April Polls: How Intelligence Report Jolted FG - The Independent August 5, 2007 |  NigerianMuse (Archives)

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INDEPENDENT

April Polls: How Intelligence Report Jolted FG

By Sam Akpe (Abuja) and Daniel Alabrah (Lagos)
August 5th, 2007

•Obasanjo, Atiku, Iwu Indicted •Polls Historic, INEC Tells Commonwealth

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is ready to release what a source has described as a damning report on the conduct of the 2007 general election.

The report when released may address all issues raised in an intelligence document now at the disposal of the government, which indicted former President Olusegun Obasanjo, his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, and the INEC chairman, Maurice Iwu, over the conduct of the April polls.

The report, anchored by a former Central Intelligence Agent (CIA) officer, was said to have jolted the Federal Government to the extent that it immediately made moves to put certain things right.

Iwu could not be reached to confirm this, but sources said the report, which he had ordered its compilation, follows widespread condemnation of the election by Nigerian and foreign observers.

One of such severe criticisms is contained in a journal by the American State Department, which stated that Obasanjo masterminded the failure of the elections.

The stinging publication exposes both Obasanjo and Atiku as the architects of election rigging in Nigeria since 1999 when they came to power.

A top INEC official, who spoke in confidence, said the expected report would state the behind-the-scene intrigues, the drama and frustrating manipulations that almost marred the exercise.

He said collation of the final copy of the report would be done at a retreat that would take all the top officers of the commission out of Abuja and the states capital.

"The INEC chairman has asked all those involved to compile an undiluted account of all that happened during the election. And that is just what we are doing now," he disclosed.

He said it was difficult to ascertain what the final report would generally look like since the heads of departments were still putting facts and figures together.

Sources said the release of the report might be delayed to allow the election tribunals finish with pending cases, although it does not mean the report would in any way influence the decisions of the tribunals.

Iwu was said to have ordered the immediate and meticulous compilation of the report following a well-loaded article published in the July/August (Volume Six, Number Four) edition of State Department Journal entitled: "Foreign Affairs."

The scathing article is written by Jean Herskovits, (a former) officer of the CIA in charge of African affairs, who is also a research professor of history at the State University of New York, Purchase.

The 16-page document entitled: "Nigeria’s Rigged Democracy," which runs from page 115 to 130, ends with a scary suggestion that a military coup was very unlikely in the country.

Unconfirmed sources said the Nigerian government was rattled by the report and immediately took urgent steps to address issues and suggestions exposed therein.

Herskovits stated that the little success recorded at the election was based on the raw individual and collective will of Nigerians to push Obasanjo out of office in 2007.

She revealed that having failed to achieve the third term bid, Obasanjo had another plan, dubbed the "Mugabe Option," which was meant to enable him remain in office by any means.

She said one method was by hampering preparations for the elections so as to trigger popular unrest and then declare a state of emergency.

According to Herskovits, preparations for the 2007 elections were, indeed, deliberately delayed until late 2006.

The INEC "whose chair, a professor of herbal medicine, was appointed by the President complicated voter registration."

"Although INEC was starved of funds and Nigeria lacked reliable electric power supply, its chair decided in late 2006 that registration and the voting itself would be carried out electronically."

She said not enough of the required machines were in the country and that the few brought in were defective, adding that the situation would have been worse if the National Assembly did not bar the use of electronic equipment suggested by the INEC.

The intelligence officer stated that most of the 50 political parties registered electoral body were organised by the PDP and the security services.

The suspicion, she says, was that the flurry of party registrations was meant to undermine the major opposition groups and confuse voters during the various elections.

On Atiku, the analyst said it was his face-off with Obasanjo and the leadership of the PDP that launched him into the political consciousness of many Nigerians.

She said: "Atiku, who was seen as the principal architect of election rigging in 2003, was never a popular figure, at least not until last year when Obasanjo’s personal vendetta against him became public.

"And the more Atiku fought Obasanjo’s effort to prevent him from running, the more he grew in stature and popularity as unlikely defender of democracy."

She stated that the elections were not just flawed, but they followed the downward trajectory of Nigeria’s sad electoral history in which millions of people who want democracy are betrayed by their leaders.

According to the research professor, it has always been the courageous press and an independent-minded judiciary that have served as the most promising signs of Nigeria’s difficult liberalisation.

Herskovits added: "Each mangled election brings disillusionment, not with democracy but with how Nigeria’s leaders impose their will.

"Nigerians talk of the power of incumbency, ample money, control of the security forces, and, this year especially, a compliant electoral commission."

Regardless, Iwu has again described the 2007 general election as a "historic success."

Iwu thumped his chest in self-adulation at the recent sixth Cambridge Conference on Electoral Democracy in the Commonwealth held at the Trinity College in the United Kingdom, where he maintained that INEC achieved a feat for transiting Nigeria from one elected government to another.

"If transition from one elected government to another in Nigeria has been an easy task, how come the country had not hit the mark all these years?" he asked rhetorically.

The annual conference is open to the Chief Electoral Officers of democracies under the Commonwealth of Nations and is a forum for peer review and sharing of experiences towards strengthening the electoral process in member countries.

Part of the report of the Commonwealth observer team to the April polls presented at the summit by Mathew Neuhaus, Director of the Political Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat, concurred with Iwu’s assertion.

It noted that the election recorded some progress in Nigeria’s political development, to the extent that it achieved the first successful democratic transition the country has had.

Neuhaus, however, pointed out the flaws inherent in some of the reports from the foreign observer teams to elections. For instance, the Commonwealth observer team based its report of the 2007 election in Nigeria on its visit to only four of the 36 states. Amazingly, the report was signed on April 27, even before the elections were effectively concluded.

Many participants also noted that the fact of the Commonwealth election team report being based on visit to only four states out of 36 as well as the observer team talking to some of the major contenders in the national elections while failing to talk to other major contenders subtracted heavily from the value of the report.

But, Iwu counselled international observers of elections to gain a better understanding of the real dynamics of the politics of countries they set out to observe their elections.

"Elections often reflect outcomes that in themselves reflect various complex political and social forces as well as the preparedness of the contestants," he said.

Instructively, his counterpart in the Ghana National Electoral Commission, Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, observed that one of the problems of managing elections in Nigeria is the high turnover of chairmen of the electoral commission.

He said more than four chairmen of the electoral commission in Nigeria have come and gone since he assumed office as chairman of the electoral body in Ghana, wondering how the lessons learnt in the conduct of an election by a Chief Electoral Officer can be meaningful if such officer will leave office after just one election.

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