Lagos — Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Maurice Iwu, recently incurred the wrath of Nigerians, when he compared the Nigerian electoral system with that of the United States of America. Davidson Iriekpen reports
The Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Maurice Iwu, last week stirred the hornet's nest when he condemned the United States of America's style of election process, asking the US to draw lessons from Nigeria.
Iwu, who made his remarks during a visit to the presidential villa, said the Nigerian electoral system was better than that of the US. Asked to comment on the specific areas the US could learn from Nigeria, Iwu said Americans should learn to keep a national voters' register.
He also said the US should learn to hold presidential election in one day rather than scatter it over several days, as they do in the case of early voting. "They should learn to keep a voters' register and they should learn to hold elections in one day," Iwu said as he hurried off, declining to make further comments.
Why many were wondering what America has to learn about the Nigerian electoral system, the INEC boss said that he was misquoted. A statement issued on his behalf by the Director of Public Affairs, Segun Adeogun said the report was "a malicious fabrication and a tissue of lies."
He added: "We wish to state that at no time did the INEC chairman condemn the US electoral system. In his brief interaction with State House correspondents, he acknowledged that while Nigeria has a lot to learn from the US, Americans can also learn from Nigeria's experience especially in the area of keeping national voters' register and holding presidential election in one day. This does not in any way amount to condemnation."
Adeogun said: "Prof. Iwu has always held the US democratic process in high esteem. He cannot therefore at any point in time begin to infer, impute and surmise that the same democracy which he has been part of at various times in the past is riddled with drawbacks as was being insinuated in the media reports."
The statement added: "The INEC chairman has been an apostle of electoral integrity, internal democracy among political parties and fairness to all. Prof. Iwu did not condemn the US electoral process. Any report alluding to such is nothing but a figment of the author's imagination.
"In recent times, there has been a grand plot to malign, discredit and disparage Iwu's reputation, which he has built over the years both in Nigeria and in the United States. This has been orchestrated in the form of unrestrained and unrelenting media siege to his person and the INEC as an institution."
For these comments, it did not take long for Nigerians to descend on the Iwu. One of the opposition parities, the Action Congress (AC) descended on him heavily. It described him as a man who is either suffering from pangs of hallucination or tottering on the brink of instability. In a statement in Abuja by its National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, the party said the statement, which Iwu reportedly made during a visit to President Umaru Yar'Adua on the same day Americans were voting peacefully, was calibrated to make Nigeria a laughing stock in the comity of nations.
AC said the angry reactions to Iwu's comments by the Nigerian community have shown the danger in making such a careless statement, saying going by the woes of 2007 elections, no country, not even United States to say the least, has anything to learn from Nigeria beyond election rigging, violence, voter disenfranchisement, ballot box snatching and vote stealing.
"Just imagine this, a man that organised what has now emerged as the worst election in the history of Nigeria and perhaps that of the world is now trying to teach the world's greatest democracy the rudiments of elections. No statement made by Iwu in the past has exposed his lack of seriousness and stability more than his comments on the US election and it is sad that this is the kind of man to whom we chose to entrust what should have been Nigeria's own landmark elections in 2007.
"The fact that he made the statement after a visit to President Yar'Adua is even more embarrassing and could be read to mean that what he said reflected the thinking of the President. It's unfortunate, but these are all we have bequeathed to the world after the 2007 elections and it will remain so until we repudiate the likes of Maurice Iwu and organise a free, fair and violence-free elections," the statement added.
Also, former Senate Chief Whip and leader of the Action Congress (AC) in Edo State, Senator Rowland Owie, urged President Umaru Yar'Adua and the National Assembly to urgently reconstitute the INEC led by Iwu in order to make the commission "truly an unbiased umpire."
Owie, while reacting to Iwu's statement, stated that "we are aware that people have said that this administration is slow but one thing that this President should do now and the National Assembly is to disband this present INEC led by Iwu so that the integrity of this country is not rubbished the more.
"It is a shame that Iwu who has failed to apologise to Nigerians on how he manipulated elections during the last general elections is coming up to say that America should come and learn from us. As a matter of fact, if Iwu was living in the Benin Empire before the British came, by now he should have committed suicide. What it means is that we have no hope again unless he leaves there.
