Less than a month to the April general elections, Salome, widow of Professor Eme Awa, who was chairman of the defunct National Electoral Commission (NEC), during the General Ibrahim Babangida led-transition has revealed how former military dictator unsuccessfully induced the late Awa to truncate the transition programme before Awa was eventually sacked.
She also offered her view on the chairman of the National Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Maurice Iwu, whom she said, is a man of integrity. Like her late husband, Mrs Awa said Iwu would never yield to pressures to compromise his office.
Speaking with the benefit of hindsight, Mrs Awa, a member of the Eme Awa Institute for Studies in Governance, advised Iwu to act on the right side of posterity and the Nigerian masses, even at the risk of suffering the same fate like her late husband, whom she said was sacked by Babangida, for refusing to compromise the regime’s transition programme.
Her words: "Let me give you a personal example, when my husband was not yielding to what they wanted him to do, he was given incentives. Some people came with an architectural drawing of a mansion and said, they ask us to ask you to chose anywhere in Nigeria to have this house built for you and give you the keys. They asked him, what is your problem, this is what your position deserves."
Stressing that Iwu meant well for the country she said: "What I can tell you, as I said earlier is that, there is no chairman of electoral commission, who does not want to succeed. I pray that Iwu will succeed, and I know that he is a determined person. I have known Iwu for a long time, right from the University of Nigeria, even then, I knew him as a very determined academician, who know his onions. And I still believe that he is still the same Iwu that I knew then. Lets wait and see what will happen. From his utterances, you can tell that he is doing what he can do."
She urged the INEC boss not to be, "disturbed by the seeming mindset of most Nigerians, of fear that, may be, Iwu will disappoint us, lets pray for him. It is God that will strengthen him to do what is right. We should not condemn him, because his desire is that the election of 2007 will be a most successful election. You have heard what he said, that, if it is the last thing he would do, he would do it to make sure Nigeria has the most successful election.
"I feel that, he went too far to even use his life, and when a man says a word like that, take him very serious. We should support him with our prayers, because if Nigeria succeeds, it would be the beginning of a new history of our ability as a people to conduct free and fair elections," she added.
Mrs Awa further counseled Iwu to stand firm, in the face of overwhelming pressure, to act against the Nigerian masses.
She stressed that there was no person in the position of the chairman of the electoral commission, that would not want to do what is right.
"Everyone that has occupied that seat in the past, or the person that is there now wants to do what is right, but most of the times, they are overwhelmed by pressure. They may think of the common Nigerian or the masses, but they may not be able to withstand the people bent on compromising the process.
Mrs Awa recalled the reaction of her husband, whom, she said, asked, "What will I tell Nigerians if I take this from you? If I am not to pay for it now, you wait till I am ready to pay for it with my money, by then I would have saved enough to build such a house. But if I don’t have that kind of money and I have this house, what would I tell Nigerians?
"From that point on, he became a bad person in the eyes of his employers, he was shunned and rejected. It was so bad that, at a time, he went to see Aikhomu and in his usual manner he was impeccably dressed, prompting a General he met in Aikhomu’s office to compliment his dressing, saying, Prof, you are always impeccably dressed. Aikhomu said, don’t mind him, he is just pretending, he does not know that he is old. The people in government became very antagonistic towards him," she recalled.
Mrs Awa stated further, that "at another time, the husband was asked to disqualify a candidate that had been voted into office, because they had a problem with the man, but my husband said no, I do not have the power to sack anyone; then they said, if he cannot sack, we will sack, he said okay, you can sack me, because the constitution does not give me the power to remove anybody from office, only the people can impeach such a person. That was when he really entered their bad book.
Mrs Awa further said: "On the day, he was to be removed, he was not officially informed about the meeting, he was only invited in fifteen minutes to the end of the meeting, he was called in and they said yes, we have received complaints from some electoral commissioners against you; Of course, these were officials they got on their side, mostly those who wanted to abuse their offices and my husband refused.
"They all conspired with the military president then, who said well, you know Awa, we heard that you want to introduce another kind of system, when in fact you forced us to have two party system. But my husband said, I did not, it was the recommendation of the political bureau. He said, Your Excellency, may be you forgot. He said well, we want to tell you, that, this job is finished, we thank you and we thank everybody."
In a bid to rubbish the late NEC Chairman, Mrs Awa said, agents of the Babangida regime, "went through our bank accounts, they did everything in search of what could be used to blackmail my husband, but they found nothing, except that, we brought two party system, which was the recommendation of the political bureau. I pray that the people there now will have the courage to stand for the truth. If you do not have money and you have good name, it is better. I have no car, no house, except a small place in Lagos. As a widow, I board buses and taxis and my husband had worked so much for this nation."
