In 1999 the military regime handed over power to a civilian government in Nigeria. The political bottle changed, but the military wine in it remained the same.

Always elections are rigged at all levels, the ruling party rigs and the opposition party rigs; all in all the party with the highest rigging structure always wins the election in Nigeria. In the past in most areas in Nigeria, elections didn’t even hold, the ruling party just write results from the comfort of their homes and the electoral body (INEC) announces it.

This has been the foundation of corruption in Nigeria. Politicians get into office and instead of serving the Nigerian people, they now owe their allegiance to the godfathers that rig the system to get them into office.

In 1999, the military spared no effort in rigging the system to make sure one of their own emerged as president, The opposition party candidate Chief Olu Falaye of the APP/AD cried out helplessly in the face of the obvious manipulations that went on, but there were no institutions to listen to his plea, the judiciary was still under the control of the men with guns (The Military), and so general Olusegun Obasanjo of the PDP was sworn in as president.

In 2003, General Muhammadu Buhari of the ANPP contested against General Olusegun Obasanjo of the PDP. I worked as an adhoc staff then for the electoral body during the elections and I saw firsthand how elections were conducted in the Niger-Delta. The governors and major chieftains to the ruling party are actually the employers of majority of the men and women in charge of election. Elections didn’t even hold over there, they just write results and the stooges of the ruling party working in INEC just announce false results; irrespective of what happens in the streets, the military will always be sent to brutalize the noisy Nigerians.

General Buhari went to court to challenge the result, the case dragged for 30 months, at the end, the Nigerian Judiciary that is yet to express independence succumbed to the ruling party PDP, and the circle of corruption, deprivation of the masses, unaccountability, and deceit and murdering of our institutions continued.

In 2007, the worst election ever held in Africa’s history by my own estimation was conducted under President Obasanjo where results were announced on television and radio stations by Professor Maurice Iwu the then INEC chairman, even though days after the election ballot papers were yet to arrive in some communities and wards for them to vote.

Again General Muhamadu Buhari went to court to challenge the absurdity organized by President Obasanjo which he called elections. After 18 months the case got to the supreme courts consisting of 7 judges. The all agreed the election was messy, but somehow the judges allowed the mess to go unaddressed, and the candidate of the ruling party Umaru Yaradua remained as president even though he himself acknowledged that the elections that brought him to power was rigged; and so the mess continued, corruption, deprivation, unaccountability, godfatherism etc.

In 2011, a popular candidate was running under the platform of the ruling party, President Goodluck Jonathan had the sympathy of Nigerians, he said he had no shoes and the millions of poor people in Nigeria identified with that situation and supported him. There was almost no need to rig the elections because Nigerians queued up for him and made sure he won, however the fraudulent electoral system remained unchanged and uncorrected.

This is 2015 – four years after, and President Jonathan has betrayed the love and trust of majority of Nigerians. He has presided over the massacre of Nigerians in the north east, having recorded the highest number of deaths of innocent Nigerians in his administration since the Nigeria/Biafra civil war of the 1960’s due to his naivety and refusal to defend innocent Nigerians living in the north east from a rag tag insurgent group called Bokoharam.

President Jonathan abused the mandate given to him freely by Nigerians with his obvious lack of appetite to fight corruption. The Nigerian President surrounds himself with so many dubious characters and charlatans that shade him from the truth about what is going on in the streets of Nigeria; the President even said that the fact that a lot of his cronies are buying private jets is a sign of Nigeria’s prosperity.

His six year reign has being plagued with series of corruption scandals from ‘trillions stolen in phony petroleum subsidy contracts to bribery everywhere’, Stella Oduah’s aviation scandal, stealing of pension fund of Nigerian workers and pension fund of even the police, and yet no big wig is in jail for these wrongs, in fact President Jonathan protects the corrupt elites.

President Jonathan was never prepared for leadership, it fell on him. That’s why he still doesn’t understand the value of leadership. He got into power and immediately outsourced the work of the economy to the former vice president of the World Bank Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Nigerians expected him to lead but instead he spent his six years playing internal politics within his party seeking a second term, with the hope that the fraudulent electoral system he inherited from General Obasanjo will always work for him, and the Nigerian Judiciary can never pass a judgement against an incumbent Nigerian president.

