Onyebuchi Ezigbo
11 November 2008
Abuja — Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Maurice Iwu, yesterday said President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's victory at the April 2007 poll was a true reflection of the wishes of the electorate.
Iwu, who spoke at the openning of a one-day seminar on Delimitation and Delineation of Federal Constituencies in Nigeria, organised for political parties, said INEC would make public the result of the on-going delimitation and delineation of federal constituencies ahead of the 2011 elections in March 2009.
Iwu said result of the Prersidential election confirmed the fact that the President's party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was the most popular party during the polls.
He attributed the outcry against the polls to the negative mind-set of Nigerian politicians about elections.
He insisted that the odds favoured the PDP, being the dominant party, saying "the rules of engagement in countries where you have a dominant party is totally different from the rules of engagement, where you have parties of near or equal power.
"It has happened in Kenya, it has happened in South Africa.
There are established political theories about these things and yet we want to see daylight and pretend that it is darkness, we just want to be able to shout that somebody has a stolen mandate when the President had near or know competition," he said.
While berating Nigerian politicians for always resorting to crying wolf each time they loose elections, Iwu said a major problem afflicting the country's electoral system is that these politicians are not willing to accept the wishes of the people by accepting election results in good faith.
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I totally agree with Prof Iwu and support his theory that the outcry against the polls is based on the negative mind-set of Nigerian about our politicians on their attitude to elections plus Atiku's tantrum about running despite his disqualification and the very late court of appeal's last minute decision which requires re-print of ballot papers. Despite that, INEC was still able to meet the election date deadline. For a country that has never conducted a successful election in 28 years removed from its very first stab at a completed election back in 1979. That is an accomplishment in itself to which the decent Professor and his staff deserves kudos. I don't understand why we should blame the messenger when the actual culprits are the corrupt politicians themselves who would do anything (kill, rob, steal) to win elections by any means necessary. INEC can only operate under the legal parameters set for it by the constitution and the legislature. If the system is bad, blame the rules of the game, not the messenger and the hostile condition under which INEC operated. Hopefully, we have learned the inherent lessons in the rules of the game so it can be fixed before the next election and for us to keep improving upon it till it becomes more perfect. No country in the world has a perfect system just as no man is perfect, except Jesus and Allah. Man can only attempt to emulate them. So why beat ourselves up because outsiders keep pushing their destabilizing self-fulfilling prophecy of failure on us. To counter that external negative agenda by aiming to be the best we could and let's stop outsiders dictating to us when all we need to do is look at ourselves in the mirror and keep improving the defects we see until we achieve our goal & not kow-towing to somebody else's agenda. May God continue to bless Nigeria and our President and his loyal & dedicated deputy.