Date Published: 05/03/10

Dear Editor,

Iwu should behave gentlemanly

The print media was agog on 30 th April, 2010 that Professor Maurice Iwu who was asked to proceed on a disengagement leave by the acting President two days earlier was at the Aso Rock to see Jonathan but was snubbed. The media also reported that Iwu refused to hand over accordingly to the next in command at the INEC.

Nevertheless, the Saturday Leadership newspaper of 1 st May 2010 reported front page that Barrister Philip Umeadi stepped in as the acting INEC chairman; but this was done unconventionally.  As a result of Iwu’s refusal to hand over (as he reportedly locked his office), there was a forceful entry into his former office.

One wonders why Iwu thought that INEC office is a personal place for him. He forgot that he had served two terms and he took over from someone when the person’s tenure was over; that person did not feel bad and therefore did not behave like Iwu has just done. There was a seamless transition.

The worst election Iwu conducted was in 2007. Elections were fraught with many discrepancies as a result many results were upturned. During the Anmabra 2010 gubernatorial election, in what many thought was a peaceful conduct was later to have been aided by the overwhelming presence of security agents from all over the country, emptied into one state? Therefore, out of one-million-eight-hundred registered voters, only about three-hundred-thousand were able to cast their votes. The rest were disenfranchised and Obi emerged (surely by technical error) to govern about four-million Anambra people with little below eighty thousand votes. By any standard; Obi is governing with unpopular vote casts. People of Anambra awaits the tribunal’s decision but it is looking that what Obi succeeded in doing against Ngige after the 2003 elections, Ngige might give same to Obi this time around but in a different style; a re-run election.

Geoffrey Nnadi

University of Maiduguri

Maiduguri, Borno State

geoffreynnadi@rocketmail.com