By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Former Senate President Ken Nnamani abused his office to lobby for an inconclusive election in 2007 so he could become an unelected President, former Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Maurice Iwu, has alleged.
Ken Nnamani
Seven years after the vote, Iwu made the startling disclosure when he opened up to TheNiche on the contentious polls which led to the election of the late Umaru Yar’Adua as President and Goodluck Jonathan his Deputy.
Jonathan became President after the death of Yar’Adua in 2010, served out the joint ticket, and then won the ballot in his own right in May 2011.
Iwu spoke in an exclusive interview with TheNiche against the backdrop of Jonathan’s recent claim that the result of the 2007 election embarrassed him. He took a swipe at Nigerian politicians, describing them as rotten.
Jonathan had disclosed in Abuja while receiving the report of the National Stakeholders Forum on Electoral Reform led by Nnamani that his commitment to credible elections was borne out of the need to improve on what he described as the flawed 2007 elections.
Said he: “Each time one travelled abroad, people asked all kinds of questions that even got one angry. That was when I promised myself that if I have an opportunity to oversee elections in Nigeria, no other president or vice president should suffer that can kind of harassment by the international community.
“That is why the 2011 elections, even though I was a candidate, I said nobody should manipulate election for me. That my ambition and the fate of the country are two different things, the interest of the nation is much more superior to any other ambition and I kept faith with that.
“At least at the end of that election, it was accepted by observers locally and internationally. And I promise that 2015 elections will be better.”
The recommendations of the Forum included the establishment of an electoral offences commission, adequate funding of the INEC and support for constitutional/electoral reform proposals, compliance to internal democracy and campaign finance regulation ahead of the 2015 elections, and respect for the rule of law by political parties.
Jonathan said all these are in tandem with government’s plans and policies.
But while Iwu refused to join issues with Jonathan, insisting the president has a right to be embarrassed, he took very strong exception to Nnamani, whom he accused of lobbying for inconclusive elections in 2007, which would have constitutionally made him an unelected President.
“I reserve my comment on what the President said for very many reasons. One is that no matter how rascally your child is, you don’t disown him.
“I cannot disown the fact that Jonathan and Yar’Adua were products of the elections that we conducted in 2007 and that we believe that they won the election. Whether they are embarrassed or ashamed is left for them,” Iwu stated.
“But the one that amused me was former Senate President Ken Nnamani who presented the report of the supposed stakeholders’ forum.
“Am I not a stakeholder? Nobody consulted me to ask what happened during the election and then use that as premise for making recommendations. Recommendations were made on a totally empty and unsubstantiated premise.”
He said Nnamani was one of those who marred the 2007 polls.
“Nnamani was the same person who abused his office when he was Senate President and held INEC staff to ransom at the CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) headquarters in Enugu.
“He called policemen and thugs who obeyed him and refused that they should move electoral materials from Enugu CBN headquarters for distribution.
“When we finally, with the help of the then President, Olusegun Obasanjo, got the authorities to force him to allow us move the materials, the same man turned around to say there was delay in the distribution of materials when he caused it.
“Second, and much more important, Nnamani was one of those who were mounting pressure on me that I should not declare the result of the 2007 presidential election, that I should make it inconclusive.
“If not for counter lobby, I thought that was the general opinion of everybody but then when you realise what happened in 1993 during the (Moshood) Abiola election when a lot of Igbo people were massacred for something they had nothing to do with, I couldn’t allow such a thing to happen.
“I know that if I had done that, it would have pleased a lot of people, including Ken Nnamani, so that he would become an unelected President regardless of what would happen to the country.”
Iwu said Nnamani and others are still angry with him because they failed to achieve their goal of not wanting the election to hold.
He accused Nnamani, Chairman of Ken Nnamani Centre for Leadership and Development, of being “a paid agent of some foreign bodies” and urged Nigerians to ask him “who is paying for the so-called leadership centres they are having.”
Rather than blame the INEC for contentious elections, Iwu said Nigerians should hold political parties and politicians responsible.
“The problem is with the political parties. You cannot give what you don’t have. There is no internal democracy in all the parties.
“If you now have your selection process for candidates not based on popular mandate, it then means that whoever you elect subsequently is unpopular. He comes there with a handicap because he didn’t come through popular will.”
Iwu insisted that no amount of electoral reform can bring change until the political elite decide to reform themselves.
“The political elite are so bent on holding all of us to ransom. They are so bent on making sure that Nigeria doesn’t work. They are so bent on making sure that the will of the people is never realised.
“It is a cabal. They are into a bubble of their own. Nigerian politicians are rotten. They are just rotten. I am not saying some of them are rotten. I am saying Nigerian politicians are rotten.”