he Nigerian presidential system was initially meant to be a carbon copy of the American system. Since we are experts at putting the cart before the horse and expecting the same result, we adopted it before we suddenly realized we probably made a mistake. Nigeria is very good at repeating the same thing but expecting a different result. If we define insanity the same way it is defined in clinical psychology, you can understand the classification of Nigeria not only as a terrorist state but also as a crazy one in deed. When I wrote the part one of this article on December 28, 2009, the full ramifications of the act of terror by our Nigerian-born Mutallab has not become the topical issue it has now become around the world.

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We now know how seriously America is responding to the terrorist act, even though the tragedy was aborted by sheer luck or destiny, and not a single soul, thank God, was lost in the encounter. Our evil genius religious fanatic was definitely out on a suicide mission to blow up a 20 million plane, not to talk of the priceless lives of its crew and passengers, which cannot be quantified in Dollar amount as we speak. What of the carnage the burning plane would have done to several buildings along the path of its decent and all who live in those buildings and their properties? God was truly awesome that the weapon of mass destruction did not ignite mid air. If the attempt has succeeded, America’s vulnerability as a super power would have assumed a new dimension. It would have been downhill for the Obama presidency from that point on, and the Republicans and most especially Dick Cheney would have told America “I told you so” and that would have sealed any future hopes of the Democrats or the minorities in America to ever aspire to the presidency for a long time to come. The supremacy or the superiority of the Republicans at dealing with the security of the nation would have been validated for good..

All the predictions of Martin Luther King that people should be judged not by their skin color, but by the strength of their character would have been ridiculed as mere slogan. It is a great pity that it took a Nigerian to get to that mighty cross road in man’s inhumanity to each other in the garb of religious hypocrisy or sanctimonious pretension. I cannot, for the life of me, understand what the young man was thinking as he flew around the world preparing for his deadly mission in the name of a religion he professed, but did not fully understand. If I did not know his father, I would have thought he was simply a bastardized product of a totally dysfunctional family. I cannot say that now because the poor father did the best he could as a father because reporting your own child to Law enforcement like he did, had to take a lot of guts in all honesty. The only good news in the whole tragedy is the action taken by his father. Those who still want all Nigerians stigmatized as terrorists must remember his poor father is a Nigerian too I am awfully shocked and traumatized that a promising young man with his kind of parentage, background and education would have chosen to pitch his tent with the most radicalized and perverted agents of Islam who think that flying a plane against an edifice like the World Trade Center or blowing up a plane mid air, with himself and 289 passengers in it, should give him a right of passage to Alijanah or Paradise. My hypothesis in dwelling too much on the young man is that if he had never left Nigeria to go study abroad, he probably would have turned out differently. But because our political leaders have turned Nigeria into a failed state, because majority of them were never voted into office, to begin with. They all rigged themselves into office. Having ruined Nigeria’s educational system they now send their children to expensive schools abroad where the children intermingle with all kinds of characters including fundamentalists that brainwash them turning them into monsters ..

I cannot think of any event that has brought out the sharp contrast between America and Nigeria than the bomb incident on the air space of Detroit, Michigan on Christmas day. If you compare the comic drama the event has generated in Nigeria with the seriousness the Obama Administration has projected to the world on the issue, you will understand that Nigeria’s tolerance level for evil and terror in all shapes and forms is drastically different from that of America. Of course America is a super power and Nigeria is clearly a third world country even though Nigeria’s share of Ph.D holders and educated people in our population of 140 million is comparable to that of America with her population of roughly 300 million. Nigerians are smart and intelligent people. We love life too much and very few of us ever wish to die before our time is due. We all want to go to Heaven or “Alijanah” Suicide or heart attack is very rare among us because our shock absorbers are uniquely strong. It is therefore a big surprise to me that this young is acting out of character. We all want to get rich quick. That explains why some of our people engage in blue collar crimes like credit card fraud, and Drug peddling and money laundering. Becoming a terrorist is never part of the deal.. The great problem of our leaders, however, is their inability to recognize serious problems facing our nation like Americans do. American political leaders have an activist and pragmatic approach to governance. It is not so in Nigeria. Our leaders like to pretend that all is well with country. But how can all be well with us when we are busy fixing census figures and manipulating election results and electing bricklayers to do the job of carpenters or plumbers and expecting good results. You reap what you sow. If you sow the wind you reap the whirlwind according to the Law of nature or retributive justice.

