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24 May 2009 Gusau — Former Presidential aspirant
and Marafan Sokoto, Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi has said the
report of the Justice Mohammed Uwais led-Electoral
Reform Commit-tee, even if fully implemented, may not
solve the problems facing Nigeria's electoral system.'
Shinkafi in an exclusive interview with Nigerian
media at the weekend said Nigeria's electoral woes are
being compounded largely because those saddled with
the responsibility of being unbiased umpires take part
in the rigging process. This group, according to him,
include security agencies and administrative officers
of a given locality.
"I am not being pessimistic, but no matter how much
we change the law, unless we tackle the problem at the
polling station level, at the ward level, at the state
and national collation level, we are not going to win
(the rigging war)," he said.
He regretted that undue emphasis has been laid on
correcting the electoral law, rather than changing the
attitude of politicians and seeking the best
democratic principles that suit our clime. He said it
is time Nigerians tasked our scholars to come out with
alternative democratic culture most suitable for the
nation's culture, even if it means jettisoning the
acclaimed one man one vote concept.
"In the speeches of our leaders, the emphasis has
always been on the constitution. There is nothing
wrong with the constitution. There is nothing wrong
with the electoral law. The problem is the
(politicians). Nigerians are difficult people to rule.
"Unfortunately when the present administration came
to take up the issue of election reform, it overloaded
the panel with lawyers. But the problem is not the
law, it is the politician who cooks up the number of
votes he needs to rig election from one remote local
government or cluster of local governments to another.
"Sometimes he delays the results, or as the Ekiti
scenario shows, some of the electoral functions were
performed in a police station. That is what the reform
programme should have tackled, not the law. With due
respect to the people in the (Uwais) panel, which
comprised of astute scholars, astute judges and astute
public figures, the problem that is inherent in the
issue is strange to them, they don't know it.
"None of them to my knowledge, has spearheaded the
aspiration of a party in order to make sure that it
wins an election and how those aspirations are
accomplished, sometimes by hook or by crook. That was
one mistake we made. We have now sent bills to the
National Assembly to correct the pattern of
registration of parties and other issues. But those
are not the issues," the former DG of the National
Security Organisa-tion (NSO) said.
On the crisis in the Niger Delta, Shinkafi tasked
all Nigerians to be involved in seeking solution to
the problem, as he said other parts of the country
have not done enough to bring an end to the crisis.
Reminded that the Federal Government has taken
initiatives to involve Nigerians in seeking solution
to the problems, Shinkafi said there was no concrete
proof of that yet. "Are we sure that it is being made
a Nigerian problem in the sense of the whole country
having dialogue with the Niger Delta? Also, is Nigeria
conceding to Niger Delta that it is an entity of this
country as much as other zones? Also is the sense of
evolution of leadership in the region is firmly in the
hands of the people of the region, rather than on
remote authorities in Abuja or elsewhere? Are you sure
these things are being done? I am not sure. "It is
unfortunate that when the issue of amnesty to the
militants is being discussed, the government is being
forced to revert to the former approach of a solution
through the use of armed forces and police. And these
are issues about people who take refuge within
communities. As you know, there is nothing in law
enforcement as difficult as taking on deviants who
take refuges inside the communities. So if government
is to take them on, lots of intelligence must be
deployed. So we ought to exhaust thoroughly all
options of solution through means other than the
military," he said.
EsinIslam.Com
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