[DR SIKIRU ENIOLA]

NIGERIAN ELECTIONS: MY RESPONSE TO CONCERNED FRIENDS IN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY 

BY PST (DR) SUNDAY ADELAJA

Friends and brethren, 

In response to all the fears, concerns and your inquiries regarding the ongoing electoral process in my country of birth Nigeria.

Please, let me appeal to you to set your mind at peace. I will adjourn you not to be overly worried from those internet propaganda by aggrieved losers. 

The truth is that even if the elections will be conducted a thousand times Peter Obi can never win one single one of them, no not this year’s elections.

Nigerians don’t know him enough across the whole nation. He is famous mainly among the educated elites, especially the youths and among people of his eastern region.

In this particular election he will only come third with or without rigging. Especially 

Without rigging.

Believe me I know a few things about elections not only in Nigeria but around the world having lived in Europe for close to 40 years of my life. These people wailing here on the internet are like Donald Trump January 6th christian supporters. Their pastors have prophesied that Peter Obi is the God anointed candidate so they’re ready to bring it to pass even if God himself has refused to do it with his almighty power. 

For your information 

I’ve participated in more than 100 elections and got 600 government officials in our church in Ukraine and I can confidently say that elections are not won by prophecies, prayers, affirmative declarations, shouts and emotions. 

I told all my disciples and followers on Facebook last year that Obi will loose and no amount of shouting or wailing will change that. I even told them that they shouldn’t expect a miracle because elections are won not by prayers, prophecies or miracles. There are other factors needed for that, I learnt this the hard way, because as a young pastor in Europe I also once falsely believed that and failed woefully before I learnt the hard way. So when I speak today they don’t know I speak out of my painful experiences of the past.

Unfortunately, the youth and young enthusiasts on the internet who don’t understand this aspect of life will think Obi can win a general election in Nigeria at this stage in 2023 with his last minute burst into the arena. I understand that they’ve invested their energy, faith and resources into this elections hence it’s incomprehensible for them to even imagine that all their investments are gone just like that.

Hence they have to resolve to the accusations of malpractices. Those who say there was rigging in Lagos against Obi forget that even if he gets a million votes in Lagos Obi still can’t win the general elections. In fact even if he gets 10 million votes he will still not win. The reason is very simple. Our constitution says no matter the amount of votes you get if you don’t win 25% votes in 2/3 of our 36 states you cannot be declared a winner of the presidential elections. It’s similar to the Electoral College rule in America. 

Unfortunately Obi can’t win 25% in 24 states of 36. Right now he has not succeeded in getting that. Without it I’m sorry he’s already lost.

No other way to win without that even if half of the country votes for him, no, not in Nigeria of today.

Forget about rigging, the issue is not about rigging at all it’s about his lack of popularity in almost half of the nation. Talking about rigging, Obi and his supporters could also be accused of same.

I just sent you a video where Obi’s followers wanted to kill somebody who didn’t support his party in eastern part of the country, the video is in your inbox.

I have sent you another video where his followers were trying to bribe the INEC officials. I also sent you another one where his supporters were arrested in Lagos with fake voters materials.

So, the point I’m making is malpractices could have happened from all sides.

But it’s not the reason why Obi won’t win.

He will lose because he is not popular on ground all across the lengths and breaths of our country Nigeria.

Unfortunately,you only mostly listen to his followers on internet because of their pro-active position online. Remember I told you that Obi’s support base is majorly the elites youths and the people of his Igbo region. Yes, the elites can speak on internet but remember that 50% of our people can’t even communicate in English language, some of them don’t even know what internet is, especially in the core northern region of our country. Even though these people are illiterates yet there are those grassroots politicians that they know and follow on the ground. The relationship with those grassroots politicians and the disadvantaged masses is what is called in Nigeria a “structure”. A structure they had built over time, which is a trust relationship between benefactors and beneficiaries. These people are in the majority numbers in our country, while it’s only 20 million Nigerians that are on internet in a country of over 200 million. 

