OPINION: INEC’s con artists and Adamawa coupists

WRECKAGE! A telling cartoon made the rounds last weekend on the social media.It was simple. And poignant. The message was in the graphics and the absence of words. It had a picture of a rather unusually big commercial bus painted in a yellow colour. If you lived in Lagos and you were a commuter in the public transportation system up to the 1990s,that bus takes you back to the days of the notorious mass transit molue. Molue bus was a successor to the more jar ring Bolekaja. Native Yoruba language speakers would tell youth at bolekaja means ‘come down and let us fight’.Imagine commuting in a bus [really more of a contraption than a bus] that conveys the above meaning. But some of us did in the1970s and 1980s.A fuller description of the features of a typical bolekaja and its erstwhile passengers,including yours sincerely, will be a story for another day.On its own, the molue bus which has been virtually phased out of Lagos has itspeculiarstory.The inimitable Afrobeat king, the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti [could the man who said he had death in his pouch really die?], once sang that the molue bus was a master in moving more standing passengers than those who were seated from one point to the other. While it held sway, it used to have about 30-50sitting passengers and more than double that number of standing commuters. Fela described the situation then as suffering and smiling. And his was a hit song. In the cartoon that we earlier referenced,the massive bus was shown by the cartoonist as having broken down in the middle of nowhere. It bore the colours of Nigeria on its side somewhere near thetop.Some of its wheels had broken off.

And the tyres separated from the frame
and chassis of the bus. The bonnet was open but no mechanic was seen attending to its apparently failed engine. The bus looked exhausted and weather-beaten.
However, there was the image of a man who sat on the road in front of the broken down vehicle. He looked like the driver. He seemed carefree. Indeed unperturbed.He was wearing a flowing gown and he was picking his teeth. The image appeared like that of Nigeria’s President, Gen.Muhammadu Buhari. We cannot vouch that it was him. But it will be difficult to forget that such a picture was once posted on the social media by his handlers and it was also once used by a university in Europe to depict the image of a nun serious president in a failing African country. Has Buhari been an unserious President?We are not able to say so.We cannot be categorical. Certainly not in this season when treason is becoming a by word to frighten those who attempt to
sing from a hymn book different from that of the people in government. But one thing was unmistakable from the cartoon:the bus represented a broken down country while the man who sat on the road was the driver who was unconcerned about the fate that had befallen the bus and its passengers.
That has been the story of Nigeria, and everything inside it under Buhari. He and his political party, the All Progressives Congress [APC] never kept the majority, if not all, of the promises they made to Nigerians ahead of their accession to power in 2015. They behaved like con artists with promises of delivery without the delivery of promises. At every turn today, which is the eve of his departure from office, he keeps claiming that he had more than delivered on all of his promises. He must be mocking Nigerians to their faces.Forthe records he is leaving

office with more than133millioncitizens
or more trapped in dimensional poverty.His legacy will also include the worst Naira value in living memory;the highest inflation rate in one generation; the most terrorized and insecure country ever; the most divided; the worst election in almost one quarter of a century; a country trapped in debts,foreign and domestic;and the most underwhelming regime since independence. To his credit he succeeded in moving the country from one of the fastest growing economies in Africa to the poverty capital of the world.

Con artists are a lot more humane and considerate than what citizens got inBuhari’sNigeria.It’s no surprise, therefore, that some public servants who are heading some critical national institutions have taken a cue from the con artistry of the top leadership.

The so-called Independent National
Electoral Commission [INEC] is one such institution. It is peopled by con artists from the top to the bottom. As Nigerians we used to pride ourselves as some of the smartest people around. But the INEC chairman and his team showed us‘pepper’ [outsmarted us]. Months before the 2023 general elections which held in February and March, INEC leaders especially its chairman, Mahmood Yakubu and national commissioner for information and voter education, Festus Okoye, repeatedly assured Nigerians that the elections would be like no other in terms of fairness, transparency and credibility. They assured that the tech innovations they had introduced would bea game changer. They said that Nigerians would be enabled to follow and monitor their ballots real time online from their polling units or home or offices without let or hindrance. And that votes would count this time.

Nigerians especially the younger generation believed them. Many young and intending first time voters did not waver in their faith in INEC when that agency failed badly in delivering voters cards to new registrants. That was the first sign that INEC should not be trusted.ButNigeriansstillbelieved.
When the election days arrived, voters were confronted with old problems.
Election materials and personnel arrived many polling units late, as late as 4PM in some places for an election that had beens cheduled to close by 2.30PM. In other places elections did not hold at all.

Symbols of a few political parties were missing in the ballot papers in some constituencies. In places where voting happened, INEC refused to upload polling unit results real time on its viewing portal,theiREV.Beforetheelections, INEC had repeatedly assured that instant upload of results was mandatory by law.

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After the elections, INEC said the upload and collation of results would be as determined by INEC. The story changed.But in spite of the later day claims by INEC, the electoral law has not changed.The anxiety is that the election management body has positioned itself asthe‘clearandpresentdanger’ to the survival of democracy in Nigeria.
The recent failed coup in Adamawa state has removed any doubt, if ever there had been any, that the INEC is the greatest threat to our democracy. Before the conclusion of the collation of results of the supplementary election for the
governorship position,thestate’sresident
electoral commissioner, one Hudu Yunusa-Ari, who was said to be a lawyer,sauntered into the collation centre and announced a phantom result. He was not charged with that duty, anyway.Last week we wrote here that Yunusa-Arigota slap in the wrist from INEC which casually invited him to Abuja instead of getting him arrested. And last weekend he was reported to have vanished into thin air,allegedly spirited away in a private jet from an airport in Yola, Adamawa state to an unknown destination. He must be laughing at the rest of us. Another curious development which should not escape Nigerians is that Yunusa-Ari works for an‘independent’ agency but a presidential decree was needed for him to be probed,arrested and tried. That’s part of the oddity in our structure. The agency where he works is helpless unless the President directed that action be taken.Yunusa-Ari was not alone in that coup to steal the Adamawa governorship. He was accompanied to the robbery operation by armed security agents including a commissioner of police. The only story so far in the public domain was that the police commissioner has been withdrawn by the police hierarchy. Just that? Is there call from duty post the prescribed punishment for participating in a coup?The alleged disappearance of Yunusa-Ariand the kid’s glove treatment of the commissioner of police and other collaborators in the Adamawa heist are indications that they acted based on‘orders from above’. Even Aisha Binani Dahiru,the governorship candidate of the ruling APC should be answering questions from the security agencies by now. The election thieves acted on her behalf if not at her prompting. If she had no hand in it,then why did she give an acceptance speech about her ‘election victory’ and why did she hurry to court to obtain an order stopping the INEC from annulling her win? Her desperation is a minus to Nigerian women in politics. They are not different from the devilish men. We will not talk about the refusal of the National Broadcasting Commission [NBC]to sanction the NTA for airing an ‘acceptance speech’ derived from an electoral fraud for the simple reason that the NBC is a primitive regulator. It should have no place in the 21st century.Meanwhile, we will await the day when the government and its agencies,including the INEC, will start the trial of other alleged electoral offenders while the high profile thieves of Adamawa walk away and about scot free.

AUTHOR: Ugo Onuoha

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Articles published in our Graffiti section are strictly the opinion of the writers and do not represent the views of Ripples Nigeria or its editorial stand.

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