Our Foreign Affairs Minister, Ojo Maduekwe in the absence of our sick President and in the wake of the Muttalab tragedy, and the classification of Nigeria among 14 terror-sponsoring countries around the world, was trying to impress Nigerians by immediately summoning the American Ambassador to his office threatening fire and brimstone for what America has done to Nigeria. He stopped short of telling the ambassador Nigeria was going to recall his own ambassador to Washington It was an empty threat.. Our President of the Senate, third in the order of succession to our President quickly got the Senate to issue an ultimatum, which he had to quickly withdraw when the young American President simply brushed the noise aside like he did when he flew over Lagos to honor Ghana for being a leading light for Democracy in Africa.. The American President would not dignify the meaningless ultimatum by formally responding to it. The Nigerian ultimatum was viewed like a story told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

You can tell from the scenario that Nigeria was totally confused. Our Vice President confirmed his role as the proverbial spare tire to be used only when there is a flat tire and securely locked up in the trunk, most of the time .The VP did not have the power to act as President and his boss did not trust him enough to handover power to him before proceeding on his medical leave, where he has been in and out of coma for as many times as he had to be rushed to the operating table in Saudi Arabia. The President could possibly be on life support, as we speak, and he could be brain-dead, for all we know just like the former Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Aaron Sharon.. All Nigerians could do is invoke the blood of Jesus to see him through. The whole scenario is pathetic.

. The American president had made it clear that his first obligation was to America and his people and he owes no apologies to any other country for taking steps to secure his country. The classification would remain in force for as long as needed. End of story. Ojo Madukwe with his tail between his legs quietly reversed himself telling Nigerians he has received assurances from the moon that Nigeria has been taken off the list because the American President has blinked. Can you believe that? I am not making up the story.

If the Mutallab’s tragedy has occurred in Nigeria, as we are reminded by the former Governor Umar of Kaduna, it could easily have been covered up because of the bomber’s father’s status in Nigeria. We are a very sick nation. I cannot help but recall the death of one of my junior boys at Oyemekun Grammar School, Akure. I am talking of late Lt Col Aladesuyi, one of the military officers killed in a plane crash near Lagos some years back during the Babangida era. Up till tomorrow nobody knows the cause of that crash and the country could care less. More than 50 military officers were killed in that crash. The Chief Law Enforcement officer and the Attorney general of the Nation, Uncle Bola Ige was murdered in cold blood in his own bed room at Ibadan. The Obasanjo Government would not allow the investigation to see the light of day till tomorrow.

How many religious riots, with Muslims killing Christians in thousands, have occurred in Kano and most recently in Bauchi and other parts of the North with the Government doing nothing to permanently stop the recurring pogrom? Our Government just does not care about Nigerians dying and Nigerians as a people don’t care because our shock absorbers never give way. Can any Nigerian tell me how many Nigerians died in Liberia or Sierra Leone fighting as foot soldiers for ECOMOG? Many of their corpses were returned to Nigeria for mass burial without anybody asking a question. Did the Nigerian Government ever have to explain anything to their families? Hell No.