Friends, You have known me personally over the years and you know my track records in Europe. On the other hand you don’t even know those people on the internet whose videos and writings you were sending to me to comment on. I have to say that not all these people are correct in their reasoning and arguments. Some of them I must say are 

simply ignorant and sour losers. Most, I’ll say are sincere and innocent people who don’t know what it takes to win or loose an election. Majority are too young to recollect what used to be called elections in Nigeria. Especially in the days of our former President Olusegun Obasanjo who happens to be from the same state with myself and a father figure also. Yet, in his days elections results were simply written not counted. Moreover, they must be written according to the dictates and caprices of the President himself. Ironically, it’s this same former President Obasanjo that is one of those calling for an abortion of this ongoing electoral process, just because it’s not going his way. It’s worth noting that Obasanjo is one of the promoters of Obi and his Labour Party.

Empirically speaking though, true researchers will find these elections are by far the best and fairest in the modern history of Nigeria, thanks to the use of top notched technologies and the new electoral laws.

It’s no more possible to rig elections as in previous years in Nigeria. 

Let me tell you now that Nigeria will not burn down. More so, Tinubu will win the elections this year even if it’s conducted a thousand times. On the other hand, Obi who is making the most noise won’t even come second even if the elections are held a thousand times. In these particular elections he can only be third. The reason is simple the two leading political parties have spent years to build a nationwide relationship and political affiliations (structure) that clearly give them an edge in these elections. Obi needed a little longer time to do the same, but instead of his followers to take this to heart and go to work on their weaker link, they want to rather believe in an instant miracle. Especially when they have some visible results on ground already. Their attitude is like tomorrow will never come either we take it all today or we tear the nation apart. 

What their leaders are not telling them is that each result that is being declared carries the signature of all party agents at the polling stations that attest to the validation of each results. So their agents already agreed to these results on national television too. Because before the declaration the Chaiman of INEC asks if there are objections or queries and he gives answers and explanations before the declaration. Unfortunately most people have parochial interest that things must be as they want it at all cost. 

This point is further confirmed by the results coming in already. The fact that where Obi is known or popular he won there and where he is not popular he failed woefully such that he could not even get 25% in those places because they don’t know him enough. Unlike, the other two leading parties who easily secured 25% in the required 24 states of the federation unlike Obi who could not even secure 25% in 20 states. Compare that to 33 states where APC’s candidate is already having over 25% of the votes. 

Talking about rigging these elections there are some facts on ground that show that to accuse the ruling party of rigging is to be malicious and disingenuous. 

Here are some of these facts: 

1. The presidential candidate of APC the ruling party could have easily do the rigging in Lagos because Lagos is his strong hold. Just like in Obi’s stronghold the votes recorded for him are up to 90-99% of the votes there. By the way what’s the essence of APC rigging Lagos and still loose it, if someone wants to rig isn’t it to win? Why rig and still allow your opponent to win? Crazy logic isn’t it? The ruling party was supposed to also accused Obi of rigging at their backyard to explain off their loss but they showed a bit of maturity by taking all results in good faith. 

2. The sitting President promised to deliver his stronghold for his party the APC, yet he lost his very own state to PDP yet no crying of foul play. If anything, he should have done everything to rig the elections in favor of his party, yet he didn’t do so. The ruling party should have been shouting of a foul play as the reason why they lost but they have been rather more magnanimous I must say in their loss.

3. The campaign Director of APC the ruling party could not even deliver his state and also lost his senatorial bid. I would think these are those who were to put in all efforts to rig these elections yet they allowed Obi and his party to win in their backyard to their shame 

4. Another fact is that the state with the largest number of votes apart from Lagos is also ruled by the APC and they had hoped to win the state called Kano state in a big way. You know what, they lost it too to another opposition party and still they took it in good faith. Yet you want to tell me their is rigging? Bearing in mind that the Governor of this state is a best friend to the APC candidate.

5. Another Governor who is the most passionate supporter of the APC candidate also lost his state of Kaduna to Obi even though it’s an APC controlled state. This is despite the fact that this particular Governor had publicly vowed to deliver the state to their candidate.