However there is a joker for the Nigerian people this time, the electoral body has gone for biometric voting to almost eliminate electoral fraud, snatching of ballot boxes, having cronies of the ruling party write results from their bedrooms etc. President Jonathan was busy playing internal politics and weakening his party (the ruling PDP) to further his ambition only to wake up one morning and realize its election time and there was nothing to show for six years but sorrow, tears and blood all over the north east. President Jonathan is now scavenging looking for projects to show to Nigerians, but leadership is not about projects only, even a fool can start a project.

Political Leadership is all about inspiring confidence, giving your people a direction, a focus, a goal and a reason to hope for a better society where they can dream higher with the evident possibility of achieving their dreams.

This coming election Nigeria is less about the contestants President Jonathan or General Buhari, it’s about the Nigerian people, and the eagerness to own the process and take control of their destiny, to break away from the claws of a ruling elite that has bleed the nation dry for 16 long years. The huge votes against President Jonathan would be protest votes against a demonic elite that would steal public funds to buy private jets, pay themselves obnoxious salaries and allowances in the midst of so much poverty in the land, destroy the public health sector because they can afford medical tourism, allow our public schools to dilapidate because they have enough to put their children in schools abroad, even when millions of Nigerians go to bed every night hungry with nothing to eat.

President Jonathan, discovering so late in the game that his time is almost up, he is now playing his last cards which might put Nigerian in jeopardy just like he has weakened and destroyed his party the PDP. Sensing imminent defeat, the President through his national security adviser asked for elections to be postponed by 6weeks by sabotaging the electoral body INEC through refusing to provide security with the excuse that the army is now ready to go on a belated offensive against Bokoharam, after 6years of trauma, loss of businesses, homes and properties in the north eastern part of Nigeria and an estimate 18,000 innocent deaths – President Jonathan now using 6 weeks to solve the problem of insurgency. Where was this idea all this long while before the last week to the elections?

If President Jonathan wins this war against insurgency within these six weeks, it means he always knew what to do and didn’t do it, thereby allowing the insurgency to spread and his people die in vain.

If President Jonathan loses the war, the shame of incompetence continues.

The loopholes have being blocked by INEC, the rigging advantage of the ruling party has being reduced by the introduction of biometric voting. President Jonathan is playing his card of mischief, first by sabotaging the electoral body to postpone the election. What next is on his mind?

The attempt by President Jonathan to sack the Chairman of Nigeria’s electoral body six weeks to elections and replace him with an unscrupulous character to turn the electoral commission upside down and Jonathan as President.
The attempt to frustrate and stop the use of the card readers for the elections, by hiring crowds to protest at the INEC office at every opportunity and sponsoring pliant characters to continue casting aspersions on the electoral body to bring down the institution.
The careless ravishment of public funds to induce and buy voters.
The pursuit of an Interim National Government in the place of election. etc.

If any of these happens, it means Nigerians have a leader who would prefer to win an election and loss a nation by destroying a democracy he never fought for.

Worse still, President Jonathan has unleashed his fixers to go sponsoring hate documentaries on television and blackmailing the opposition.

Every nation has its trying times, and Nigeria continues this long march to emancipation from the clutches of its political elites, I call on world leaders not to ignore the fraudulent chess game going in the Nigerian polity powered by greed and lust for power and not for the service of the Nigerian people, @BarackObama, The British Prime Minister David Cameron @Number10gov, The Chinese President #XiJinping, German Chancellor Angela #Merkel etc. not to allow the unclean politics played by some naive and lucky politicians to destroy Nigeria.

No country can exist and prosper alone, if not for the support from the international community, South Africa would most probably still be in apartheid, and keep destroying itself.

If not for the international community there would be no South Sudan, and the Sudan nation would still be destroying itself.

At such a time as this, the Nigerian nation needs same support to stop a desperate incumbent and it’s beneficiaries from bringing down the Nigerian roof with their personal ambitions and turning more and more poor Nigerians into refugees within their own country or refugees in neighbouring countries as we have now in Chad, Cameroun and Niger.



By Chinedu Enebeli

Calljonas@yahoo.com, Twitter@calljonas

Source: http://www.citizensepistle.com/2015/02/nigerias-long-march-to-freedom-a-clarion-call-to-world-leaders/

Good

Well written. A lot of people have been blinded by the religious card the ruling party has decided to play indirectly. It's even more disappointing when you see enlightened people fall pitifully for that shi.t!