Uwais Report Can’t Guarantee Credible Elections In 2011-Balarabe Musa

Despite calls by many Nigerians for the wholesale adoption and implementation of the recommendations of the Mohammed Uwais Electoral Reforms Committee, Second Republic Governor of Old Kaduna State, Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa, says the report was not the panacea to Nigeria’s electoral woes but Nigerians themselves.

Musa argued in an interview with The TIDE in Umuahia at the weekend that the Uwais report could not guarantee free, fair and transparent election is 2011 as many people erroneously believed.

The foremost opposition leader in Nigeria rather urged Nigerians to seize the opportunity offered by the on-going amendment of the 2006 Electoral Act by the National Assembly to prevail on the lawmakers to enact a law that would guarantee credible polls next year. He insisted that no electoral reform would yield positive results unless something concrete was done to reduce the influence of money politics, elections in the country would continue to be for the highest bidder no matter electoral reforms

Musa, the National Chairman of the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP) as well as the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), maintained that there was nothing new in the Uwais Report, describing it as a set up to give the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to continue holding unto power.

In an interview with newsmen in Umuahia at the weekend, Musa who was on an official visit to the Abia State chapter of the CNPP, said “the establishment of the Uwais Electoral Reform Committee and its recommendations, if you examine it very well, are really a set up, deliberately arranged to make Nigerians accept less than what can bring about free, fair and transparent elections.”

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “the Nigerian politicians in particular, are apolitically asking for the implementation of the so-called Uwais report. The Uwais report has not contributed anything credible.”

To buttress his claims, the opposition leader said right from the beginning, elections in Nigeria are rigged, not only by the use of thugs, but by principally using money powers. “Today if you have money, you can organise and get yourself declared the winner of any election. And there is a lot of loose money around in Nigeria, 100 per cent of it, stolen money.”

“In short, what I am telling you is that no matter how the electoral process is, as long as the law does not do anything about this stolen money in the hands of thieves who have political ambition, there would never be free and fair elections because those with this money will use it to be elected from the local government council to the Presidency. “It (Uwais report) is a set up to give the PDP the opportunity to emerge. If you do not deal with the deciding role of money power in elections, PDP can even win a legitimate election because it can buy every one.”

He also faulted the Uwais Committee recommendations on independent candidature, describing it as being contemptuous of the Nigerian politician. He said the recommendation that an independent candidate running for any office should first of all deposit a tenth of the election expenses allowed by law for any elective office would put such contest beyond the reach of the poor.

“We have made our investigations. We found that Nigerians should not be deceiving themselves that there will be free, fair and transparent elections in 2011. But Nigerian can force this to happen. At this moment, there is one chance: the constitution review by, the National Assembly (NASS) which is preparing now to amend the 2006 Electoral Act, let us to talk to the NASS as they are still conducting public hearing, let us tell them what Nigeria needs to have free, fair and transparent election.

“If we do not continue to fight at NASS and they come up with something that will not lead to a free, fair and transparent election and, of course, a legitimate government, then we will be blamed,” he said.

He said that the socio economic system in control of every development in Nigeria has produced a political leadership that is not credible and has brought about the leadership of the country by thieves.