Implement Uwais Report Or Let Us March....

RETIRED JUSTICE MOHAMMED LAWAL UWAIS

‘Mr. President felt sad that our own party PDP couldn’t conduct primaries in Anambra State. We are quite sad because we believe that PDP, being the ruling party, should lead by example.’- President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua at Anambra State Forum on Thursday November 12, 2009.

‘If we make the mistake of contesting the next election under the rules to which the people have never given assent, you are lost even before the first vote is cast. Those rules and the operators of those rules especially its head, Professor Maurice Iwu must be changed…Let us march!”- Professor Wole Soyinka, at the 1st anniversary of Governor Adams Oshiohmole on Thursday November 12, 2009.

The Conference of Nigeria Political Parties {CNPP} for the umpteenth time has called on President Umaru Musa Yar ‘Adua to listen to the war cry for free and fair elections and implement the Uwais Electoral Reform Committee Report. Uwais Report is an article of faith and sacrosanct in any genuine move to construct a truly independent Electoral Commission and consequently the conduct of free and fair election. Absence of free and fair election has tainted Nigeria’s image abroad and the reversal is definitely one of the vital tools to halt Nigeria’s dangerous slide to a failed state.

The drum of battle for our votes is booming from all axes of Nigeria’s political landscape. CNPP rates it providential that in the same week and post 2007 sham elections the galaxy of discussion across the country centered on one dominant issue – Electoral Reform and the Uwais Report as a reference point.

President Yar’Adua was at Anambra State Forum in Abuja, clinging tenaciously to his placebo option, which in other word rejects the Uwais Report, hoping that only good intention will restore our vanishing democracy, promising that the Anambra State February 2010 governorship election will be free and fair, even with Professor Maurice Iwu presiding. Ironically, he was at the same time bemoaning the inability of his party, the PDP to conduct Anambra State governorship primary successfully.

The Senate was at Enugu almost in the week busy rationalizing the sham 2007 elections, shielding their benefactor, Professor Maurice Iwu and confused with what to do with the granite recommendations of the Uwais Report. Meanwhile, Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka was at Benin declaring the battle for our votes, the great march for restoration of democracy and clarion call for the implementation of the Uwais Report. Soyinka sounded a note of warning to Nigerians that if we were not ready to defend our votes, we should desist from naively contesting the next election under anti-democratic rules to which the people have never given assent. This simply means if you cannot march and defend your vote, boycott the elections.

As if in anticipation that the Uwias Report might not be implemented after all the agitation, Senator Ken Nnamani called for Mandate Protection, underscoring the imperative of the battle for our votes. The leader of Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reform {CODER}, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu stridently reaffirmed his commitment to the implementation of the Uwais Report.

‘The voice of the people is the voice of God’, goes the old saying; accordingly if President Yar‘Adua wants credible 2011 elections, he should fully implement the Uwais Report. This could be done by using the over 800 out of 990 members of the State Houses of Assembly across the country, 250 out of 360 members of the Federal House of Representatives, 80 Senators out of 109 and 28 Governors out of 36, bequeathed to the PDP, to amend the relevant sections of the Constitution, 2006 Electoral Act and extant laws. Good intentions alone cannot ensure credible elections either in 2010 Anambra State or 2011 general elections.

It is our considered view that the critical stage for Genuine Electoral Reform or the Battle for Our Votes has been set; the two options had been defined clearly at Benin, Enugu and Abuja, consigning the placebo option of President Yar’Adua and his minions to the dust-bin of irrelevance. There is time for genuine Electoral Reform, only if PDP purges itself of the phobia of free and fair elections and treats Electoral Reform as a family issue in their tradition.

The critical phase of the survival of our vanishing democracy has not just arrived; but is on cliffhanger. The die is cast, as not many Nigerians have confidence any longer in President Yar‘Adua’s promise on Electoral Reform. This is because he reneged on his pledge for genuine Electoral Reform by out rightly rejecting the core recommendations of the Uwais Electoral Reform Committee’s Report, in his seven Electoral Bills submitted to the National Assembly.

A cursory glance at the faces at the Anambra Forum showed clearly that the audience took with a pinch of salt President Yar’adua’s statement that, ‘We must make sure that the result of 2010 election, the one coming up in Anambra State, must be credible and can stand any test, because if the Anambra election is not done properly, people will even discredit the 2011 election even before the elections are conducted.’

Nigerians need to be reassured; for once beaten, twice shy. President Yar ‘Adua did well to express sadness over the failure of his party, PDP to conduct a successful governorship primary. It negatively eroded the confidence of Anambra State indigenes and Nigerians in general and casts doubt on the credibility of the 2010 Anambra State, especially when the Vice President, Jonathan Goodluck who represented the president had retracted his condemnation of the PDP executive. The retraction clearly diminishes the political will to purge a party executive that instead of conducting credible governorship primary, allegedly engaged in extortion and corrupt practices.

This is the time for the president to recover lost ground, redeem his image, implement the Uwais Report and make history. Failure to do so will regrettably leave Nigerians with a chaotic, anarchic and violence-prone 2011 election.

This is an alarm already raised by the Director-General of State Security Service, Mr. Afakiriya Gadzama.  One cannot accuse the Director-General of SSS of partisanship but the regime should conduct a careful analysis, for he knows the political temperature of the country more than many of us.

That is why it is ironic that the same SSS today is questioning patriots like Engineer Buba Galadima for re-echoing the quotable quote: ‘Those who make peaceful change impossible, wittingly or unwittingly make violent change inevitable.’

Osita Okechukwu is the National Publicity Secretary of CNPP.