n 1980, 69-year-old Ronald Reagan became one of the oldest candidates to ever win the presidency in America by asking voters this rhetorical question. “Were you better off than you were 4 years ago. If you are, vote for my opponent, if not, vote for me and you will be voting for a change. American voters responded, regardless of party labels to give Ronald Reagan the margin of victory he needed to handily beat Jimmy Carter the incumbent President. Nigerian voters are quite capable of giving a similar response if asked. What has stopped that from occurring from time to time in the last 12 years of PDP, The PDP has kept on winning one election after the other in a landslide victory due to massive rigging of elections because the PDP is never short of dubious characters like Maurice Iwu and now Umeadi who are both willing and ready to sell their conscience, if they have any at all, in making sure the PDP wins by all means, even if nobody came out to vote for them.

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Omolade Oluwateru the former Deputy Governor of Ondo State was caught red-handed snatching and switching ballot boxes in 2007 in Akure, the Ondo State capital with his Police escort providing him cover. The EFCC under Ribadu promised they were going to prosecute him after he leaves office. Up till tomorrow, nothing has happened. The Appeal Court overturned his election and that of his boss three years later.

If you think the acting President is interested in preventing other Deputy Governors of the PDP from committing similar crimes in the 2011 election, you are going to wait for eternity. Election rigging is fine as long as the perpetrators are card-carrying members of the PDP. I strongly believe that Umeadi is being rewarded today to succeed Maurice Iwu because he was the most vocal of all the Federal Electoral Commissioners, and as a lawyer, he knew how to use technicalities to defend massive election fraud like he did in 2007 and like he is going to do again in 2011 as the all powerful Chairman whose appointment cannot be overturned in the next 10 years even if he is found guilty of murder. I think Jonathan Goodluck is being clever by half as they say by going ahead to name Umeadi as successor to Maurice Iwu. All the Commissioners that served under Iwu were men of dubious character who should not have been retained at all because they were part and parcel of the election fraud as far as I am concerned. If that were not so a few of them would have resigned their job on principle. They were all guilty by association as far as I am concerned.

The NPN the forerunner of the PDP tried the same trick in Ondo State on August 16, 1983 when they announced a fake result that proclaimed Omoboriowo as winner of the gubernatorial election that late Papa Adekunle Ajasin clearly won in recognition of his track record in office. The mayhem that followed in Akure was one that Nigerians would never forget. Did that stop the PDP from repeating the same scenario in 2007 when Mimiko’s mandate was stolen from him again in broad daylight as Agagu was proclaimed the winner in Abuja? It took nearly 3 years before Mimiko with help from the Judiciary was able to reclaim his mandate. The number of elections overturned by the tribunals and later on by the Appeal Cour did not at all embarrass the PDP, Maurice Iwu and Umeadi. As a matter of fact Maurice Iwu lobbied very hard to keep the job until he was forced out.

The same thing is about to happen again with Goodluck Jonathan appointing another crook out of 140 million Nigerians to step into the shoes of Maurice Iwu the nutty Professor for the sole purpose of keeping the PDP in office by all means possible. Umeadi the man nominated to take over from Maurice Iwu was a big accomplice and the mouth organ of INEC in trying to explain away the landslide victory of the PDP in the 2007 elections. He was the Okoko Ndem of the INEC at the time and a dubious lawyer. He was the Professor Peller of election rigging in Nigeria who will tell you that 2 plus 2 is not 4, and would go to great lengths to prove it with the dexterity and precision of a Chike Obi. Nigerians can forget having a free and fair election in 2011 with Umeadi as the overall boss I can tell you, loud and clear that Goodluck like Obasanjo before him has just pulled another stunt on Nigeria.

Umeadi is going to be far worse than Maurice Iwu. Goodluck Jonathan like a clever used car salesman has sold Nigerians another lemon car for the price of new. If Nigerian voters and the opposition were wise they would have seen the trap that Goodluck is setting for them. If you are in any doubt about this observation I refer you to the excellent character profile done on Umeadi by the Sahara reporters led by Omoyele Sowore. If Umeadi is the only Nigerian Goodluck Jonathan can find to lead INEC to 2011, there is no point going forward. The acting President has failed the nation again.

This article is a follow-up to my last article titled, “Is Yar Adua able to return to work as speculated” posted by Nigeria world. I said in that article that if the acting President is really serious with his promises to clear the Augean stable of massive election rigging in Nigeria, his action rather what he says is what we need to judge. It is common practice everywhere in the world for new comers like him to promise heaven and earth. The acid test is whether or not they are going to be able to deliver on those promises when the chips are down. Idi Amin promised the whole world on taking over from Milton Obote in a military coup. Same thing happened with late Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Waza Banga when he seized power in the Republic of the Congo. Robert Mugabe promised pretty much the same thing on taking over in Zimbabwe. What became of all those promises is now history if you are paying as much attention as I do.

Babangida on coming to office in a military coup, had promised he was going to do far better than Buhari and Idi Agbon, Even Sani Abacha privately admonished Abiola and Nigerians not to worry because his was going to be a transitional regime to stabilize Nigeria for about 6 months or one year before returning back to Abiola his stolen mandate. Abiola was fooled into believing Abacha and he ended up dying in detention. By the same token Abdulsalam Abubakar said his Government was going to be totally transparent. He was going to conduct a credible election that the whole nation could be proud of. While Abdulsalam was telling Nigerians what he thought they wanted to hear, he was secretly holding nocturnal meetings with retired Generals like Babangida and and Danjuma to find a way to bring Obasanjo back into office as the only southerner the North could trust to return Nigeria back to the status quo.

