INEC, APC and Democracy 

INEC, APC and Democracy 

Saturday letter3

For a federal government unit headed by a professor, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) lacks finesse and sophistication in its bid to convince anyone it is playing fair and square on the political scene. When it was obvious that Northern Nigerians were charting out a fresh political course for themselves defined by the emerging PDP-controlled states that can be traced along an arc on the northern stretch of the map of Nigeria running west to east from Sokoto through Kano, Bauchi, to Adamawa and then following an easterly course through Taraba that curves inward to Plateau and then slightly southward to Benue State, someone high up in the corridors of power remembered that certain “disloyal” APC stalwarts who defected to the PDP must be “punished” like Bukola Saraki and not be allowed to control any “political dynasty.”

This overriding desire, more than anything else, was the reason INEC truncated genuine polling results at Sokoto in order to get at Aminu Tambuwal, at Kano in order to get at Musa Kwankwaso, at Bauchi in order to get at Yakubu Dogara, at Adamawa in order to get at Atiku Abubakar, at Plateau in order to get at Jerry Useni, and at Benue in order to get at Samuel Ortom. Over there in Rivers State, it is gangster-styled federal Mafiosi shock treatments that are being meted out to the good and hardworking people of that state. Let us all face it, is this democracy at all?


Sunday Adole Jonah,

Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State

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