Okotie And 2015 Politics: Let me lend my voice to the series of write-ups on the vexed subject of elections as it relates to party de-registration which has been running in this paper and other media channels for some time now. Nigeria’s problems keep getting worse in the hands of the people charged with the responsibility of ensuring the peace and prosperity of the nation. The numerous conundrums of Nigeria’s brand of politics always leave a deep scar in the heart of those who refuse to play by the rules laid down by the god-fathers; rules that stand only to justify their selfish ends. The resolve of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to skew the electoral process against new structures like the Rev. Chris Okotie-led Fresh Democratic Party, FRESH, has received enough coverage in the media, to warrant a definite response from the agency, but nothing has been heard, weeks to the 2015 elections. Despite Justice Gabriel Kolawole’s ruling, and INEC’s half-effort at appealing the verdict, which voided the party’s de-registration, the nation still awaits concrete actions even as Prof. Attahiru Jega, chairman of INEC recently blew the whistle signalling the commencement of campaigns towards the 2015 general elections, which has produced two candidates – Dr. Goodluck Jonathan (PDP) and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (APC). INEC’s attitude means two possible things: The agency could choose to honour the judgment deep into the campaign season, meaning the party should conduct hurried, haphazard and inordinately expensive campaigns; or it could opt to pointedly disregard the court’s ruling and stand-by the de-registration. Either way, the electoral agency already has a potentially explosive situation and conflict of interest on its hand, because sooner or later, the judicial system must be challenged to take action against the agency’s vicarious flouting of its pronouncements. Justice A. Adeniyi while delivering Hope Democratic Party, HDP’s victorious verdict, made reference to the refusal of INEC to obey the verdict on the same subject delivered earlier in FRESH’s favour by Justice Kolawole. Yet, the Commission still stands its ground. This is why the new Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, in the light of his recent comment on personal interests which conflicts with ruling especially in political cases, needs to act fast, to salvage this matter of utmost judicial urgency, because this soap-opera could stall the 2015 transition, if the party carries out its threat and eventually succeeds in getting the court to stop the coming elections based on the agency’s violation of its constitutional rights and the disregard of its victorious verdict. These repeated smorgasbord of miscarriages ignited the tinder box of a new paradigm of political representation, which the new parties represent. Yet it is an intensely populist position: New parties which seek to overthrow the decadent and expired elite, who created the enabling environment for the corruption-poverty-insecurity triad to spiral out of control, are being strangulated. The increasingly steeped political and economic slide which has been a harrowing experience for us highlights the systemic failures of government, which is another reason why politics should not be left in the hands of our politicians. Their spurious excuses for total disregard for the plight of the majority of our population cannot be hinged on anything else but the mismanagement of our extractive assets, and the result is this new wave of austerity measures; an unending protraction and downward spiral of the nation’s fortunes and image, despite the trillions of dollars oil income, which of course were embezzled over the last five decades. Nigeria has reached the tipping point, where small trends grow into a critical mass affecting everything from the marketplace to political opinion. When men like Rev. Okotie stepped onto the political rostrum in 2002, it was with a resolve to challenge the status quo with his paradigm shift philosophy which pledges to deviate from the graft, embezzlement and cronyism which is the mainstay of our ruling class. But the powers that be won’t have it, and with the many intrigues playing out on the political landscape, watchers of the unfolding events are wondering how Okotie will achieve this goal, seeing that INEC’s dilly-dally tactics may stop the Pastor from contesting in the forthcoming general elections. The responsibility to decide party existence is not the Senate’s or INEC’s, but the Nigerian people, to whom sovereignty under the constitution is vested; so INEC, in trying to endorse the stronger party’s hankering and willful destruction of the structures of the new rivals like FRESH with its machinery, seeks to exercise such sovereignty on our collective behalf. Even the Senate’s re-amendment of the voided electoral act, is a blunt tool applied to a complex and fine-grained issue; a protective clause that was injected by a ruling cabal trapped in the vortex of political insecurity, to stall opponents from making in-roads into the system. FRESH members are therefore right in taking a serious view of the unwarranted twist which this matter of urgency is taking. We are entitled to look upon INEC’s whole conduct over the last year since the verdict, which appears to aggravate the already exacerbated situation, rather than minimise its portended damage with suspicion. It affirms the case which FRESH and several observers have been canvassing that INEC never intended to obey the court order, despite entering a notice of appeal. But after 2015 elections have come and gone; believing of course that we survive the palpable atmosphere of the security challenges that pervade the country, “Nigerians may again simply return to their characteristic tedium which they are used to by now, and await another circle of four years of subsistence living before they have another sighting of aspirants”, according to a commentator. But must this always be the case? – Mudashiru wrote from Oyo State Original link Read More goo.gl/sDKTr0 (y) ✍comment ☏share
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 22:18:21 +0000
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