"Iwu's commission is anti-Christ and anti-democratic and something serious must be done to save Nigeria from his hands. That is why we must continue to appeal to the President to save this country from embarrassment. At least, he watched the election in the United States; if he truly wants this nation to move forward, he should start from reforming INEC, after all he acknowledged that the last elections was fraudulent," Owie stated.
Since the April 2007 general elections, criticisms have been trailing the conduct of the election with allegations that massive rigging, thuggery, stuffing of ballot boxes, announcement of results before the conclusion of polls, omission of candidates' names and political logos from the ballot papers, among others, were the hallmarks of the controversial election.
The alleged failure of INEC was exposed by judgements of the election petitions tribunals across the country which established that the election was grossly marred by malpractices and irregularities. The tribunals sitting different states condemned the role played by the umpire from the state Houses of Assembly and gubernatorial elections, to House of Representatives and senatorial elections as well as the presidential election, describing them as fraudulent.
It was the perception of many before the election that candidates were indiscriminately excluded and voters' register was not displayed in accordance with the constitution. They also believed that electoral matters were not prepared on time, adequate ad-hoc personnel were not recruited and deployed all over the country, adding that Iwu was embroiled in needless court altercations.
International observers as well as domestic observers, including the European Union Election Observer Mission (EU EOM), Republican Institute, Justice, Development and Peace Commission (IDPC) in their different reports, also maintained that not only was the election fraught with irregularities, the electoral processes were also flawed.
According to the EU report, during elections at various states, polling started very late throughout the country, due to the late arrival of polling officials and materials which were often incomplete. EU also reported that in several areas, polling did not take place at all. Polling stations were generally under-staffed with officials under-trained. Procedures were often poorly followed and the secrecy of the ballot was not guaranteed in the majority of polling stations visited by EU observers.
Since the conclusion of the election, there have been calls for Iwu to resign his position as INEC chairman. The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has been at the forefront of the calls. NBA said Iwu should resign if Nigerians would have confidence in the commission to conduct re-run elections ordered by the election petition tribunals across the country.
The then president of the association, Mr. Olisa Agbakoba, predicated the call on various tribunal pronouncements which he said had vindicated NBA's position that the election was characterised with irregularities adding that the commission's chairman should leave office "so that INEC would have a fresh start" in the conduct of the by-election, ordered by the courts.
The NBA Election Monitoring Committee had, shortly after the April, 2007 general election, said in its preliminary and final reports that the election was not free and fair, a position shared by both local and international observers who also monitored the elections.
Iwu had, however, dismissed the reports of the observers and insisted that the election was free and fair, adding that there is no perfect election anywhere in the world.
Chairman of the Conference of National Political Parties (CNPP) former governor of old Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, also supported the agitation for Iwu's removal from office. He however, lamented that President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua and the National Assembly have not been courageous enough to remove the INEC boss, because they are products of his fraudulent polls.
"Everyone is aware that the elections were characterized by malpractices. All the elections in 2007, it was not possible to determine who the winners were; yet INEC declared winners. INEC knew what it was doing, it deliberately committed treason in participating in the election rigging, it is not enough for Nigerians to ask Iwu to resign, what should be done is to suspend or remove him and to remove him involves some constitutional technicalities which must involve the National Assembly," Balarabe said.
He continued: "We know that the National Assembly will not remove him because it was a beneficiary of the rigging; 90 per cent of the members benefited from this, so they can't do so because INEC and Obasanjo wanted them there. I will suggest that court will be the most appropriate way of removing him and pressing that a commission of inquiry be set up to look into the activities of INEC since 1999."
But Iwu at the presentation of the 2007 INEC report said, the April election reflected the wishes of the electorate. The INEC boss in an alleged bid to cover his shortcomings, said his commission could not be faulted. He went ahead to berate some politicians and wealthy individuals whom he did not mention specifically.
He said: "The elections of 2007 marked a big leap in Nigeria's democratic process. For one, the election effectively broke the jinx of several failed attempts by the country to successfully transit from one democratically elected government to another.
"The 2007 election, the third in the series of national elections conducted by the INEC since Nigeria's return to democracy in 1999, marked the watershed in the annals of the conduct of elections in the country. The commission went the extra mile in ensuring not only that the elections were held, but also that they were successful, free and fair."
