Using propaganda and army backed violence Nigeria’s ruling party claimed self awarded victory in the 2019 presidential election. A robust opposition PDP has since repudiated the sham and nonsense
Election rigging by Nigeria’s ruling APC ends in self awarded victory
by Chin Ce, Africa Forum
DATELINE: Abuja: Saturday 23 February 2019. Nigeria presidential election ended in a predictable win for the Muhammadu Buhari led All Progressives Congress, APC – a consequence of several, months of security threats, public intimidation by the army, systemic violence, illegal arrests and persecution of opponents with the view to the rigging of the election for the incumbent head of state.
Nigerians have always been shortchanged and tyrannised by the foul electioneering gambits of the political class. The electoral body now called Independent (INEC) has never conducted any independent or credible election in history. This is because Nigeria, with British support, had contrived a system where the northern section of the country would determine the political leadership of the multi ethnic, multi religious society of over 200 million people by fraud and abuse of state power. Northern Nigeria’s vaunted population and oft tagged ‘populated cities’ still remain a myth, as Nigeria has had no credible census figure. All there is have been the humongous local governments allocated to the North by military fiat for their advantage in sharing resources from a central coffer.
In 1983, music legend Fela Kuti sang “Teacher Don’t Teach me Nonsense” and chided the British government over the charade of democracy that saw the reelection of northern Nigeria’s Shehu Shagari through fictitious vote allocations.
The 1993 election, ten years later, was annulled by the northern dictator, Ibrahim Babangida, because a southern Muslim, Moshood Abiola, had beaten the northern candidate, Barkin Tofa, in a rare show of political maturity by the few enfranchised Nigerian voters at that time. In 1998 Abiola was murdered CIA style by Nigerian authorities led by General Abdusalami Abubakar because he was still trying to claim his mandate five years after.
1999 election, coming the year following Abiola’s political martyrdom, was hastily manipulated to install a northern surrogate and former military dictator, Olusegun Obasanjo, from the same south west zone. Obasanjo’s military junta had foisted Alhaji Shagari on the country in the 1979 election. Under Obasanjo’s presidential influence, the rigging called Nigeria elections continued into 2003, 2007, and 2011 with the mastermind and active backing of Northern and Southern politicians.
In 2015, the incumbent PDP president Mr Jonathan of the South, voluntarily abdicated office in an election widely rigged by conniving political elements to favour General Buhari’s bloodthirsty ambition for power and control of Nigeria’s mineral resources through his so called All Progressives Congress. The APC is no different from the PDP in mindless rigging, corruption and impunity; it now boasts of larger numbers of treasury looters who had migrated from the PDP in a typical aftermath of African political struggles for power.
Ironically the rigging bands of politicians in the PDP, whose 2019 presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, had masterminded the fall of Jonathan from power in 2015, have since been the major vocal opposition. Saturday’s February 2019 electoral fiasco under president Buhari’s APC has seen the PDP sorely miffed by the venal politics of awarding dubious population and fictitious votes to the states in Northern Nigeria. It called for the cancellation of the election charade, and set up machinery to challenge the announcement of Buhari by Nigeria’s corrupt and dithering INEC.
As usual, the international communities of America, Britain and Ecowas countries barely acclaimed the dupery and ended up suing for peace among the parties. They also called for electoral reforms.
Ahead of the federal ploy, President Buhari had unconstitutionally removed the southern Christian justice chief and installed a northern Muslim justice. The move was meant to protect the rigging of the elections at the nation’s Supreme Court.
Patriots have argued that without restructuring the unitarian federation, every Nigeria presidential election, like the country itself, will remain guaranteed violent, big for nothing, fraud.
