Plans to rig presidential poll exposed!

In what now appears to be an ego problem for Professor Atahiru Jega, National Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC,

his messianic pursuit of the lopsided allocation of 30,000 Polling Units, PUs, fresh strong signals suggest that his ability to deliver on successful general elections next year may be suffering a massive discount on account of the many deceptive postulations that he recently made on the matter.

This report will show clearly that but for an agenda that is at best confusing as well as suspect, it should be clear to all lovers of democracy that Jega may have concluded plans to deliver elections molded in a furnace and shrouded in secrecy.

The inherent danger in this fools’ errand is that just as the INEC boss went into the April 2, 2011, elections with misplaced optimism, so is he going into the 2015 general elections with deceptive assurances on a grander scale based on the advantage he has already handed his northern region.

Just after voting on April 2, 2011, journalists asked President Goodluck Jonathan for his thoughts about the process. An anxious Jonathan expressed joy that “so far, everything is going smoothly”.

But had Jonathan chosen to cross-check from the man in whose hands the destiny of a guesstimated 73.5million voters laid, Professor Attahiru Jega, the INEC Chairman, Nigeria’s President would have discovered, rather embarrassingly, that Jega had failed the nation.  Before that fateful day, Sunday Vanguard had made some revelations about the contract award for voting materials in context, content and volume per figures, the profits therefrom and why Nigerians needed to pay more attention to Jega’s inclination, especially in the light of the tens of billions of tax payers’ money involved – N30,000 (that figure of 30,000), for instance, was paid to each of the about 360,000 registration agents, 8,000 of whom were INEC staff.

It was a flustered Jonathan who was to hear on the airwaves like other Nigerians that Jega had canceled the elections and postponed them. Jega’s statement read in part that morning:

“As you know, the National Assembly (House of Representatives and Senate) elections are supposed to be taking place as I speak. You would also have noticed that things have not proceeded smoothly as expected with the elections.