By Juliet EBIRIM
The ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, were once against the use of Permanent Voters Card, PVC, and campaigned for the use of Temporary Voters Card, TVC. That didn’t sell. They mounted a campaign that INEC, Professor Atihiru Jega must go. That didn’t sell too.

The campaign now is for INEC to drop Card Reader Machine, a device that is meant to check rigging. This was hot in the media during the week and veteran journalist, Jimi Disu, in his daily newspaper reviews on Classic FM had the following to say on Tuesday:

I have a funny feeling about PDP and these elections. It’s just like a spoilt child looking for excuses not to go to school. The irony is that for 16 years, we’ve had a PDP government in place and we’ve had a PDP president for 16 years. The current INEC plan was constituted by a PDP government. First of all, it was the issue of security, later we had the issue of PVCs. Now, we have the issue of card readers. What they are telling Nigerians is that the INEC they put in place is poorly prepared for the elections. That’s enough for them to quit government. It means that the PDP government, in itself, has failed. It’s an admission of failure.

Jimi Disu

They should stop behaving like spoilt children and go in for the elections and let’s see what the results are. Instead of giving excuses day in, day out, confusing people. What else do you want INEC to do? You can never get 100% PVC distribution, you can never get 100% performance on the use of card readers. In fact, you can never get 100% on the use of ballot papers and so on. You will always leave a margin of error. Are you going to say because POSs fail, we should stop using ATM cards. In any system in the world, there are flaws here and there. The only being that doesn’t make mistakes at all is God. They are just behaving like spoilt children with all these excuses they are giving.

Imoke said somewhere that as far as he was concerned, “INEC has failed completely”. If they failed completely, then the government has failed completely. It is the government that conducts elections. INEC was appointed by the government. Every time they accuse Jega, I just sit back and laugh. You appointed Jega and 36 representatives. Are you now saying that they are headed to the same direction? If they are headed to the same direction and they were appointed by you, then there’s a problem.

We’re not fools here and I maintain that this election is not going to be won either by discrediting Jega or by raining curses and abuses on your opponent. It’s going to be won by Nigerians voting for who they think will get them out of the current quagmire that we are in. That’s the crucial point. I’m glad that on one hand the federal government has been trying to publicize what Jonathan has been doing for the young people and all that. That’s a step in the right direction. We are beginning to see that Jonathan has done this and done that. That’s what they should focus on rather than focusing on non issues, hate campaign and all that.

They’re not showing reservations about the cards. The headline is very clear; INEC poorly prepared for elections – PDP Governors. They’re discrediting the election before it takes place. What if they win? Supposing the PDP wins? Will they be claiming victory for a poorly prepared election?

Ivory Coast Former First Lady Simone Gbagbo aged 65, has been jailed for 20years for her role in the violence that followed the 2010 elections. She was charged with undermining state security.

So she will leave jail when she’s 85. There’s a lesson to be learnt from what has happened to Simone Gbagbo. She never shot anybody and I don’t think it was said that she had a gun in her hands. She’s being jailed for 20 years for her role in the violence that followed the 2010 elections. These should be a pointer to all our politicians down the line that whatever you say now counts.

God forbid, if there should be violence after these elections, some people are going to be sharing cells with Simone Gbagbo for statements that they have made now. So we need to be careful with all these careless talks. Don’t forget that these are not Nigerian courts where you can settle the judges and prosecution. These are international courts.

You can’t prolong the case, no tricks, no long adjournments. Our politicians need to learn that now. Everything that is being said now is being documented by some people. There are certain people in the world who are documenting the various statements, documentaries and adverts that are being made. They are saying to themselves “Should there be any problem in this country, these are the people that are going to be held responsible”. So we need to learn a lesson from this. A word is enough for the wise.

Less than one week after delivering Obasanjo’s birthday lecture, Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, Chairman of the multi-million naira SURE -P scheme, the government’s much criticized answer to the crushing unemployment in the land, got a boot.

One of the opportunities I thank God for in my life is the fact that at a very young age, I was able to work as a Senior Manager in a Unilever Company. I remember we had something then that was being used that is called the Green Field Exercise. What it does is that it separates the person from the job. The rumor here is that Agwai was removed because he attended Obasanjo’s party and he said something about ‘change’. Luckily, nobody was there to ‘stone him’.

The man was employed by the federal government of Nigeria and the president is just a custodian. Was he good at his job? Only the federal government can answer that. Is this the way this country wants to go forward? You have to be loyal to the Office of the President. But if this is the way this government wants to go, so be it. Let’s assume for example, that I work for a bank and my MD has divorced his wife and they are not on talking terms.

I am a General manager in the bank and I happen to be related to his wife and she’s having her 50th birthday. Will you now tell me not to go for my cousin’s birthday party because my boss is going to be unhappy? And then I get fired! That’s a correlation. It’s left for Nigerians to ask themselves if this is the way a government should be run.

House of Representatives demand details of sanctions by National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC)

I know in the parastatals across the board, the politicians usually put the civil servants under a lot of pressure. I know it’s going to very difficult for the Director-General of the NBC to pass sanctions on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) also owned by the government thereby indicting them. So I’m glad the reps are stepping in to provide a platform for the NBC to do the job they are being paid to do. We need to bring sanity into the system and therefore, the NBC should be allowed to do its job.

I’m sure that they’ll also be under a lot of pressure from the top. We are not going to have a good democratic system if various organs are not allowed to do their jobs professionally.