SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Three Reasons You Should Be Worried about 2019 Elections

For the sake of his own stomach, the King of the jungle, lion, always find one infraction or the other to hang on impala to make food out of it. Farooq Kperogi is not a jungle professor even though he is narcissistic and embraces social Darwinism in his writings. Buttressing his doubt that the 2019 elections in Nigeria will be free and fair Farooq Kperogi asserted : 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. I underline the collective pronoun 'we' to emphasize Farooq's trick of incorporating his readers into his own gang of false witnesses to what happened during the APC governorship primaries in Lagos. Contrary to his assertion, neither Farooq nor any forum reader saw hired thugs in Lagos forcibly disenfranchising voters. What Farooq saw was a video clip of one Oluwabunmi Adetola who claimed to come from Ward E, Shomolu in Lagos complaining about thugs beating up people who wanted to vote for Governor Ambode. Oluwabunmi Adetola did not show his APC membership card that entitled her to vote in the APC Primaries and as Farooq ought to know, not all Ward E residents of Shomolu were entitled to vote in the APC Primaries. Since voters did not attach name-tag of the candidate they were going to vote for, the unbiased mind of Farooq should have asked how thugs could identify those who wanted to vote for Ambode against his APC opponent in the Primaries. This is just an internal APC party democracy. However, on Wednesday, 3 October 2018, Akinwunmi Ambode addressed a 'World Press Conference' in Lagos at which he said among other things : Dear Lagosian, APC is a great party and the interest of our beloved State must always supersede that of any person or group. It is in this regard that I wholeheartedly congratulate the winner of Lagos State APC Primaries, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu and urge all Lagosian to immediately support our party's gubernatorial candidate in the 2019 elections and work for the success of our dear party. www.saharareporters.com/2018/10/03/full-ambodes-post-primary-election-defeat-press-conference/ That is what is called party discipline and party supremacy.

Having assigned himself the role of a prosecutor and a judge in his own case, Farooq Kperogi submitted : The Independent National Electoral Commission deployed what I call *legerdemain* to rig the Osun State governorship election for the All Progressive Congress. …//… 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. The use of the word *legerdemain* is a clever ploy by Farooq to deceive and manipulate gullible readers into thinking that he is saying something very important beyond the understanding of ordinary people. When Nigerians read *legerdemain* their immediate reaction will be, this man, na book o. The simple meaning of *legerdemain* as applied by him would be : The Independent National Electoral Commission deployed … dexterous trick to rig election for All Progressive Congress. Which trick did INEC use to rig Osun State governorship election for APC? Farooq says the APC got INEC to declare the election "inconclusive."  

For those of us that are not suffering from Alzheimer or memory loss, we will remember that in the Anambra State gubernatorial election of 2013, Willie Obiano (APGA) won 174,710 votes while his nearest opponent Tony Nwoye (PDP) won 94, 956. Victory margin for Obiano was 79, 754. However, 113,113 votes were cancelled and since the number of votes cancelled exceeded that of victory margin, INEC declared the election inconclusive. In Imo State Gubernatorial election of 2015, Rochas Okorocha (APC) won   385,671 votes while Emeka Ihedioha (PDP) won 306,142 votes. Victory margin for Okorocha was 79,529 votes. Since victory margin was less than cancelled votes of 144,715, INEC declared the election inconclusive. Also in the gubernatorial election of Bayelsa State in 2015, Siriake Dickson (PDP) won 105,748 votes while his opponent, Timipre Sylva (APC) won 72,594 votes. Since the victory margin of 33,154 for Dickson was less than cancelled votes of 120,000, INEC declared the election inconclusive. All the afore-stated inconclusive elections happened when Jonathan was President and Professor Attahiru Jega was the Chairman of INEC. Now in 2018 Osun State gubernatorial election, Ademola Adeleke (PDP) won 254,698 votes against 254,345 for Gboyega Oyetola (APC). Since victory margin for Adeleke was 353 votes as against 3,498 cancelled votes, INEC declared the election inconclusive. If inconclusive elections between 2013 and 2015 were not tricks to rig election, why should it be *legerdemain* á la Farooq Kperogi in 2018? Yet, reports from several sources indicated that people defied downpour rain to vote in the Osun rerun elections. https://punchng.com/osun-rerun-drama-at-polling-units-as-voters-defy-heavy-rainfall

As for those who attempted to rig the rerun election, here are links. https://punchng.com/osun-rerun-police-arrest-pdp-house-of-reps-aspirant-15-others-for-inec-tags-possession/ 

https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/09/osun-re-run-police-arrests-16-over-illegal-possession-of-inec-tags-face-cap 

On his third reason why he thinks the 2019 elections in Nigeria will be rigged, Farooq Kperogi wrote : The current INEC is not the same INEC Professor Attahiru Jega headed. …//… The current INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, is known to me personally too. …//… 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. 

Psychologists and psychiatrists describe a schizotypal as a person who believes in things that most people in this world do not, such as having extrasensory powers and being able to read minds. Farooq Kperogi imagines himself as a well-connected person to anybody that matters, either in the government or private institutions in Nigeria. And the narcissistic blood running in his veins makes him fancy himself not only as more intelligent than all officials in private and government institutions in Nigeria but makes him demand attention, admiration, and obedience to him from them. That is why he declared that he has no confidence in the capacity of Professor Mahmood Yakubu to be fair in the 2019 presidential election and he is demanding that Professor Yakubu should prove him wrong by making APC lose that election. For non-suspecting, Professor Mahmood Yakubu's led INEC has conducted some bye-elections into the House of Reps and the Senate since 2016 and in which PDP or APGA won over the APC. Senator Isiaka Adeleke representing Osun West Senatorial District died early 2017 which compelled a bye-election to be held. It was through that bye-election that Ademola Adeleke, the brother of Isiaka Adeleke became a Senator in July 2017 after defeating his APC opponent Mudashiru Hussein. Adeleke (PDP) polled 97,280 votes against 66, 115 votes for Hussein (APC). When Ademola Adeleke under the platform of PDP won the bye-election in Osun West Senatorial District in July 2017 in spite of the fact that the government of the State was controlled by the APC, Farooq Kperogi did not see any electoral *legerdemain* rigging. Farooq Kperogi rates himself as Professor know-all and from that belief resorts to always treating others as anus that brings nothing but shit, forgetting, however, that a closed anus is a recipe for disaster.

S. Kadiri

    

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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 Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author 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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