The INEC chairman put part of the blames on the ill-fated third term agenda of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, saying that the political intrigues and manoeuvres generated by agenda, further contributed to the pollution of the political environment before the election.
However, certain Nigerians have reasoned that it was shameful that only Iwu defended the April election, saying it was free and fair, bearing in mind that even Yar'Adua, believed to be a beneficiary of the flawed election, admitted that the election that brought him into power was not a perfect election. To cure the country of the mess, he had to put in place an Electoral Reform Committee to overhaul the electoral process.
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Apologize for what? If anybody deserves to apologize to Nigerians it is the corrupt politicians. Who cares what EU and US observers think about Nigerian election? Perhaps This Day and/or whoever is perpetuating this neo-colonial story forgot that the same Europeans that has turned Zimbabweans into paupers via their economic sanctions in order to get Mugabe to say "Yessir" to the "Master", also killed a democratically elected Lumumba in favor of Mobutu thus causing the Congo to become a failed state we see today due to its un-ending civil wars for most part of its 50-year history. What about Slavery and Jim Crow practices in a democratic US until the advent of Obama Presidency. Please stop these colonial mentality and show more pride in your roots. Obama is not elected President of Nigeria. My interest is how we improve Nigeria's future elections and infrastructure so as to make life better for the common man - even a benevolent dictatorship would be preferred than these Rouge Politicians. The past is gone; even though it may be prologue, let's move forward instead of wasting time rehashing old but dead issues. As far as I am concerned, Iwu and his staff conducted a credible election based on the parameters of election laws allowed INEC. If there is any deficiency, let our do-nothing NASS pass legislations that will make INEC more effective in conducting better election in the future. I just read that our national association of students has elected Mr. Iwu as their Man of the Year - go figure.
Iwu,Thank you and all of your Friends for the history lesson.The truth will set us Free. Is Obama White? God Bless Africa and America. Oweij Liebo-USA,Peace and Love.
Sir, would you tell us who SPECIFICALLY killed Lumuba? Name names please; no abstract generalities, devoid of content, such as "Europeans."
I am calling you to the mat on this one; never mind the myopic professor, an alienated African intellectual, trying so get his fifteen minutes: name who killed Lumumba, the naive commie!
Regards.
Jallowlaw, It is obvious that you have limited knowledge of African history that you have to be educated as such via the medium: Let me start with Exhibit 1. The report of 2001 by the Belgian Commission mentions that there had been previous U.S. and Belgian plots to kill Lumumba. Among them was a CIA-sponsored attempt to poison him, which may have come on orders from U.S. President Eisenhower. CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb was a key person in this by devising a poison resembling toothpaste. However, the plan is said to have failed because the local CIA Station Chief, Larry Devlin, had a conscience issue and did not go forward. In February 2002, the Belgian government apologized to the Congolese people, and admitted to a "moral responsibility" and "an irrefutable portion of responsibility in the events that led to the death of Lumumba." In July, documents released by the United States government revealed that while the CIA had been kept informed of Belgium's plans, it had no direct role in Lumumba's eventual death. This same disclosure showed that U.S. perception at the time was that Lumumba was a communist. Eisenhower's reported call, at a meeting of his national security advisers, for Lumumba's elimination must have been brought on by this perception. Both Belgium and the US were clearly influenced in their unfavourable stance towards Lumumba by the Cold War. He seemed to gravitate around the Soviet Union, although it was the only place he could find support in his country's effort to rid itself of colonial rule, not because he was a communist.(Ironically, the US was the first country Lumumba requested help from). Lumumba, for his part, not only denied being a Communist, but said he found colonialism and Communism to be equally deplorable, and professed his personal preference for neutrality between the East and West. You can read the rest of the story at its source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba www.africawithin.com/lumumba/who_killed_lumumba.htm
