candidacy of Muhammadu Buhari should end this week. The reason is
well-known to all. Buhari swore an oath on his INEC application that
his credentials are with the military. This turned out to be a lie.
The military has come out to deny that it has Buhari's credentials.
That means Buhari committed perjury instead of fulfilling INEC
requirements. For this reason, he must be disqualified from contesting
the presidential election.
The matter has been taken to court and the courts should decide the
matter this week. I am not a lawyer, but from my layman's perspective,
this is an open and shut case. Buhari lied willfully. As a former
military secretary of the Nigerian Army, he knew that the military
does not keep any credentials of its service-men. Nevertheless, he
lied on oath that his credentials are with the military. He must face
the penalty for this perjury. There can be debate about whether, and
for how long, he should go to jail. However, there can be no question
about his resultant ineligibility to contest: he must be disqualified.
To overlook this infraction is to succumb to Buhari's appraisal that
Nigeria is corrupt. If we are going to deal with corruption, we must
not fail to deal with the likes of Buhari, who are contemptuous of the
laws of the land. Buhari's false affidavit is corruption. The
disqualification of Buhari by the courts will be a testament to the
determination of the judiciary to show zero tolerance for corruption
in the coming new dispensation.
Some of us have watched APC make a song and dance about the
possibility of postponing the 2015 elections. The party brought out
all its big guns to tell us that the election cannot be postponed.
They insisted that if it is postponed all hell would break lose. Well,
the election has been postponed and nothing has happened. It has been
postponed and the APC can do nothing about it. It was postponed
according to the law.
Similarly, the heavens will not fall with the lawful disqualification
of Buhari. Of all those APC could present as its presidential
candidate, it chose a man without the appropriate credentials. APC has
nobody to blame but itself for this fiasco. It has forfeited its
chance of presenting a candidate for the 2015 presidential election.
The contest should now be between the remaining 13 presidential
candidates.Shikenan!
JEGA MUST GO IMMEDIATELY
The excuse used to force Attahiru Jega to postpone the elections is
the inability to provide effective security given the insurgency in
the North-East. However, there is little likelihood that the security
situation will improve within the next six weeks of the postponement.
So, strictly-speaking, security has nothing to do with the
postponement. One major reason for the postponement was to prevent
INEC from compromising the election.
INEC has long ceased to be a disinterested umpire in this election.
The evidence is now overwhelming that INEC is determined to bias the
election in favour of Muhammadu Buhari and the APC. This is evident in
INEC's determination to go ahead with the election in spite of the
fact that out of 68 million registered voters, over 20 million have
yet to receive their permanent voter's cards (PVCs).
It is remarkable that, in announcing the postponement, Jega
conveniently forgot to mention the nagging issue of the inadequacies
of INEC in providing voters with their PVCs. It is also remarkable
that Jega briefed the Council of State that INEC was ready to conduct
the elections. This was one big lie. You cannot be ready to conduct
elections when there is a cacophony of complaints, especially in the
South, that people are unable to claim their PVCs. Given the time it
took INEC to distribute 40 million PVCs, it could not have
realistically expected to be able to distribute the outstanding 20
million in just one week?
INEC rigmarole
What is even more sinister is INEC's willful determination to
disenfranchise select geopolitical regions which represent areas of
strength for Goodluck Jonathan. Credible Alternative Alliance, an
independent political interest organization led by former Kaduna State
governor, Balarabe Musa, observed in INEC activities: "a criminal
gross disparity of voter spread designed to tilt the election to a
pre-determined outcome."
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