Professor Attahiru Jega, the cross bearing Chairman of the gee gaw Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was programmed to fail if the sortie being lobbed in the public domain happened to be true. His appointment has continued to rage and the consequence of the rage and outrage is the polarization of opinion on Jega’s vaunted pedigree and his coming day of doom and reckoning. INEC, Jega’s captured colony is a graveyard of otherwise sun-clean integrity, honour and reputation. Its pathways are littered with no-go mines which not only maim but also shatter character into unrecognizable smithereens. Most of the old INEC warlords, lionized at inception for integrity, are now wounded lions quarantined alone in hidden mansions.
Professor Maurice Iwu (ewu) goat from Imo State, believed, like Jega, that he could create a more capacious space in our luckless universe for free and fair election. Like Iwu, Jega also believed that he has the wand to provide the finishing blow, through electoral probity against known destroyers of our social democracy. Election rigging which returned to respectability in the form of PDP bastardisation of our vote during Iwu’s stewardship of INEC will now be challenged by Jega. This is Jega’s earthly woes!
Before the commencement of his electoral re-engineering that would usher in a concrete foundation of our democratic utopia, we need to confront Jega with questions bothering on moral dilemma. Rumours in the blogosphere are currently enmeshed in unflattering vocabularies and conversations are laden with shocking pronouncements. It is being touted that beneath the universal gloss of perfection halo heaped on Jega, there is a sinister hand of Iwu in his appointment as INEC chair. Mendacious-driven, noisy and irrepressible grapevine is overheated with toxic submission which suggests that Jega was a consultant to INEC and was Iwu’s boss as former ASSU president. To stretch the imagination further, it is being said that Iwu recommended Jega to Jonathan. Now a small play on words will do here. We can now “deploy language embellished with pleasurable accessories”, to paraphrase Aristotle.
So a ‘wuruwuru’ Iwu offered a ‘jagajaga’ Jega as a parting gift for a ‘jagajaga’ election. Welcome to a nation of future happy chaos!
The discovery of a secret transition of mantle between the two men was like a knife to my sense of integrity. Ever since this volcanic broke into the public domain, helpless Nigerians have been encouraged to yammer futilely at the tops of their voices. There is yet no rebuttal from Jega’s INEC colony to redeem pundits, columnists and Internet warriors from warpath and malicious interpretations. This allegation has blunt Jega’s authority, impartiality, independence, tainting him with the charge that he is the very antithesis of probity, integrity, courage, magnanimity and even democratic.
Further, Nigerians is a nation where banality is snorted like cocaine on a daily basis. The people’s inaction to defy the irrationality of their leaders has encouraged political insensitivity and disrespect for the deep yearning of the masses. There should be a Ministry of Banality in Abuja headed appropriately by an illiterate lecher with irrational impulse, preposterous thinking faculty and distortive vision.
What man of sound impulse, sound thinking faculty and clear vision will give Jega N87.721 billion to victimize Nigerians again as a nation of election riggers? Righteousness and justice are the foundation of my throne, says the Lord Almighty. Pray what is right and just in handing Jega such huge sum when the election is already won by Jonathan? Contrary to a thread of popular but poor politics, giving huge money to INEC alone cannot guarantee free and fair election. In the nether world of Nigeria’s ignoble and cash-laden democracy, caprice and ignorance play far more elevated roles than their rational counterparts in logic and enlightenment. As we walk the fragile rim of bleak peril, yet, our real leaders refuse to sound the alarm but prefer to await the future commencement of Machiavellian mayhem, confrontations, legal fights, primordial violence which are sure auguries of our political harvest, come 2011.
Then again, Jega’s uncritical commitment to accede to all the no-go mines rejected by Mallam Nuhu Ribadu points seriously to his intellectual bankruptcy. When the former chairman of EFCC was offered the chairmanship of INEC, her gave stringent conditions to Jonathan, part of which was his request for the autonomy of INEC. Ribadu demanded to be given full powers to appoint Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC) that will assist him, arguing that the success and failure of INEC rest on his shoulders.
Promptly, the intellectually bankrupted Jonathan considered Ribadu’s demand outrageous and thus ceded the chairmanship to a willing tool in the mould of Jega who has to work with imposed REC thus paving the way for the re-enactment of the tragically known outcome of he who pays the piper dictates the tunes. Jega is a Jonathan proxy, a role that is quite an anathema to his old chivalrous spirit. His fire-spitting, radical and stubborn streaks have all mellowed. As Jonathan’s servant, he has to do the ugly bidding of his Abuja master. There is no thanks to the hidden hands of Iwu (ewu) who succeeded in handing us a jagajaga gift that may yet give us a jagajaga election. This may ultimately trundle us all into the inferno of a waiting hellhole.
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S C A R Y!!!