Better yet, the following week (on March 22, 2007), the same Simon Kolawole in his Thisday column, under the caption ‘Understanding the Fashola Phenomenon’, sadly contradicted himself by stating that “The conventional wisdom is that if you control the motor parks, you control the thugs; if you control the thugs, you control the polling booth; if you control the polling booth, you control the votes! That is why associations such as National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and Road...
As regards President Yar’Adua and the PDP, they need to know that there is a helluva of a political liability that abounds if the President is seen to be too eager to placate an unserious opposition by even considering replacing an experienced INEC leadership too close to final calls for the next election. I call the opposition unserious because it is unlike in Ghana and the United States, which have been compared with Nigeria, where the opposition is large, organized and steadfast. In...
When third term failed, grand Nigerian conspiracies were unleashed on INEC to intimidate it away from carrying through with the elections. Recall that vast numbers of prominent Nigerian politicians were calling for interim national government, meaning that they did not want the elections to hold, mostly because they figured they were sure to lose. Some analysts have charged that the call for interim national government was also clever cover for the secret desire for the military to come...
Lecture presented by Honourable Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC),Professor Maurice M. Iwu at the Senior Executive Course 31 of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, Wednesday,February 25,2009
Pray, if every result INEC declared is supposed to stand or upheld for peace to reign, why did the founding fathers of our constitution create election tribunals? Why didn’t the founding fathers simply provide that: “We hereby enact that for every election nullified, ‘Iwu Must Go’”? Why is the NBA or even NLC not calling for the firing of every judge or justice whose decision is overturned by a higher court? My opinion would have differed somewhat if the NBA is instead calling for the...
WE must bear in mind that INEC does not function in a vacuum of institutions but rather in the midst of many institutions. INEC does not have the powers to arrest electoral offenders, the police does. INEC does not have the national intelligence mandate to detect early conspiracies portending threats to our elections, the SSS and to some extent, the NIA does. INEC is not well-funded and that must stop forthwith because its functions are ever so central to our very survival as a democracy....
Therefore, the creation of an additional state in the South East will succeed only if it set aside considerations of intra-cultural affinity , flimsy stretches of differences from the whole or other sectarian arguments in favor of the more persuasive and sensible geopolitical parity theory, best represented by the compelling case that the new state will comprise of swats of territories from all the existing states of the South East. Reason: This is (again) the only...
In simple terms, Okija shrine was supposed to have been arrayed against the power of a dominant ruling party – the PDP, and Okija shrine prevailed. Amazing. So, where does PPA - as a party primed to win elections - come into play? To be sure, a proper reading of the Nigerian constitutional provisions on point must include a ‘but for’ test to determine whether Okija shrine qualified or not. That ‘but for’ test requires a clear finding that ‘but for’ the intervention of Okija...
Three of the major issues raised against El-Rufai (contempt of court, time-barred allocations and buying a government-owned house) are not amongst those recognizable as indictable misconducts under the constitution, unless it is finally determined, pursuant to due process by the proper forum, that the actions were in clear breach of the black letter laws on point. The fourth issue – failure to account for some odd 32 billion naira is not yet ripe until it has been referred to and found...
To be sure, President Yar’Adua courts danger of alienating the establishment ranks who remain unaccustomed to the President’s consistency on rule of law. In other words, taking the doctrine of rule of law from a mere policy slogan to an everyday reality requires mettle and can sometimes be unpopular and dicey, and as above examples indicate, it also takes focus and exceptional presidential temperament to stay the course. Yar’Adua seems to possess them all.