How many thousands of Nigerians have died in riots caused by election fraud in Nigeria in the last 50 years with Government just looking the other way as if it was nothing to worry about like I asked in my part one to this article. Such devastation in America would have been followed by serious remedial actions by the President and the Congress acting together just like the Mutallab’s incident is now viewed as a major wake-up call for action. Not so in Nigeria

Nigeria does not keep any such statistics but. America does. The Nigerian mindset is nothing to compare with the American mindset. Any Government in America with the kind of record PDP has in Nigeria, would have been sent parking a long time ago. If the Obama Administration has not done what it is currently doing, forget it, he and his party would be defeated in a landslide in the next election. It is easy to know whether or not election manipulations have occurred in America. If it does, George Bush would still have been President till now. Americans vote their pocket books and interest. Nigerian voters only exist on paper. Their votes mean nothing. Americans are able to do accurate opinion polling on each Administration success or failure at the polls because they American voters would not tolerate a non-performing Government. That is why American politics is never dominated by one party like the PDP I shamelessly doing in Nigeria The outcome of elections are determined in Nigeria, years before the election. It is already being rumored that some powerful forces in the North are prevailing on Ibrahim Babangida to take over from Yar Adua, if for any reason Yar Adua does not make it. Shouldn't that be left to the Nigerian voters to decide if their votes count? .

. The PDP has that kind of track record in Nigeria, but they are still the ruling party till tomorrow and decidedly for many more years to come, because we let them. The PDP President has been missing in action now for more than 40 days now. The Vice President is totally crippled to do anything and the Legislature including the Senate are in constitutional limbo, as we speak, but they still continue to empty the treasury with no one in charge. The country is at a standstill, and yet the PDP is still nursing the ambition to retain power for another 60 years. How come Nigerians not see this as a big problem? It beats my imagination.

Why? Because massive election fraud and rigging have become part and parcel of our DNA in Nigeria and nobody is ready or willing to confront it and force the Government to do something drastic. One Mr. Kunle Oyetomi, writing on the Mutallab affair in the Vanguard of January 8, has defined a terrorist “as anybody who causes fear and extreme trepidation to another creature, community or nation and in the process kills or destroys or devastates people”. I might add that any government that willfully creates an enabling environment for criminals to do that has forfeited its legitimacy to retain power. Electoral fraud in Nigeria is worse than all of these crimes combined and should be treated as such by Law.

Mutallab is most likely to receive a life sentence for the offense he has committed. He may not get a capital punishment or be made to face a firing squad but getting a life sentence is not considered a slap in the wrist, which is what he would have gotten in Nigeria, assuming that his crime was not covered up. We all still remember the case of Gloria Okon who was found guilty of Drugs peddling but because she had connection in high places, she was smuggled out of jail and her whereabouts have remained a mystery to this day. Late Dele Giwa was going to dig up some dirt on her and her Barons in power Dele Giwa never survived to tell the story. He was blown away into shreds with a letter bomb bearing the imprimatur of the presidency. Gani Fawehinmi was the only Nigerian to stand up for Giwa, but nothing came out of his effort. The assassination of Dele Giwa still remains a mystery till tomorrow. Election malfeasance has become a cancer eating Nigeria alive, and why is that so?

The isssue of one man, one vote was a huge transformational step in America. If electoral fraud which was equally prevalent in America when representative Government first started, has not been fully addressed by America, there is no way in the world America would have achieved the great strides she has achieved as the shining city on the hill and the lightening rod, she has become for Democracy around the world.

As a matter of fact, Obama, the first black President would never have made it to the White House, if the Republican Party under George Bush was like the PDP under Obasanjo or Yar Adua. John McCain would have become President even though Obama was head and shoulders better than him, all things considered. Nigeria is forever ruled by mediocre for precisely the same reason. There were far better candidates than Umaru Yar Adua in the 2007 election. Obasanjo knew it, and the whole nation knew it, but because the PDP had secured Maurice Iwu to do his fuzzy Math and to pronounce Yar'Adua the winner regardless of how many people voted for him, it was a forgone conclusion that Umaru would be President. Just imagine the quagmire Yar Adua has led Nigeria into right now. What election fraud is doing to Nigeria, I dare say, is worse than what Terrorism is doing to America and the whole world today, and we are all suffering but smiling at the same time to quote Fela Anikulapo Kuti.

The big difference is that America is stepping up to the plate to confront her problems. If it means classifying 14 sovereign states including Nigeria as sponsors of Terror, so be it. Nigeria can complain from now to Eternity, it is not going to change America’s resolve. We are guilty by association. The young terrorist is a Nigerian. He knew enough to buy his ticket in Ghana in hard currency, but he chose to board from Nigeria because he knew he could get away with it and he did.

