Why Mahmood Yakubu should not conduct March 18 elections — Keshi

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Why Mahmood Yakubu should not conduct March 18 elections — Keshi

From all indications, Nigerians are approaching the Gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly elections earlier scheduled to take place today, with mixed feelings.

The election has been postponed to March 18th and, many aren’t sure of what to expect having had their hopes raised and then dashed by the electoral umpire- Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the February 25th election.

INEC has so far been widely condemned for its inability to conduct free, fair and credible Presidential and National Assembly election. It lost the trust of the people due to widespread infractions that took place during the election in addition to its failed promise to transmit results electronically from polling units. For these reasons many concluded it was best if the INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu steps down for someone else to preside over the forthcoming election; his promise of an improvement in the gubernatorial election notwithstanding.

One of the many grouses against Yakubu is that, more than a week after the February 25th election, uploading of results on INEC portal was yet to be completed even after he hastily declared APC candidate president-elect.

On that note, former Nigerian diplomat, Ambassador Joe Keshi, also thought Yakubu didn’t have the temerity to oversee the March 18th election when he has not concluded that of February 25th.

“I don’t think he should be talking about the next election; if he has any honour, he should resign and let some other fellow complete the process.

“There’s a particular line in President Obasanjo’s letter, ‘Mahmood, this is an opportunity for you to redeem your reputation’; for me, it was a heavily loaded statement. He was told from day one to slow down, check some of these things. But no, he continued with full speed, announced the results and days later he admitted that a number of things went wrong. I don’t see why you want to rush to any election again.”

Rather than rushing through another election and making same mistakes, Amb. Keshi advised that since the presidential election has ended, it’s better to “calm down, get all the systems in place, change staff or remove those who committed some infractions, then, you can organise the Gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly election. So that at least everyone can be satisfied that one went well as a credible election.”

Amb Keshi, who spoke during an interview on Arise TV early in the week, insisted that Mahmood could have waited for a while before declaring a winner, adding that he would have first apologised to Nigerians and explained what was happening.

”He would have tarried a while and investigate what was happening; that would have given credibility to the process.”

Speaking about the length of time it took to announce the results, he said, “I’m aware of the fact that the leaders of the world who were here as observers, were urging him to slow down; they were actually trying to pressurise him to investigate some of the allegations in order to give credibility to the process. He rushed through the process and now he’s telling us that a lot of things went wrong; it doesn’t make sense.

“Now we are about to hand over the election to the Supreme Court. What is so sad is that even those celebrating are saying, go to court; you begin to wonder what do they have? Now they are promising us that they are going to fix it, they should have fixed it before announcing the results.”

Keshi, who served as ambassador to many countries of the world including the United States, further commended the PDP and LP for going to court to seek redress. But to some elders who are urging the two aggrieved parties to move on for peace to reign, he said, “It’s nice to remember that those who are not prepared for peaceful change are not working for peace because there are enough people who are aggrieved about the outcome of the election. This is a question of justice, fairness. Everybody should be committed to peace but stop telling people to accept defeat, go home and rest. So, let those who are aggrieved go to court.”

Those celebrating, asking aggrieved parties to go court according to him, “put pressures on the judiciary because right now, I’m not too sure how many people will tell you that they have confidence in the Supreme Court.

“So, for those shouting go to court, what is in that court that they have prepared that they are asking everybody to go to? Someone wrote recently that if somebody is caught stealing and he says go to the police; know that his brother is a member of the police. Let’s calm down and be careful with the narratives we are pushing. Elections have been decided by INEC and INEC itself has admitted that things didn’t go well; logistics, officials and everything went wrong but that they’ll fix it. This was what INEC should have done earlier rather than rushing the process.”

The former diplomat however regretted that, the election which every Nigerian thought would be a game changer, will end up with the Supreme Court deciding who will be Nigeria’s next president. INEC Chairman he insisted, chose to rush things; gave out certificate of return negating even the law of 25% threshold in FCT. Now in the eyes of the international community, our election is flawed. The international press have also been making the most of their spaces to ridicule Nigeria. “That’s the reality and that’s why it’s so painful. He should have tarried a while and do the right thing. Do you know the number of observers and world leaders that came to this country? They came to this country not just to observe the election but to help give credibility to the Nigerian state at the end. “Regrettably, we failed everybody. You need to be at some of these meetings to hear what they were saying. They were openly expressing here in Hilton their disappointment with the whole process. It’s not whether some people lost, or some people won, at the end of the day it is Nigeria’s image and Nigeria as a country that lost. So, if the Supreme Court decides otherwise, good, that’s the law of the land but it will go down in history that this election, was flawed. Everybody is saying the same thing. Nobody from the international community has said anything different.”

While maintaining that “Once the process was flawed, you cannot say that the election was not flawed”, he said “As everybody is saying go to court, I hope the Supreme Court will do the right thing.”

He appealed to the judges of the Supreme Court for their own sake, for goodness sake, to allow camera into the court room for the first time so that Nigerians can follow the case itself. This is so that at the end, Nigerians will probably be satisfied that they followed the trial and listened to all the evidence.

Asked if he is skeptical that the Courts will not do justice in the presidential election matters, he said, “No, I’m not skeptical. The average Nigerian on the streets is skeptical, not Joe Keshi. For me, I’m hoping that the Supreme Court will do the right thing and for their own sake, considering what everybody is saying about the court today, let them open up and allow cameras into the court room. It will remove whatever doubts Nigerians have. Supreme Court is the last hope for all of us. Since 1999, every election has been decided on technicalities; so, our hope is that they will decide on the facts and the law in this case.”

One of the low points of the February 25th election was security personnel’s alleged involvement in electoral fraud. In some instances, they watched while thugs unleashed violence against voters. To that, Ambassador Keshi said “The tragedy of the Nigerian police is that it does not understand what they’re expected to do. They are actually becoming part and parcel of people committing crime. “Instead of disputing what the police or DSS did or failed to do, we should be thinking of the solution.” He suggested that government should deprive everybody of police protection. He gave an instance with governors who were going around on election day committing one crime or the other, while members of the Nigerian police attached to them cleared way for them. They watched people snatch ballot boxes, people threatening to kill, hid in rooms thumb printing, etc. “They watched all that not even knowing that they were accessory or witnesses to crime.”

“Every institution of state continues to screw up the Nigerian people and it’s unfortunate because sometimes, you don’t know which institution to trust. We are hoping that Supreme Court will redeem everybody’s image. There are so many big men going about with police escort committing crime; reduce them. Let’s stop commercialising the police in this country; the police was set up to fight crime and for the protection of the people,” He stated.