silence and suppress and crush any form of dissent. Nigeria today looks like a typical coup day, and everyone lives in fear. That is Obasanjo democracy. Democracy of fear and intimidation. 


Well, the main loser in the whole charade they are calling elections would of course  be Prof Maurice Iwu who would always be remembered on the wrong side of history as the man who sought to gratify the narrow interests of a tiny, unpatriotic few at the expense of the national expectation for progress and democratic stability. Whatever ugly incidents that these elections are throwing up will surely be blamed on him. 


In Imo State, for instance, the Governorship election was cancelled because of alleged eruptions of violence, yet in some states where worse things happened, the elections have been announced and applauded by the PDP/INEC. And mark you, the elections into the State House of Assembly in Imo State in which the PDP achieved a “fraudslide” victory was not also cancelled. INEC is yet to tell us how it determined that the violence was only perpetrated in respect of the governorship polls, even though the two elections ran simultaneously. 


But what everyone knows is that INEC/PDP cancelled the Gubernatorial election in Imo State and fixed a run-off election on April 28, so that the PDP which had expelled its Governorship candidate can now have the opportunity to field another candidate and equally rig him in. Nothing can be so outrageous. Iwu does not even pretend at all about where his loyalty lies in this election. 


 Well, after the all this mess, Iwu would certainly sit down to count his losses, just as the nation is doing now, and determine where the rain began to beat him. For instance, the way he had gone about his present job had led some people to probe his past, and some questions marks now accompany his academic reputation. When the clouds have cleared, and this strange PDP/INEC assignment is over, he would have to grapple with this, and the fact that he shattered the hope of his people. 


Indeed, this INEC Chairman would be remembered as the man who was given an opportunity to advance his nation’s progress but he chose to conspire with a tiny congregation of retrogressive and dishonourable characters to abort the prized dream of his nation. Most unfortunate, indeed.
 ——————————————————–
scruples2006@yahoo.com

Nigeria: Campaigns In Troublous Times

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

As I see the reports of the numerous rallies the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is addressing in several parts of the country, I am always forced to ask: what really is the PDP telling these people? Somebody should, please, help me, because, I have not attended any of their rallies, and sometimes, I am too sickened to read the boring, exasperating, empty and incoherent speeches the newspapers say they made at those rallies.

There is nothing I hate like listening to or reading speeches, everyone knows, including the speaker himself, are full of lies and empty promises, and only meant to deceive the hearer, or show that the speaker thinks his listeners are a bunch of fools. In such an instance, the fellow just feels he needs to tell his hearers something, and so, he opens his mouth and vomits even what he himself does not believe.

Nigeria is facing the worst kind of energy crises at this very moment, and President Olusegun Obasanjo, the PDP Chief Campaigner, whose regime has dragged Nigerians through a most excruciating eight years of boundless decay, deterioration and unspeakable pain and hardship, is out there telling Nigerians to forgive the PDP for fielding some governors, whose performance in their states may even had brought some tiny bits of succour to the people unlike Obasanjo’s at the federal level, but whose only offence today is that they had decamped from the PDP.

In the nation today, under Obasanjo’s effective management, power supply has become the people’s greatest source pain and torment. People attempt to sleep in their houses in a pool of their own sweat, and wake up the next morning so tired and drained of strength, and probably nursing a headache, that the thought of being productive that day becomes a distant dream. Severe damage is being inflicting on several eardrums by the tormenting noise of different forms of generators, which conspire with the oppressive heat to make Nigerians have a juicy taste of hell here on earth. Nigeria is fast becoming a dangerous gas chamber because of the dangerous fumes the countless generators are emitting into the atmosphere.

Many have already died as a result of the fumes they had inhaled and many more dying gradually as they inhale these killer fumes daily. Business outfits are folding up due to the high cost of doing business in Nigeria, caused by the perennial energy crises, and this has greatly compounded the already terrible unemployment situation, and shot the prices of goods and services far beyond the reach of the ordinary man.