If these top leaders of the party could not rig the elections to protect their reputation and integrity in their own turf how then would they manage to go rig in other peoples territories when they don’t control and have much less power to do anything.

Now let’s compare these to what obtained in Obi’s stronghold where as seen in the video I sent to you the so called Obidients were threatening to linch anyone who votes against Obi right there in polling stations. But apart from the video please judge by these statistics below:

Enugu State

 1. ANINRI LG

Valid votes 11889

LP – 11339

The rest is shared between 18 other parties including the ruling party of that state. The party with all the votes is Lsbour Party of Peter Obi

2. AWGU LG

Valid Votes 20713

LP 19803

The rest is shared between 18 other parties including the ruling party of that state. The party with all the votes is Lsbour Party of Peter Obi

3. Enugu East

Valid Votes: 49729

LP: 48085

The rest is shared between 18 other parties including the ruling party of that state. The party with all the votes is Lsbour Party of Peter Obi

4. Enugu North

VALID VOTES.. 45764

LP. 44666

The rest is shared between 18 other parties including the ruling party of that state. The party with all the votes is Lsbour Party of Peter Obi

5. Enugu South

TOTAL VALID VOTES 39554

LP 38511

The rest is shared between 18 other parties including the ruling party of that state. The party with all the votes is Lsbour Party of Peter Obi

Please judge by yourself where is it looking most likely there was rigging in the two scenarios I have just painted. Bear in mind that I sent you the video where in one of these eastern states the mob were about to kill a gentleman just because they suspected that he voted to the ruling APC. Is this type of intimidation also not equal to election malpractices and rigging?

There abound scary and horror stories from party agents who went to represent their parties in our eastern states. They testify to the fact that the amount of fear and intimidation at the polling stations were so much that they dare not utter a word against the malpractices if you want to escape there alive. This was also attested to by the INEC officials the Copers they all said they had to keep quite to escape with their lives. So to me the cry of the Labour Party is like a pot calling the kettle black. 

Please note that I only quoted results from 5 local governments out of 85 or so local governments in the eastern part of the country, which is the stronghold of Obi. Also note that there is no single state in the whole of the nation where these type of total results were recorded for a single political party. It only happened in the East of Nigeria, yet no one is complaining about this. 

I do hope I’ve been able to bring to your understanding the true picture of what’s going on in my beloved country. Most importantly I hope I’ve been able to allay your fears about the happenings in Nigeria. 

I did this as a sign of my respect for you friends. Please keep Nigeria in your prayers. Thank you so much for your time and attention.

May Nigeria Succeed And May All Her Haters Live Long To Witness It. 

For The Love Of God, Church And Nation

Dr. Sunday ADELAJA

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

 More affirmations cement the reality: African Union Congratulates Tinubu On Election Victory 

In the 2019 Presidential election, there was a total of  “1,289,607 rejected votes nationwide, according to the results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission “ 

However, we have not yet been given a precise figure as to the number of voided votes and where such voided ballots were cast  in the just concluded 2023 Nigeria Presidential Elections

[DR SIKIRU ENIOLA]

A man of faith

THE NATION

Sam Omatseye

March 6, 2023

What Asiwaju Bola Tinubu – the president-elect – just pulled off is a miracle but the merchants of miracles in our midst are not shouting hallelujah. They are still querulous. Rather than see a divine halo in the man’s march to his hallowed dream, they were trying to choreograph the divine poise.

They did not see his seesaw of obstacles and how he scaled one after the other. And, also, how gifts fell on his lap. First, it was in his party, the APC. Once the 2019 polls were over, some elements in Aso Rock as well as opponents in the party ganged up. First step, sack Adams Oshiomhole as chairman. He was seen as Asiwaju Tinubu’s man in the party’s inner sanctum. They did, and then one of the coupists, Akpan Udo-Edehe, announced that they wanted a consensus candidate. In other words, a not-Tinubu as flagbearer for president. It was even decreed that no court suit should ensue. Udo-Edehe limped in his run for APC ticket in Akwa Ibom. He sulked into NNPP.