Offering just 50 Dollar bill as a bribe to any Immigration officer at Murtala Mohammed Airport was enough to waive the security checks for him as he meanders his way to the aircraft. You can be sure that most of the security machines in Nigeria don’t work and there is also the problem of power outages in the country. Any number of things could have gone wrong. I ascribe all of this observation to the fact that we are being ruled by the majority of people we did not vote for to begin with. That was why and how Shehu Shagari was able to beat Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo and Aminu Kano despite their experience and political maturity. All of these leaders were superior to Shehu Shagari but Shehu beat them, nonetheless, in large part, because of massive election rigging at all levels. Alhaji Tofa was programmed to beat MKO Abiola using the same formula, but the whole plan blew up in IBB’s face because the electoral plan engineered for IBB by Professor Omo Omoruyi among others, had worked to precision. You have the ballots counted , recorded and signed at the polling station The Abiola election could not be rigged because the North voted for Abiola because they trusted him. Abiola beat Alhaji Tofa in his own home base in Kano just like Oluyemi Falae once beat Obasanjo in his own Local Government in Abeokuta. The election manipulators in Nigeria did what they had the power to do. They got IBB to annul the June 12 election.

Just imagine where that annulment has led Nigeria. Abacha would never have become President, if MKO’s election had not been cancelled. Musa Yar Adua would not have been killed, Abiola would not have been poisoned and Abacha himself would not have been killed. Abdulsalam Abubakar would not have been President and there would never have been the second coming of Obasanjo and MKO would probably not have allowed a return to rigging of elections in Nigeria at the scale it has reached, and Nigeria would have been on the road to true emancipation. As a matter of fact, MKO Abiola would have seen the need to classify election rigging as equivalent if not worse than Terrorism and the punishment to follow would have served as a deterrence to future election riggers in Nigeria. Awolowo would have done the same. Murtala would have done the same, but the manipulators would not allow them.

I don’t care what other Nigerians may say about Ojukwu’s speech at the colloquium in Rhode Island. He sure hit a home run in my book by any standard of assessment. He is right on the money that Nigeria is never going to make it until the issue of electoral fraud is effectively tackled and resolved once and for all. Like him, I have thought long and hard on the same subject and I have come to the same conclusion. I consider the issue so important and urgent that I decide to make the subject my very first article in the new year I refrain from saying “Happy New Year” to Nigeria, because Nigeria is never going to be happy and fulfilled as a nation until and unless we find a solution to this problem. The Blood of Jesus or the Blood of Allah, regardless of how many times we invoke it, is never going to do the trick for us, because the country’s foundation was laid on quick sand. Reuben Abati surely got that right in one of his insightful columns on the same subject in the Guardian Newspaper and Nigeriaworld. Mr. Abati has totally condemned the sanctimonious hypocrisy of Nigerian Christians and Muslims who daily invoke the Blood of Jesus or Mohammed as their ultimate solution to man-made problems like election rigging.

The first question we must all ask ourselves is why for God’s sake has election fraud become such an incurable disease in Nigeria? It is so, because far .too many people and too many interests in Nigeria thrive and benefit from the malaise in a way that makes solution harder to confront. The election riggers and manipulators themselves and their sponsors and godfathers are just too entrenched to let any war against it succeed. Do you think Maurice Iwu and his accomplices are seriously interested in doing anything to stop election fraud in our country? The answer is a resounding no. Why should they? That is why Professor Iwu would never resign from that criminal assignment, and that is why President Yar Adua or the PDP would never have the courage to fire him.

They both need each other. Even though Yar Adua has spent more time on his sick bed than he has spent on performing his duty as President, many in his PDP still want him returned to power in 2011 even if nobody votes for him. Maurice Iwu is there to return him as winner whether we vote for him or not. It is that simple! If there is a coup in Nigeria, the first person to go will be Maurice Iwu. I can make that prediction if the new commander-in-chief is a person like Murtala Mohammed. I am not rooting for the Military to strike but it is now within the realm of possibility that the Military could intervene again. If we don’t want that to happen, we have to fight election fraud with everything we have got.

