2011: Onosode, Uduaghan seek credible election

By Emmanuel Edukugho
The 45th anniversary of the Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos, Distinguish Lecture Series provided the platform for Deacon Gamaliel Onosode, Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council and Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, Governor of Delta State, to seek credible election in 2011, to avoid Nigeria becoming a laughing stock in the international community.

In his opening speech at the lecture, Onosode described the event as an intellectual exercise, moreso when the university is “place to foster new ideas, production and distribution of knowledge for development, ideas that will create jobs, generate wealth as knowledge is the only way to bring about development.

“Nigeria cannot be a toddler at 50 years, looking at what had been done since, especially following the ill health of President Umaru Yar’Adua and his eventual death.  The impending 2011 elections offer us another opportunity to get it right by enthroning a credible government,” he said, adding that good governance can only be achieved through credible election.”

Uduaghan defends his electoral status

In his lecture,  entitled: “The Imperative of Conducting Credible Elections in 2011,” Uduaghan, apparently trying to clarify his own electoral status, declared: “I was elected in a free and fair election. There was no quarrel with my election. There are no elections, however, without challenges. The election of US President George Bush was challenged.”

He said the topic for the lecture should not have come at a better time than now when the next election is near and had become a cause for anxiety in the nation.

“The next general election is only a few months away and there is justifiable reason for anxiety. Our broken down electoral system has not given people a lot of confidence. Most are unhappy with the outcome of the last one, scathing criticisms from international and domestic observers trailed the exercise and this has affected our standing in the comity of nations,”  Uduaghan said.

Uduaghan asked:

What went wrong? What is to be done? How do we strengthen these institutions? How do we build credibility?

“In the outpouring of criticisms, politicians, political parties and the electoral commission have not been spared. For me therefore, this is the most appropriate time for action. Confronted with a challenge such as this, we can either do one or two things:

Sit on  hands and grumble and blame everyone, or take responsibility towards the restoration of this broken system.”

In providing some answers, he affirmed that there is no magic pill somewhere that can cure all our problems and end the national malaise about elections and how it is conducted.

To answer the question, the Delta governor said there is a bit of everything, an interconnection of our attitude at the electorate, the system we run and the people who run this system.

According to him, the most important feature of a democracy is “holding credible periodic elections. There can be no government of the people by the people and for the people.”

A credible election, the type we all seek should be an election conducted following due process, accepted by the people as representing their free choice, respected by political contestants as valid representation of their true strength and resistant to obnoxious interferences.

He quoted profusely from the Bola Babalakin panel report, set up by the Ibrahim Babangida Administration in 1985 on the 1983 general elections. All the recommendations were touched during the lecture pointing to the way forward.

He frowned at lack of effective voter education, and endorsed the resurgent campaign of one man one vote as a “strong mobilising tool to educate the people.

“The voting public must hence forth be ready to monitor the process at every stage. Ultimately, the supreme will of the people must prevail, if we are to have a democracy we will all be proud of.”

Uduaghan declared that the battle for change has only just begun. “To be on the right side of history, everyone must play their part. The Civil Society, academia, the new look INEC, party leaders, politicians, the youths aid the elite who prefer to siddon look the media and the general public must be mobilized to the civilian equivalent of war footing against forces that have kept us down over the years.”