I agree that Farooqs columns are ultimately biased towards helping his boss and paymaster Atiku unseat Buhari as he alleges Mahmood Yakubu is biased towards helping A PC and Buhari retain power.
OAA
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-------- Original message --------From: Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>Date: 06/10/2018 22:00 (GMT+00:00)To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Three Reasons You Should Be Worriedabout 2019 Elections
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"Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?" (The Lotus-Eaters)
Everly once in a while his premonitions nightmares and fears, awaken premonitions , nightmares and fears in other people. The concerns that Professor Kperogi raises here are worthy of serious consideration. Prevention is better than cure, loonta , but what preventive measures are available?
In an earlier incarnation, with the same kind of verve, Farooq is possibly one of those who lived in the Galilee in Jesus' time under Roman colonisation and occupation and wondered,"What good can come out of Nazareth ?" Nazareth the old time fixation in the popular imagination of that day was a place and a state of affairs now replaced by a place and a state of affairs in some people's head where it suffers a continuous wideawake existence, is not enjoyed, it's like a permanent poison headache that simply does not go away, a permanent internal reality ringing in their heads and an external reality too, currently known as the APC, when it comes to some people's sense of personal or national despair – and that includes the Boko Haram people : They hope that their headache will be blown away on the 16th of February, next year.
But, "Man proposes God disposes"
"And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'."Still five months to go or to be pedantic and exact, the date with fate on 16 February 2019 is 132 days away, that's all of just over 16 weeks away and we know that it's just as they say, in Nigeria and in almost everywhere else, "a week is a long time in politics". So we read in Professor Ayo Olukotun's column "Why Nigeria stagnates at potentially great status" maybe rather prematurely, about the Economic Intelligence Unit "which predicted a narrow electoral victory for the Peoples Democratic Party, went on to say that regardless of which party wins the election, Nigeria's fortunes and economy are unlikely to improve, at least in the short term.".
So, if it doesn't make any difference who wins the next elections , what's the fuss about? If there is no difference between the APC and the PDP , at worst not even the possibility of preferring a "the lesser of two evils" , then why worry? Professor Kperogi would have been most eminently qualified to produce an opinion on that proposition, but for the fact that – and many readily agree that he is as biased as hell, on behalf of those who who pay him to produce opinion pages for Atiku Abubakar's so called "Daily Trust" On the dollar, dollar akbar, it's also written, " In God we Trust"
Of course, we shouldn't agree with him if he has rigging in mind , but in the given context, "rigging" and "defeat " are coterminous and could only mean the same thing when APC chairman Adams Oshiomhole says, "I think that for democracy to flourish, only those who can accept the pain of RIGGING, sorry defeat, should participate".
Very sharp and perceptive that Professor Kperogi could point this out, with a short lesson on Freud, but facing the reality of this instance what else could it mean - unless we want to see a Freudian slip in everything - and in the case of the suspicious-minded, in everything that the enemy or the opposition says. Just search anywhere. Seek and you shall find if you care to look hard enough. The world champion for suspicion was held by one Dostoevsky: "I became suspicious when I noticed her female genitalia and moustache", he said. Freudian slips everywhere. But dramatic irony, or the Freudian slip - in whatever language, even as a literary device should be the least of our worries – what is imminent almost everywhere in electoral Africa in Cameroon tomorrow and in some other places some time after tomorrow is the spectre of rigging, electoral fraud. The criminals are becoming more adept, more sophisticated , more efficient and more effective with the latest methods, from advantageously interfering with voter registration, voters cards, the purchasing of votes and voters to the actual voting and the rigging of the ballot counting machines. The presence or absence of the Freudian slip rightly, wrongly or wrongfully attributed to anybody is not the problem, The solution lays in its prevention and not in crying - post -election blues - over the split milk.
He could not have meant that those who are defeated because of rigging should accept the results, calmly. At least that was not Brother Buhari's understanding when he said that, "If what happened in 2011 (alleged rigging) should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood"
There is much to give us goose pimples in the words that conclude this article, concerning the New Electoral Commissioner : "Yakubu sees himself as an APC appointee who is beholden to the party. I have no confidence in his capacity to be fair in the 2019 presidential election " ( One of Prof Kperogi's nightmare headaches) But he hopes and wishes: "I hope he proves me wrong...I wish I could be more optimistic, but the danger signs are too glaring to ignore. "
There are many who prayed for Blessings on Professor Attahiru Jega, Nigeria's Electoral Commissioner for the 2015 elections. For not submitting to any of the pressures from the then powers of the Goodluck Joe's incumbency - and that partly accounts fro how Brother Buhari got to be elected President - the absence of the type of the NPN "magic"of 6th August 1983 which returned Shargari to power. Hopefully Professor Jega will assist the New Electoral Commissioner in the midwifery and safe delivery of the 2019 presidential elections , "without fear or favour".
Taking it easy with James Carter : From Conversin' With The Elders
On Saturday, 6 October 2018 06:37:56 UTC+2, Farooq A. Kperogi wrote:Saturday, October 6, 2018
Three Reasons You Should Be Worried about 2019 Elections
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
You don't need special prognostic powers to know that the 2019 elections will be fraught with frightening fraud. Here are three reasons why anyone who spares a thought for the future of democracy in Nigeria should be worried.
1. Nigerians feel oddly smug and empowered by the possession of their Permanent Voters Card (PVC). They think it's their bulwark against Buhari's continuing incompetence. I am sorry to be a party pooper, but the truth is that in Buhari's Nigeria, the PVC is becoming worthless, as we've seen in most of the elections conducted while Buhari is president, the latest being the Osun governorship election.
