Jega, Olurode, Akeju; A Tripod Of Tyranny

 
If democracy were a throne, the electoral process would be the crowning rites. It would be powered by an unfettered force of the ballot. The managers of the electoral process would be distinct in their sparkling whiteness. They would be distant from the lepers’ colony. So that every time the process proclaims results, winners and losers would go in peace. More importantly, the voters would be satisfied.

 Beyond that, they would be climbing the stirs of knowledge about their polity. This season, they would regret voting one candidate into office. Next season, they would vote better. This is the heart of democracy. The kernel of electoral process, which enshrines the will of the people who vote above the preferences of cliques which lord.

When this is not the case, a virus must have infected the system. A reversal  of the norm is enthroned. Power is taken off the hands of the people and the projections of their collective intelligence is breached. Then, instead of elections, we have selection. Instead of democracy, we have tyranny. The tyranny of power-cliques who exhibit affectations to normalcy but are in reality enthroning disorder.

The game INEC is playing in Osun State is not baffling. In fact it is familiar in all its perspectives. These are the deft moves which signal institutional bias ahead of elections in Nigeria. Many times, it is a precussor to violence, chaos and vengeful rejection of INEC’s results.

The insistence of the opposition on the removal of Madam Ayoka Adebayo as INEC REC in Ekiti fell on deaf ears, until blood was spilled, INEC disgraced and the country roundly embarrassed. In Lagos State, more than one commissioners of police were redeployed ahead of elections about three seasons ago in the effort to enforce fairness.

INEC in the instance of Ambassador Akeju, was prepared to spend huge legal fees to force Akeju’s retention in Osun. It begins to look like an irregular game where the rules of engagement are not fixed. The goalposts are in perpetual fluidity, but a grand pretence rules the exterior, making believe that there is a trustworthy stasis in the structures and the procedure. That if you took a shot, the post would not dodge the ball.

INEC gave the game away in its tenacity for Akeju’s Osun REC seat. Justice Babs Kuewumi’s court was in the process of adjudicating, but INEC took off to the Appeal court to secure a stay of execution of the lower court’s interlocutory order. While that appeal was still pending, INEC ran back to Kuewumi to secure yet another stay of proceedings.

This was a very busy INEC worming through the narrow straits of the justice system as if it was its primary duty. Rendering Kuewumi’s initial grants prostrate, while seeking the appeal court’s favour to retain a man who was said to be the very thing INEC must sweat not to be. An unfair umpire.

In the process of having its way, INEC spent a hefty sum in legal and related fees. It is the same INEC where Professor Attahiru Jega cries to us inconsolably that he suffers paucity of funds, otherwise, we would have marveled at the profuse pour of sweat off his chicken’s body. But he regrets we would not know because of the several feathers.

Beyond the cost, Jega has a curious way of dropping words as if they do not matter or that we do not have the ability, may be, capacity to break his thoughts down and retain them. Let us quote Jega on the 17th of October, 2012 in Akure, Ondo State. The labour party had raised alarm over professor Lai Olurode’s alleged partisanship. Jega would have none of it.

        “Olurode is one of the best brains in Nigeria and any attempt to smear his name would be met with strong resistance…we do not take any allegations as spurious immediately it is made.We investigate: Your allegation is spurious.No INEC member is a member of any political party” 

First, a little after this statement, Jega must be thanking God he was a Nigerian, so he could talk so idly and get away with it. It is how we play God at the peak of our human frailties which we misconstrue as solidity of power. Even as temporal as the best of our realities are. What surveillance system did Jega install to confirm and speak so assuredly that “no member of INEC was a member of any political party”. How would he know? 

INEC members are in thousands. Umaru Mutallab must be shaking his head at Jega’s seeming naivety. Mutallab’s son turned into “underwear bomber” in a twinkle. Not his staff, his son. In any case, do they need to be members of political parties to commit themselves to extra-official errands for pecuniary pursuits? 

How does the quality of Olurode’s brains feature in jega’s defence of an allegation of bias. Was the prof saying the best brains in Nigeria are immune to prejudice? In the entire tirade mounted as defence, Jega in his sincere moment would probably see the wide hollow in the words he dropped in Akure that day. 

They were meant to insult the politicians and dismiss them, but he was not thinking of the rest of us listening to him, taking him seriously. We who pay him and provide so bountifully for the politicians. Jega committed the sacrilege of mixing us up.

Now, has Jega carried out his investigations again on who Ambassador Rufus Oluwatoyin Akeju really is? Has he listened to the protest of the opposition? Has he found the protest and allegations spurious? He did not say so in many words, but he must have concluded they were spurious or he would not have pursued the case like a typical election rigging litigation.

The scary portion of this unfolding event is that there is no dispute that Akeju was Tinubu’s Assistant. That he represented Tinubu at various events. That he left Tinubu’s table to join INEC. That there was an ultra-high probability that he would be an unfair umpire, because he would do his masters’ bidding. In this case, one of the said masters being Alhaji Rauf Aregbesola who is the incumbent in Osun and is seeking a second term. Is it not a scary proposition that INEC does not see any danger here?

Why is Jega bent on retaining Akeju in Osun inspite of his glaring ties to the APC sponsor and candidate? Is Jega promising the electorate that Akeju would be willing to spurn the dictates of the hands which feed him? Anyone who could vouch for the minds of thousands of members of his staff should find this easy to do. It is as if no INEC staff had ever been caught before.It is as if RECs had not wrecked elections in the past. Why does Jega want to travel this wrong road?

Why does he not take the honourable path instead? Redeploy the favorite of APC and save the day, even if Akeju merited the kind of sainthood which borders on treachery. It is not about removing the contention. It appears to be like replacing it.

But Alaba’s take in a matter between a twin should be minor. If there is no resident pointer, it should be tough for the stranger to identify a blind man’s grave. In this instance, the resident pointer would be the INEC official in charge of South-West. The self-effacing and humble Professor Lai Olurode. Now, Alhaji Lai Olurode hails from Iwo in the same Osun.In Olurode’s home town, it is very dangerous to switch babies between Oba and Osun Rivers. These issues transcend the obvious. 

The intrigues of elections are often buried in unspoken loyalties and hidden ties. They could be between judges and politicians. Between electoral body chieftains,  activists on sabatical and fellow faithfuls, with half a hue and half a shade away from Boko Haram. It could be just about anywhere in the sordid graffiti. You never really could fully tell.

We will definitely ask Attahiru Jega questions if his permutations go bad during or after this election. But Olurode is the one his soil would ask the greater question if the roof caves in again in Osun as it did before and a reluctant ground opened to claim that which it did not request. Olurode knows that if life ever goes awry on the elders’ watch, it is not because of anything but their unsavory conduct. Their poor character. A new-born babe’s head does not just bend, save the elders are not in place.

The key here is the ‘elders’. What elderly role has Olurode been playing over his own backyard? Whichever way this one goes: a credible and neutral umpire in Osun, that is not from the Island cash empire. One which leads to peaceful transition or retention. Or the other unspeakable one.

There would not be any rest day anymore for the pot used to cook a dog. Every time the pot is called, it gets its mention with the dog. Olurode himself had been severally accused of playing the ACN/APC card, but Nigeria is not a country where the smell of tyranny is enough.It always took blood, tons of human blood for us to identify and dislodge tyranny. Death on the streets before IBB would go. Thousands of graves before Abacha would go. What would it take before Akeju is replaced. Osun is really tired of singing dirges on tiny little graves, the epitaphs of stolen mandates.

By Akere Oniyide