That was not enough for self-confidence. All eyes focused on the primaries. First, they advanced the idea of an open one. Then they balked. Tinubu had a way with the crowds. The sweepstakes may creep out of their hands into the Jagaban’s web. After all, he was the chief proponent of open primaries. So, let’s make it delegate-driven. It buzzed until they saw again trap falls of disaster. The only feline path to tear him apart was to get the president to appoint a successor in the mould of how Abdullahi Adamu emerged as party chairman. It did not happen from Buhari’s end.

Then, they came with a magic. They wanted a narrow count that disenfranchised lawmakers and many party leaders. Their frustration was that a primary had to happen. Before that, they orchestrated a machine of lies. He did not go to Chicago. A media outfit called Chicago State University to wrest a denial. Rather the school said he was not just a student but a distinguished one. They brought drug hobgoblin even after a U.S. government’s denial. They said he was not fit enough. He beat all contestants hopping from state to state. He even beat his chest over his peripatetic prowess when he met Niger State delegates. His opponents were waiting for him to faint and fly out in a medical craft. Nature failed their malice.

On primary day, some party men rallied behind Senate president as the anointed pick. But it floundered. In fact, some Villa elements wanted Buhari to change his mind at the last moment. One of them asked the service chiefs to see Buhari for a last-minute order. One of the chiefs insisted the president already gave them a go-ahead to conduct a fair primary. But a cabal insider insisted all three should see him. They did. They met an irritated boss who asked them to proceed to the stadium to conduct a fair poll.

He did not only win but handily, flummoxing all those who predicted his Nunc dimittis. He had before then enriched our political language with Emilokan. Some called it outburst. But it busted the cabal. As the campaign wore on, he became a source of immense derision. They mocked his body fluid, his height, his walk, his sitting, his standing, his words, his accent, his language, his faith, his paternity and maternity, his roots. But they were mocking his maker. And God said, God is mocked. If he had lost, a newspaper was waiting to appropriate O lule for him. But they wouldn’t employ it for their dazed candidate.

Weeks to the polls, they saw an inevitability, and they devised a new obstacle. Fuel and cash. They would blame his party for putting Nigerians through the crucible. Tinubu will pay for them. The elements in the villa were accused but they had no shame. They persisted. Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar loved the cynical play because they expected the scarcity to knock out the Jagaban. We experienced in Tinubu on this matter what political scientists call loyal opposition, when he spoke under warrior Lisabi’s shadow in Abeokuta about those who wanted him to fail. El Rufai encountered later.

But in the divine strain must be seen a few factors. One, the APC northern governors, who were this essayist’s personal pick for persons of the year in 2022, insisted the next president must come from the south. Two, Obi came in as a gift by wiping out Atiku’s southern entitlements in Lagos, Southeast and south-south. Three, Wike and the G-5 factor. The forces were aligning. For the LP man even the APC did not hide the permutation that he was a gift for Tinubu. Yet, PDP and Labour Party in their mutual obstinacy united for Tinubu. Kwankwaso, the Kano landlord, also left PDP. They broke into three. How could pieces make mincemeat of a whole? The APC left them alone according to the words of Napoleon: “Never interrupt your enemies when they are making a mistake.”

The Obidient movement was like Asahel in the scripture who, like Fela’s joro jaro joro, ran but looked neither left nor right with no weapon and plunged straight into a sword. It is a movement without eyes or ears but legs of a flailing antelope. Like flies following the sweet scent of death in a corpse, they buzzed into their own electoral oblivion.

Buoyed by false prophets and ethnic bigotry, it believed it could force a victory on a diverse nation. They forget that southwest and North coalition gave Buhari his victory. They didn’t have that heft. Christians and southeast alone is a narrow coalition. If the Atiku votes up north of Muslims with the southwest were in contention with the Obidients, a shellacking would have drowned Labour. Having shaved Atiku in the southeast and southsouth, Atiku relied only on the north for big numbers. Obi’s cynical move gave us no ideology. If it did, it romped in a narrow radius.

The United States has a religious and white coalition. But it falls short. They align with business with the concept of low taxes and small government. Nixon enunciated the Christian and cultural nexus into what he called the southern strategy. It is exhibited in the G’s: God, gays and guns.