The political parties in Nigeria, all of them I might add are all beneficiaries of election manipulations but the major culprit is the PDP. The smaller parties have to do it as their only way to retain power in the few states they govern like Lagos, Edo, Ondo and Anambra to mention a few. I am sure that the AC in Lagos and Edo and the Labor Party in Ondo and the APGA in Anambra are also guilty of rigging. Only the scale may differ. Rigging by those parties is not nearly as bad as rigging by the PDP whose life and survival totally depend on it. As long as the majority party continues to do it, there is no motivation for the smaller parties to stop election rigging in the few states they control.

For your information Governor Mimiko of Ondo State is already laying the foundation to have his labor party with no grass root support in Ondo State to do exactly what Agagu was doing as Governor. He recently announced his Government was going to build a modern city from the scratch somewhere around Ore and Okitipupa. Now tell me, is that really the role of Government to start building a model city when all of the major cities in Ondo state including the state capital are crying for development, water supply, electricity food, good roads and good schools and Hospitals to heal the sick. The only way to get money out of the treasury to consolidate his hold on power is to embark on white elephant projects like building a model city. H e wants the salaries of traditional rulers substantially increased because according to him traditional rulers constitute the backbone of Government success in a presidential system. America does not have a single traditional ruler to worry about. The Mayors perform that role at the local level. Ondo State already has Council of Chiefs. Kabiyesi Olowo Folagbade Olagbegi is his current Chairman; I do not see anything the Council is doing that the Local Government cannot do. It is a conduit pipe to waste Government funds. The traditional rulers are supported and subsidized by their various Local Governments but that is not enough for Mimiko.

Mimiko is among the Governors pushing the Federal Government to amend the current Constitution to include a definite role for traditional rulers who are more often than not used as agents of Government in power (AGIP) as characterized by Professor Omo Omoruyi in his Tale of June 12. Mimiko wants to be able to use traditional rulers the same way Agagu was using them to rig elections and create a specter of popularity and acceptance of him as Governor. I supported Mimiko for Governor and I fought for him to get his stolen mandate back from Agagu because Agagu has rigged the 2007 elections. I am not so sure I am on the same page with Mimiko any more. I see little difference between him and Agagu. If care is not taken he could be worse than Agagu. That is the tragedy of Nigeria.

I don’t care what Yar Adua may be telling the nation about his plan to end electoral mal practices in Nigeria. He himself has admitted his own election was totally flawed. Is he determined to keep that promise? Hell no. If he does, he knows his party and himself cannot win any free and fair election in most of the 36 states of Nigeria in 2011. What has Yar Adua or the PDP done to merit winning another election in Nigeria? I cannot think of one thing. As a matter of fact, some coup plotters in the Nigerian Military must be weighing their options to come back to power right now. Their only deterrence is their fear that Obama and the International community may not welcome them. Things were never this bad for Nigeria when General Gowon was sent parking. Things were not this bad when Shagari, Buhari, IBB and Abacha were all forced to step aside..

Nobody knows today for sure if our President is still alive or dead, or just placed on life support waiting for the plug to be pulled as rightly speculated by Rachel Maddow of MSNBC on January 8, 2010. She, Ms Maddow even alluded to the possibility of the military coming back in Nigeria. How bad can things get for Nigeria before something is done is my question? The answer is reforming our electoral Laws along the lines suggested by Justice Uwais report, and Odumegwu Ojukwu in his speech at Rhode Island. It is time to consider reclassifying election manipulations as more deadly than Terrorism, if we consider how much damage it has done to Nigeria.