Fuel scarcity is still very much with us. So, while the nation is plunged in thick, blinding, suffocating darkness because of the abysmal failure of NEPA/PHCN, despite the billions of naira the government claims it had poured into the power sector since 1999, those who have generators are not able to get the fuel needed to power them. Last Sunday’s night in Lagos here, because I needed some fuel to power my generator, I had to burn the little fuel I had in the car, to go very far from where I live, before I could find fuel to buy.

After nearly eight years of “great achievements” by the regime of the “Father Of Modern Nigeria”, the PDP Presidential Candidate, Mr. Umaru Yar’Adua, had to be flown to a German hospital for the treatment of catahrr, on the orders of the President, because, according to the president, they did not want to take chances. So, in essence, those other Nigerians who attend Nigerian hospitals are taking chances with their lives? Did you hear that?

 Also, Vice President Atiku Abubakar, had to go to the UK for a minor knee surgery. After eight years of wonder-working “reforms”, our rulers do not trust our hospitals enough to patronize it. They know too well that these government-forsaken and dilapidated “hospitals” are nothing but high roads to the grave, and so, they would always jet out to well-managed climes to treat catahrr! In a decent society, the PDP would not have even bothered to present any candidates for the coming elections, because no one would cast any votes for them, given that the bold signs of its eight years of resounding failure rudely stare everyone in the face.

 But this is a strange country where strange and bizarre things are normal, daily occurrences. Moreover, the “Largest Party In Africa”, headed by the “Father Of Modern Nigeria”, with its various fearsome garrison commanders, must have perfected its winning strategies in these “do-or-die” elections.

The votes, we know, would not count, or else, what were some of Prof Maurice Iwu’s data-capture machines doing in the lair of Chief Lamidi Adedibu in Molete? And we are talking about the Adedibu case because they were discovered. What of the other ones that were not discovered? What is the guarantee that what would be declared at the polling stations would not have been earlier fed into the systems by well-appointed “foot soldiers” at the various joints of the less-prominent, but more savagely zealous and dare-devil “garrison commanders”? Common, a failed regime cannot be oozing out such confidence for nothing.

Maybe, the people are really listening to the PDP at those rallies, because, I am sure some tiny crumbs of the “national cake” do fall out on or before the days for those rallies. I have met some fellows in the villages, who, though over-stretched and shriveled by the harsh and punitive economic conditions, are still able to announce boldly to me that they are members of the PDP! And what is the source of their motivation? At least once in every three months, some crumpled five hundred naira note would fall to them when they attend those nocturnal party meetings in the house of the “local organizer”, plus some beer and cups of rice. And with that, they mortgage their future, and consign themselves to many more years of unspeakable suffering, slavery and impoverishment.

Nigeria! This is the only country I know where people would have no qualms hailing the very fellow who had brutally murdered their parents and made them sudden orphans, just because of what they hoped to get from the person at that particular point in time. Indeed, this is the only country I know where people would be eating and drinking poison with every relish, and yet wishing to live.

Many Nigerians would readily murder and bury their tomorrow, or cheer on the person doing that, only to wake up early the very next day to yearn and search for it. This is indeed a strange country inhabited by a strange people.

The man who before you yesterday had cursed the leaders for enslaving and impoverishing him will file behind those same leaders tomorrow should such failed leaders offer themselves for re-election, so long as the leaders concerned would be willing to part with some tiny bits of the billions of the commonwealth they had stolen.

That is the Nigeria you and I have found ourselves in, and so, when you see many Nigerians thronging the rallies being addressed by those same people who are known to have stolen the nation blind, you can now understand what is driving them. A nation whose larger population is stuck with this kind of mindset may never be saved.

That’s the truth.

                                 ———————————————–

scruples2006@yahoo.com
www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com
www.ugochukwu.blog.com

Thursday, March 15, 2007