The prophets hoodwinked their followers, acting like God’s spokesmen. I asked on TVC Breakfast Show, if that were the case, what happened with Father Hyacinth Alia of Benue State who supported APC and triumphed for Tinubu? Did it mean the holy spirit was at war with itself? God forbid. As Jeremiah wrote, they were speaking from their imaginations. He said, “A wonderful and terrible thing is committed in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests bear rule by their means. And my people love to have it so.”

Men like that are a disgrace to the word of God. They are spiritual hustlers who want to fill their halls and build gigantic buildings as though the truth of God relies on marble palaces made with hands. Just as we no longer rely on physical circumcision but the foreskin of the heart, the love of God is in the heart, not in the ululations of false prophets. Their entrance does not bring light, but lights-out. For all who prophesied, Paul said, “though there be prophecies, they shall fail.” And of course, their tongues shall cease.

The Bible says let the wheat and tares dwell together, not duel together. When the polls results started trickling in, the Obidients were exulting because they were cherry-picking areas where they were doing well. The polls were credible then. They forgot the big picture. They were happy to hear that Lagos fell, that a sort of partial domino fall was dawning: Buhari lost Katsina, Ayade lost in Cross River, Lalong in Plateau, Adamu in Nasarawa, El Rufai in Kaduna, et al. Translation: a credible proceeding. Twenty governors lost their states. But when Obidients lost the full count, they say no sir, it was rigged. Of course, it was no perfect poll. A man like hoary Obasanjo was sulking like an anarchist. The problem with the Obidients is that where they lost, they didn’t lose. Where they won, they didn’t win enough. Maybe they want to win 150 percent of southeastern states.

As for some of my eastern brethren, they thought it was all right that a Tinubu had zero percent in one state and one percent in two states there. They have to understand that democracy is about building bridges and not erecting bubbles of bluster.

It is the sort of puffy air they are bringing to Lagos. A territorial braggadocio does not make peace in another person’s patrimony. Many of them work here in peace, but a swagger of proprietary assertion by a good number of them does not make for peace.

The LP man was an interesting candidate. He was a man who did not rely on his track record or vision. His followers did not watch him except his old wristwatch. When he lied, it was an act of human grace. When Tinubu erred, it was a big, unforgivable gaffe. His statistical illusions made the LP candidate a wizard. All those who hated Tinubu channeled their anger for the LP man. He did not have to be a saint. They canonised him and gave him the holy scent, including our pastors who loved the holy spirit so much that they did not see what was coming.

Some writers and commentators went abroad to make claims for which they have no evidence. One of them was writer Chimamanda Adichie who wrote a New York Times piece out of rage rather than method. She turned anecdotes into a pattern, history into tendentious material, bigotry into grace. She probably thought she was writing a novel. But facts, even when fictionalized, have their place. She is often quick to toady up to the west for affirmation. She is entitled to her servitude, but she should not replace research with sentiment. As in her New York Times effusions. She needed to know that we had only a fraction of the polling stations with problems. And every polling station had result sheets signed by party agents at various levels. We need to ascertain whether some people are wailing because they did not have the chance to hack the server. Writing as though her Half of A Yellow Sun, she whipped up a spectre of refugees going to America. No bloodshed here, please.

The polls may not be perfect; hence the law speaks of substantial compliance, a point the Nigerian Bar Association President noted in his assessment. At long last, we shall accept that elections, like this one, tumble social hierarchies by affirming the royalty of the citizen. In the words of the boisterous American statesman Huey Long, “every man a king but no one wears a crown.” The coronation belongs to the Nigerian people.

When he said, emilokan, Tinubu turned out to be more prophetic than any prophet in the land. It was an act of faith as novelist Dostoyevsky wrote, “In a realist, faith does not spring from miracle but miracle out of faith.” Tinubu was the man of faith.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Magnificent

Truly beautyful

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[Dr. Oohay]

So far, probably the best review of the Feb 25 (2023) Naija presidential election: succinct, thoughtful, and honest.

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