How about the Nigerian Police and Law Enforcement agencies in Nigeria including the so-called SSS? Forget it. The Inspector-general of Police, if you remember Balogun and all his successors including Ehindero and Okiro and their State Commissioners, without exception, would lose a veritable source of their illegal income, if election fraud were declared illegal in Nigeria. They all thrive on it and so is their rank and file who, have to police the polling booths across the country. The people they are supposed to police often cooperate with them to be sure election mal practices remain an unstoppable scourge in Nigeria. A good friend of mine whose name I would keep to myself, recently went home on vacation from his job in America to go take part in a Local Government election in his home base of Igbotako in Ilaje Ese Odo area of Ondo State. He decided to go and vote because he was registered to vote in the area even though he lived in America. On getting to the polling booth, he saw that many young boys ranging from 9 to 12 years were all lined up ready to vote for a particular party while the police men and the returning officers in that polling station simply looked the other way.

My friend, the Americana thought it was wrong for them to do that so he challenged them and he threatened he was going to report them to the DPO in the area. They told him to go back to America. They ran home to his parents to come talk to their son to leave them alone. They further explained to him that if they did what he was suggesting, their area and Local Government was going to be short-changed because everybody rigs election in Nigeria and they are not going to be the only saints in the midst of Satan. They have to inflate the number of votes for the ruling party, the PDP who have the money to pay them. If they did not do what is required of them the polling booth could be removed from their Local Government in subsequent elections. Doing what they were doing was their way to share out of Nigeria’s national cake. He should go back to America and stop preaching to the choir. I narrate this story to tell you how deeply entrenched election fraud has become in Nigeria.

How about the Judiciary, which is supposed to be the last hope of the common man in more civilized countries? The Judiciary in Nigeria is terribly corrupt. There will be no election tribunals if there is no election fraud. It has to continue for members of the Judiciary to have any job to do .The more the various political parties are unhappy with the outcome of elections, the greater their need to seek a redress in the tribunals and the greater their readiness to want to offer bribes to corrupt members of the tribunal who are very hungry and eager to take it. The few saints among corrupt judges are judges like Justice Nabarussima Garba who presided over the election tribunal in Ondo State. But for him, Agagu would still have been Governor today.

Justice Garba gave his verdict and he traveled out of the country. He refused to take a penny from Agagu. There are still judges like him in Nigeria but they are very rare to find is my point Going side by side with the Judiciary is the role of lawyers and most especially the Senior Advocates of Nigeria whose survival depends on electoral fraud and the motivation of the losers to seek a redress and the determination of winners to salvage the fraudulent victories they have won. The whole scenario is a vicious circle Nigeria.

The last and not the least is Poverty and how pervasive it has become in Nigeria. Everyone is seeking to take undue advantage of the other person. A few hundreds of Naira distributed to voters to persuade them to vote for a candidate is enough to sway them. They could care less whether the candidate is an armed robber or a hoodlum who will go to Abuja to go steal and mortgage their future. It is a terrible development all over the country. Even for hereditary titles like picking a candidate to be crowned an Oba in Nigeria, the candidate has to be willing and ready to offer bribes, You don’t hear a word again on the Deji of Akure’s problems with his chiefs and king makers because money has changed hands. The king makers would tolerate the new Deji as long as he lets them do their own thing. I totally reject that kind of leadership. If we truly love our country, we have got to change.

The question now is what do we do about election rigging? There are lots of things we can do. But the first I am going to address in this article is the role of the courts which have a final say on how reported cases of election frauds in Nigeria are now adjudicated. The Appeal Court is increasingly relying on technicalities rather than merit to decide such cases. Rather than totally banning anyone who has rigged election from ever contesting again, the Laws of the election tribunals have been deliberately written in a way to tie the hands of the Appeal Court. The Nigerian Legislature made the Laws and they can also amend it since they now know it has become an albatross. That is what Legislatures do in more civilized countries. The Laws are made for men not the other way round. If the Law is not doing what it was designed to do, change it.

Just imagine the new Laws and regulations the Obama Administration has issued to stop terrorism in all of American air space since the Mutallab’s misadventure. That is the way good Governments must respond to serious problems facing their country. Election fraud has become a huge problem in Nigeria. Our government must fight it to the best of their ability is my admonition.

