The warning is potent and unequivocal. Some senators belonging to the All Progressives Congress (APC) on February 26 cried out that the hierarchy of the ruling party under President Goodluck Jonathan planned within a week to oust Professor Attahiru Jega as the umpire of the postponed presidential and other polls.
Whatever the merit of the alarm, we want to sound it loud and clear that all those who contemplate Jega’s ouster are not only cowards but weak-minded subverts of our law. They are courting disaster for this democracy, a system that now stands frail from ceaseless pounding of lawlessness from the bigwigs of the president’s party and their peevish cohorts.
They mouth the rule of law in one breath, and in the other they act as dedicated gangsters who now see Nigeria as their fiefdoms of avarice and rapine. The APC senators’ warnings may have been dismissed as partisan ranting, but they have not spoken out of a vacuum. Henchmen of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) have not had flattering words for the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). They have accused him of holding meetings he is not on record to have held. They have accused him of cohabiting with northern hegemonists without evidence. They have also tried to tar him with partisan prejudice by saying he meets with elements of the opposition APC, also without proof.
The president has openly shown displeasure with Prof. Jega over his disagreement with him over whether the postponed elections should have held. In the last presidential chat, he let everyone hear that he had the powers to remove Jega, although the media weighed in on words to the effect that he had no intention to eject the electoral umpire. The point though is that his intention is not material to the law. He has no powers of any arbitrary sort to remove Professor Jega as the arbiter of the polls now scheduled for March 28 and April 11, 2015.
The APC senators, led by Senator George Akume, noted that the cynical strategy to remove Jega is the well-worn path of sending him on a terminal leave. They know that if they do that, they can settle on a pliant figure to conduct the polls and do their bidding in rigging the polls in their favour.
Two fundamental things are wrong with this fiendish design. One, it is against the law. The president has no powers under the law to remove the INEC chief without the support of two-thirds majority in the senate. The president is probably aware of this, and that accounts for the alleged subterfuge of going through the route of an epistolary brigandage. They are alleged to be plotting to ask the head of service to write Prof. Jega to proceed on a terminal leave. The INEC chief has said his term of office does not end until late June this year. So why not ask the man to complete his duty to his fatherland? But because of fear of the outcome of the elections, some desperadoes in the inner sanctum of the president, with his apparent backing, have decided to ratchet up the tension in the country. As the APC leaders quoted from the memo of the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation dated 11th August 2010, “I am to further inform you that paragraph 1 of the Circular clarified that the content of the Circular is only applicable to core officers who run the civil service to retirement at thirty-five (35) years of service or sixty years of age and not for a definite tenure as is the case under reference.”
Prof. Jega is not a core officer of the civil service but he was appointed for definite tenure. He does not fall into the bracket of those who can be slammed with an indefinite leave prior to leaving office.
Two, even if the INEC chief falls into that bracket, it reeks of indecency for the presidency to plot his ouster knowing full well that every right-thinking person will believe it is done out of spite and fear. It therefore lacks commonsense to contemplate Jega’s ouster under whatever guise.
The Jonathan administration was unhappy with the press statement from the INEC chief when he attributed the election postponement to the failure of the service chiefs to guarantee security, especially in the northeast because of the rampaging presence of the Boko Haram sect. The service chiefs have come under vehement hammer over what many see as the undue militarisation and corruption of the top tier of the military. The same military has been accused of lack of spunk and discipline in mowing down the vicious sect in the northeast. Gains have been recorded in the past weeks, and much of it has been attributed to the skill and ferocity of the neighbouring countries, especially Chad Republic. The president, in ceremonial combat fatigue, visited the reclaimed territories while it is still not clear how much our military contributed to the good news.
Yet, the same military is now being urged by Jonathan loyalists to conduct the polls, even though the Court of Appeal has said it is against the law, and only in emergencies can soldiers play a role in the civil society.
We must draw the nation’s attention to a group that operates under the amorphous name Southern Nigerian People’s Assembly. Some of the members include former Federal Commissioner of Information Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, former Governor of Anambra State, Chukwuemeka Ezeife, a member of a Yoruba group called Afenifere, Femi Okurounmu and former information minister Walter Ofonagoro. This group that lacks wisdom or any discernible patriotic zeal has called for Jega’s ouster, and the nation should beware of them.
The president cannot claim ignorance of the bombardment of advertorials in the media from his known loyalists calling for the replacement of Professor Jega. If the president cannot restrain them, it is because he is in sync with them. That is dangerous. The nation is fragile enough as it is, and we do not want the president to take the tension up by any notch.
Optimists have asserted that Nigeria is familiar with crises of this sort and we, somehow, finagle our way into peace. That is ominous optimism. The first and second republics, the June 12 crisis, and other crises have never been resolved. We went through patchworks only to return to the sanguinary moment we experienced before. Bloodshed and systemic disjuncture often tore down the society. Even though Nigeria has managed to survive, it is not always a guarantee that the past survival will determine the next one. It could be the disaster next looming. That is why the best path is law and decency. Following a path of ousting Jega negates this spirit and tempts anarchy.
