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| INEC boss, Attahiru Jega |
The first day of April as we all know now has been set aside for making fools out of people and is known as April Fools’ day.
I have a story about it myself. Being born on that day I was told that my grandfather, God bless his soul refused to turn up at the hospital thinking it was an April Fools’ joke.
As hard as they tried, he could not be convinced to go.
I remember when we were kids, our idea of April Fools’ jokes were things like- “Daddy is calling you”, “I mistakenly poured tea on your school uniform”, “I saw your WAEC result and you failed woefully”.
As we grew up, more serious April Fools’ jokes like, “The boss called and says you should pick him at the airport this noon”, “Sorry uncle, but your car was snatched from me by armed robbers at a petrol station. I was shot in the leg. I’m in the hospital now”.
When I worked as sportscaster with Silverbird’s rhythm 93.7 FM in the 2005, I played a joke on more than two million fans of Premier League side, Dolphins.
After beating Accra Hearts of OAK 4-0 in a CAF Champions League match, I announced four days later that CAF had disqualified Dolphins for fielding an unregistered player.
I searched my archives for an interview with Taiwo Ogunjobi where he said, “It’s unfortunate but we must abide by CAF’s decision”. I found another interview clip I had with Fanny Amun where he said, “That was carelessness at its highest level and I hope we have learned from our mistakes.”
Taiwo Ogunjobi was then Head of Technical Department while Fanny Amun was Secretary General and these two interviews made my story on the news look real.
A year later, the Rivers State sports commissioner was made to jump out of bed and drive straight to government house because he was told the state’s athletes who were being owed then had marched to government house, carrying placards and protesting their plight.
Just two days ago, the radio station where I now work, Cool/Wazobia FM on their morning belt announced that the first ten listeners who get to the office will be given 10,000 naira (about $64) each.
You should have seen the crowd that turned up. A lot of them had not even taken their baths.
My ultimate April Fools gaffe however, is to invite my friends to a posh lunch to celebrate my birthday only for them to see a donkey’s poster at the venue of the lunch. I’m still planning that one.
Now I think the preamble is enough.
I have always wanted to excel in everything I do. That is why I stopped playing football in 1998 because I knew I would not have been good enough to play at the World Cup( I could have signed for Lobi Stars in the Nigerian 3rd division then).
When I see people do something great, I have always wanted to emulate them and do it better and that is why when I deceived more than 2 million Dolphins fans with my radio program I was happy at the responses or relief and anger when they found out it was a joke.
This now brings me to a man called Professor Attahiru Jega, a learned man who most Nigerians thought was our only hope to organize credible elections.
I like the man because he is very ambitious.
He had probably studied world history on voting and elections and knew he could not get into the record books for organizing the most credible elections in the world.
He also knew he could not get into the record books for organizing the worst in the world too. At least his immediate predecessor, Maurice Iwu (I can never bring myself that low to call this one a professor) holds the everlasting record of conducting the worst elections in the history of the world. That record would surely last a lifetime.
So what did Professor, Jega do? He thought of getting into the Guinness book of records somehow, but using his platform as chairman of Nigeria’s Independent Electoral Commission, INEC the perfect idea came up.
How do I fool 70 million people? Has it ever happened before? I guess not so the plan was put in motion.
So Jega accepted the job to organize credible elections and made a budget for $585m (about eighty six billion naira) and promptly drew up a schedule.
One April 2nd we should have elections into the Nigerian Parliament.
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| Voters at the Ogbum-nu-abali part of Port Harcourt |
Most of these left their homes as early as 8am on Saturday, April 2nd for accreditation and after that hung around for voting proper to commence at noon before the intelligent professor announced that it was an April Fool’s joke.
“Guys you were all fooled. You can go back to your houses now. There will be no elections today. The materials were destroyed in Japan’s Tsunami and those that survived the Tsunami could not make it out of Libya. Let’s do this again on Monday, April 4.”
We are talking 70 million Nigerians deceived so Jega can now beat his chest and say, “I made it to the Guinness book of records.”
Having said all that, we must get down to the truth of it.
Professor, Attahiru Jega is worse that the worst of the lot.
Did we criticize, Maurice Iwu? Did we ask for his head? Why? At least he organized elections, didn’t he? Jega took our money and ran.
A comment on twitter read, “Dear Jega, how can you postpone elections that have already started?
And Jega answered in his midday speech saying, “There was nothing we could do to prevent this from happening,”
He added that "In order to maintain the integrity of the elections and retain effective overall control of the process, the commission has taken the very difficult but necessary decision to postpone the national assembly elections to Monday,"
"It is an emergency," he added.
But my question now is, “At what time did he know the materials did not arrive? Because with the size of Nigeria and difficulty in movement, it is not rocket science to know that if those materials had not arrived by day break on Friday at the latest, the elections were not going to hold because it would take at least 24 hours by any means to get materials to some parts of the country.
But our learned professor woke up on Saturday morning knowing the materials had not arrived but he allowed people come out to get accredited and he waited until midday to make that announcement.
The jury’s out on you. The verdict will be out after the elections. As it stands now you are closing in on Maurice Iwu for being “Idiot of the year” but you are also a genius in having fooled so many people.
You are a failure and the sooner you realize it the better for you.
On March 22, this year, about 11 days ago, Jega said http://thenationonlineng.net/web3/news/31518.html
And I quote him, “For INEC, I can say categorically and convincingly that we are ready for the election, the question should be, are the lawyers and politicians ready?.
Besides, he said, sensitive materials were being printed at the moment, adding that vehicles and speed boats had been acquired for distribution to riverine areas.
He said the commission was working with security agencies to ensure hitch free elections.
If our learned professor said he was ready as at 11 days ago, at what point did he become unready?
I can go on and on about the man, but would want to save cyberspace and band width.
On Monday, the donkeys would be out of their houses again voting while Attahiru Jega plays with our minds.
Weldone Jega. And like some one said, again on Twitter, “Maurice Iwu meant Wuru wuru and Jega means Jaga jaga.
Another person sang, “Nigeria jega jega, everything scatter scatter.
We hail thee professor.
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