The Independent National Electoral Commission deployed what I call electoral legerdemain to rig the Osun State governorship election for the All Progressives Congress. Even APC chairman Adams Oshiomhole admitted in an instructive slip-up that the Osun election was rigged. "I think that for democracy to flourish, only those who can accept the pain of RIGGING, sorry defeat, should participate," he said during a press conference in the immediate aftermath of the Osun governorship election.
That was an archetypal Freudian slip that revealed the unconscious processes in his thought-processes. In other words, what his heart concealed, his mouth revealed. In his classic 1901 book titled The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Sigmund Freud said we often suppress untoward or socially unacceptable thoughts (such as admitting that one brazenly rigged an election), which then settle in our unconscious realm. However, in our unguarded moments, these suppressed thoughts occasionally bubble to the surface through involuntary verbal miscues. That was precisely what happened to Oshiomhole.
We also saw what happened during the APC governorship primaries in Lagos State. Hired thugs were instructed to forcibly disenfranchise anyone who won't vote for the candidate that eventually emerged "victorious." To give just one example, in a viral video, one Oluwabunmi Adetola from Ward E Shomolu in Lagos said thugs beat up people who wanted to vote for Governor Ambode.
"The council chairman was going around with thugs, with canes," she said to wild approval from the crowd."They were beating people up and down. Even some of our people are still in the hospital. They didn't allow anybody to vote. They just go [sic] somewhere with all their members and start [sic] voting. Anybody that is Ambode, that they know that you're doing Ambode, they'd not allow you to vote. So there is nothing like election in Lagos." A party thug also confessed in a viral video that their "leader" told them to never allow anyone who won't vote for Sanwo-Olu to vote. (Here is another widely circulated video of voters saying they were disallowed to vote because they supported Ambode).
So, obviously, APC has a new rulebook of rigging, and it goes like this: Can't win an election fair and square? No problem. Get INEC to declare the election "inconclusive." During the rescheduled election, hire police officers, soldiers, and thugs to intimidate voters, openly steal PVCs, and then brazenly rig. And, voila, you're a winner! The more electorally vulnerable APC is, the more vicious these agencies will be in their partisanship and strong-arm tactics.
If that doesn't work, hire thugs to screen voters who will allow only those who will vote for you to be at the polling station.
Or, as happened in Kano, just manufacture arbitrary but fantastical figures from nowhere and pass them off as the number of votes your preferred candidate won. Because APC has gotten away with these newfangled rigging strategies, they will perfect and replicate them in 2019. Watch out.
2. All indications show that Buhari would lose the 2019 election if it's free and fair because he is almost back to his provincial pre-2015 electoral map. From recent election results in southwest Nigeria, one of the voting blocs that gave him victory in 2015, it's obvious that Buhari won't win the region in 2019. Northern Christians who voted for him for the first time in 2015 (he won the predominantly Christian Benue and Plateau states, for example) won't vote for him in 2019 for obvious reasons.
Of course, southeast and southern minority voters whom Buhari injudiciously called people who gave him only "5 percent" of their votes won't vote for him. In other words, Buhari's electoral map has shrunk to what it used to be before 2015.
Here is why this matters. Buhari never believed he lost the 2003, 2007, and 2011 presidential elections even though he never campaigned outside the north and was voted for mostly by northern Muslims whose votes alone are not sufficient to make him—or anyone—president, as the 2015 presidential election clearly demonstrated. (In spite of his 2015 makeover, which won him new voters in the southwest and in the Christian north, he defeated Goodluck Jonathan by fewer than 3 million votes).
A man who believed he was "rigged out" even when he never ran a national campaign and was popular only within his primordial constituency won't give up power when he loses an election as an incumbent. But it isn't just that Buhari might not hand over power even if he is defeated; he might seek to be president for life if he manages to survive a second term. It is apparent that Buhari just loves power not because of what he can do with it to improve the lot of the people who elected him, but for the perks and attention it confers on him. He can't imagine life outside it.
3. The current INEC is not the same INEC Professor Attahiru Jega headed. Like all human beings, Jega isn't perfect, but anyone who knows him will admit that he is a scrupulously fair-minded person whose singular obsession is always to make a mark in anything he does. When I congratulated him in 2010 upon his appointment as INEC chairman, he said, "You should rather commiserate with me." He said that because he had anxieties about the legacies he would leave at INEC, about public perceptions of his fairness, etc.
He requested me—and everyone that was close to him—to help him with suggestions on how to restore integrity in the electoral process. It wasn't that he didn't have ideas of his own; he wanted more ideas. He even offered me a job at INEC, which I couldn't take, and which sort of strained our relationship a little bit. I share all this to let the reader know that Jega was genuinely invested in a free and transparent electoral process because he was conscious of his pedigree and desirous to leave a legacy. I think even his worst critics would concede that he is far and away the best electoral chief Nigeria has ever had.
The current INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, is known to me personally, too. He is one of the most brilliant scholars anyone can ever wish to meet. His razor-sharp intellect is outmatched only by his piercing wit. Nevertheless, he is no Jega. He isn't encumbered by the sort of self-imposed moral burden that drove Jega to reform INEC and to remain above the fray. Yakubu sees himself as an APC appointee who is beholden to the party. I have no confidence in his capacity to be fair in the 2019 presidential election. I hope he proves me wrong.
I wish I could be more optimistic, but the danger signs are too glaring to ignore.Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Associate ProfessorJournalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogAuthor of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
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Saturday, October 6, 2018
Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Three Reasons You Should Be Worriedabout 2019 Elections
Is there an Olympian journalism? All journalists are biased.
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