His victory at the election was predetermined even before the first vote was cast. Obasanjo just came out of prison to be handed a victory he did not work for or understand. He, Obasanjo not only lost to Chief Oluyemi Falae in Owu Local Government in Abeokuta where he held the title of Balogun, (the General Officer commanding the Owu traditional Army) He, Obasanjo had come out of prison to win an election based on a platform crafted by the same retired Generals and their civilian cohorts and based on a military-imposed Constitution which has guaranteed that the Military would forever dominate Nigerian politics and power game for as long as they wish.

The same Obasanjo had promised the nation he had learnt his lessons from prison as a born-again Christian and Nigeria should expect the best from him as President. What did Obasanjo do with the power and unique opportunity? Your guess is as good as mine, He not only completed his two terms in office, and he seriously wanted to prolong his tenure much like Babangida and Sani Abacha before him. He miserably failed due to the opposition of his Vice President and the determination of the opposition parties in Nigeria to stop him. When he realized that his third term ambition has been torpedoed he came up with the idea of imposing the very weak and the terminally-ill Yar Adua on Nigeria in the hope he could continue to manipulate the sick man, as the Chairman-for-life of the PDP Board of Trustees. He single-handedly appointed Maurice Iwu to conduct what has gone down in History as the most fraudulent elections in the history of Nigeria.

Nigeria is in a terrible mess today as a result of Obasanjo’s dictatorial rule. That Goodluck Jonathan is acting President today is a fall-out from the miscalculations of Obasanjo and the hopelessness of his performance as President. Goodluck Jonathan is a stooge of Obasanjo. If you think Obasanjo was diabolical, you haven’t seen anything yet. This Ijaw man could prove to be a reincarnation of Obasanjo. If you look into all the appointments he has so far made on taking over from Yar Adua, you will clearly see that the hand is that of Esau but the voice is that of Jacob. This is not good at all for Nigeria. The prognosis is not looking good from all I can see right now. I don’t trust Mr. Jonathan. I agree that he is always lucky to be at the right place at the right time, nut leadership quality and Luck are two different things and when you are a the leader of a complex country like Nigeria, you need more than luck to see get to where you need to be.

I thought Goodluck was being used by God to momentarily clean up Nigeria. Not any more. His naming of Umeadi to head INEC is a bad omen as far as I am concerned. If he was serious at cleaning up Nigeria he has put the wrong foot forward with Umeadi’s appointment He did the same thing with his appointment of General Danjuma as his principal adviser and Gusau as his Security Chief and Are now as Gusau’s Deputy. Nigeria is back to the third term of Obasanjo regardless of what Goodluck Jonathan may be saying to the contrary.

The last straw that has broken the camel’s back for me is his widely publicized plan to now run for President in 2011 and the denial by the PDP that the presidency was never zoned to the North following the 8 years of Obasanjo. They should tell that to the mountains. The North is not going to go for Jonathan becoming President in 2011. The North was opposed to his taking over from Yar Adua when it became clear that Yar Adua was too sick to continue to parade himself as President. It was a thug of war to get the Senate and the House of Representatives to agree to recognize the Vice President as acting President. The decision to fly back Yar Adua from Saudi and the decision to keep him at the President’s mansion while Jonathan Goodluck goes around telling Nigerians and the world he is here to stay is a very funny arrangement. That is why some loyal supporters of Yar Adua keep distracting the acting President by constantly reminding him that Yar Adua will soon take back his office.

The idea of allowing Goodluck to serve the remaining 14 months of Yar Adua does not sit very well with the power brokers in the North. They just have no other choice at this point but to live with Goodluck as the man behind the driver’s seat for now. I am not sure they are going to re-nominate Goodluck as the top of the ticket when the rubber meets the road.

If Goodluck Jonathan truly means business to clean up Nigeria, he would have steered clear of running for office as President in 2011. If he is running for President himself everything he does from now on becomes suspect. He begins to lose control and credibility by so doing without knowing it. Goodluck cannot approbate and reprobate at the same time. Mr. Goodluck as I predicted, long ago is joined in the hips with the PDP and their misrule in the last 12 years and counting. He therefore cannot now claim he was not a part of the mess that Nigeria is in today. The only way he can get some traction and credibility with Nigeria is to do what is totally unpredictable of a PDP leader and current Defacto President.

If he is serious about cleaning up Nigeria he should have had the courage to offer Maurice Iwu’s job to a man like Anyaoku or Wole Soyinka or Balarabe Musa or a man like Professor Itse Sagay of the University of Benin or some Nigerians who have been very vocal in condemning election rigging in Nigeria as the “fons et origo” of Nigeria’s problems. By picking Umeadi, Mr. Goodluck has betrayed his ultimate intention. He is only paying a lip service to his desire to change Nigeria for good. He has no intention of doing so. Umeadi is not a good candidate to replace Maurice Iwu because he is a bird of the same feather with Iwu. He is going to do precisely what the acting President has appointed him to do. Nigeria does not need a candidate like that. We need a candidate who has a mind of his own and he is going to do for Nigeria what he considers right. Umeadi, from all we know about him, does not fit that bill at all

I rest my case.