A case in point is the election of Senator Omisore at the Osun East Senatorial District comprising of Ife and Ijesha Local Government and other areas. The tribunal nullified Omisore’s election on the merits of his case. He, Omisore had gone to the Appeal Court and the Appeal Court returned the same verdict but rather than declaring his challenger the winner, the Appeal Court ordered a re-run election which has just been concluded in Nigeria.

A total of 476,143 voters were registered in that constituency. From the result, just released, Omisore of PDP is now said to have won 233,210 while the PPA won 743, AC won 5026, UNPP won 676 and a total of 6,604 votes were nullified. The point I do not understand is how Omisore, despite of his track records and the track record of the PDP in the area, could have won as many votes as was recorded for him, if the election was free and fair? Omisore and the PDP are being rewarded for poor performance and bad Government. The PDP has woefully failed to deliver on any of her election promises. Nigeria is still in darkness today. Nigeria is labeled as one of the most corrupt nations in the world today. The electoral reform and the freedom of Information Bill that were supposed to move Nigeria forward, have so far stagnated in both Houses. The President is as sick as a dog and he has been out of the country now for more than a month with nobody left in charge in Abuja. In the meantime Ministers and other Government officials are seizing the opportunity to do what they like and to steal the country dry. Is this the kind of climate that should have motivated the voters in Osun East constituency to go out and massively vote for the PDP candidate again? Nigeria has to be insane to return that kind of result for the PDP. Something has to be fundamentally wrong with Nigeria. It is election fraud at all levels of Government.

I have observed that most of the election petitions to the Appeal Court are now being judged not on merit but on sheer technicalities. It is an alarming development in a country, which is reportedly determined to fight election malpractices. It is even more alarming for a President who came to office believing that his own election was totally flawed and therefore committed to reform. What has Yar Adua done to reform the electoral Law? Could anything have been done at all? Yes. What is it?

Nigeria must, from now on, respond to Election Fraud the same way the whole world is responding to Terrorism right now. Both Houses of Parliament in Abuja, if they were serious, should have amended the offending provisions in the election tribunal Laws of Nigeria in line with the recommendations of Justice Uwais. Whether or not an aggrieved person or victim files a petition within the time frame stipulated in the enabling Laws ought not to be a reason good enough to dismiss a petition, if it is established, by preponderance of evidence, that the announced winner has not won fairly.

The provisions of the Tribunal Laws should be revisited and amended as needed with immediate effect to make it illegal to dismiss cases based on technicalities alone. As a matter of fact, any person or Party found to have rigged election should be banned for life. Any Governor or politician with election petition pending in Court must be forced to step aside until his case is finalized Whoever is their closest opponent in that election by way of the total votes received, should be declared the winner. Period. Stiffer penalties like many years in jail or life sentence should be added to their punishment. If Nigeria does this, election fraud can be drastically reduced. If no member of the Nigerian Senate or the Parliament is prepared to do this, the president himself, if he is serious about serving the country should be able to initiate a bill and get enough support of his ruling majority in both houses to pass it into Law

The PDP controls more than 2/3 majorities in both Houses of the Nigeria Parliament today. So what is the problem? Where there is a will there should always be a way

There can be no progress in Nigeria until we solve this problem. I doff my hat to Odumegwu Ojukwu and Chinua Achebe for speaking the truth to power by seriously drawing attention to election fraud in Nigeria and the incalculable damage and security threat it has become. If we solve this problem, the pervasive feeling of political domination by the North can finally begin to give way. There are good people that can be elected to govern our country from the North and the South. Education or lack thereof, which used to create a yawning gap between the North and the South, is no longer as potent as it used to be. If Ibrahim Babangida is now in support of removing quota system based on education or state of origin, it can only mean that the North is no longer as fearful and intimidated by possible fears of marginalization by the south, if meritocracy becomes the yardstick for public office in our country. The South too will stop accusing the North of marginalizing them and there would be peace. We all have to fight election manipulations and ensure that Democracy is given a chance to succeed in our country.

I rest my case.

Continued from Part 1