Exhibit 2: The CIA, Belgium and the Assassination of an African Hero. By Kevin Whitelaw. "The day will come when history will speak... Africa will write its own history... it will be a history of glory and dignity." - Patrice Lumumba. It was the height of the Cold War when Sidney Gottlieb arrived in Congo in September 1960. The CIA man was toting a vial of poison. His target: the toothbrush of Patrice Lumumba, Congo's charismatic first prime minister, who was also feared to be a rabid Communist. As it happened, Lumumba was toppled in a military coup just days before Gottlieb turned up with his poison. The plot was abandoned, the lethal potion dumped in the Congo River. When Lumumba finally was killed, in January 1961, no one was surprised when fingers started pointing at the CIA. A Senate investigation of CIA assassinations 14 years later found no proof that the agency was behind the hit, but suspicions linger. Today, new evidence suggests Belgium, Congo's former colonialist ruler, was the mastermind. According to The Assassination of Lumumba, a book published recently in Belgium by sociologist Ludo de Witte, Belgian operatives directed and carried out the murder, and even helped dispose of the body. Belgian authorities are investigating, but officials admit de Witte's account appears accurate. Does that mean the CIA didn't play a role? Declassified U.S. cables from the year preceding the assassination bristle with paranoia about a Lumumba-led Soviet Communist takeover. The CIA was hatching plots against Cuban leader Fidel Castro and was accused of fomenting coups and planning assassinations worldwide. And Lumumba clearly scared the daylights out of the Eisenhower administration. "In high quarters here, it is the clear-cut conclusion that if [Lumumba] continues to hold high office, the inevitable result will [have] disastrous consequences . . . for the interests of the free world generally," CIA Director Allen Dulles wrote. "Consequently, we conclude that his removal must be an urgent and prime objective." Even out of office, Lumumba remained under the microscope of Western spy services. His ties to Moscow frightened Washington. His fierce anti-colonialism unnerved Brussels. Belgium finally got its chance at Lumumba after Congolese authorities arrested him in December 1960. Belgian officials engineered his transfer to the breakaway province of Katanga, which was under Belgian control. De Witte reveals a telegram from Belgium's African-affairs minister, Harold d'Aspremont Lynden, essentially ordering that Lumumba be sent to Katanga. Anyone who knew the place knew that was a death sentence. Firing squad. When Lumumba arrived in Katanga, on January 17, accompanied by several Belgians, he was bleeding from a severe beating. Later that evening, Lumumba was killed by a firing squad commanded by a Belgian officer. A week earlier, he had written to his wife, "I prefer to die with my head unbowed, my faith unshakable, and with profound trust in the destiny of my country." Lumumba was 35. The next step was to destroy the evidence. Four days later, Belgian Police Commissioner Gerard Soete and his brother cut up the body with a hacksaw and dissolved it in sulfuric acid. In an interview on Belgian television last year, Soete displayed a bullet and two teeth he claimed to have saved from Lumumba's body. What remains unclear is the extent, if any, of Washington's involvement in the final plot. A Belgian official who helped engineer Lumumba's transfer to Katanga told de Witte that he kept CIA station chief Lawrence Devlin fully informed of the plan. "The Americans were informed of the transfer because they actively discussed this thing for weeks," says de Witte. But Devlin, now retired, denies any previous knowledge of the transfer. Either way, Lumumba's death served its purpose: It bolstered the shaky regime of a formerly obscure colonel named Joseph Mobutu. During his three-decade rule, Mobutu would run his country, bursting with natural resources, into the depths of poverty. It took a civil war to oust him, and Congo has seen little peace since. Today, at least five countries are fighting in Congo and Lumumba's son, an opposition leader, spent several weeks in a Kinshasa jail cell on politically motivated charges. Source: www.thenewblackmagazine.com/view.aspx?index=598. Other sources that you can research include: blogcritics.org/archives/2004/09/24/053112. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/974745.stm www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/Lumumbascript.html www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/patrice.htm www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-8666563.html.
Sir, respectfully, I have learned nada from your long and boring attempt to determine the killer of Lumumba.
Bottom line: you still have to tell the readers who killed Lumumba. Your attempt to escape this proof exercise cannot be concealed by your uncritical cites to sources that you have not fontologically vetted, at least, not in your posting.
Give it another shot, if you don't mind: answer the question!
Who specifically killed Lumumba?
Calling me an ignoramus of African history is not going to absolve you of that intellectual task. Accordingly, cut the name calling obfuscationism: just answer the question.
Kindest Felicitations.