A Nigerian-American professor and media scholar, Farooq Adamu Kperogi has revealed that the late former Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, Abba Kyari outsmarted those he described as ‘owners of Nigeria by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) during the 2019 presidential election.
Kperogi in an article titled: “Owners of Nigeria” Have Been and Can Be Defeated,” said these owners of Nigeria have been manipulating the selection of Nigeria’s political leaders, particularly presidents from 1999 to 2019 when their wings were clipped.
“From 1999 up until 2019, this group determined who became president. But the late Abba Kyari caused their mystique to evaporate in 2019.”
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According to him, this amorphous group of crafty old stagers with enduringly deep roots in the structure of Nigeria include such people as TY Danjuma, IBB, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Aliyu Gusau, Obasanjo, etc.
“Like Dele Momodu rightly pointed out, the group endorsed Atiku Abubakar because they justifiably feared that Buhari was leading Nigeria to a ruinous future that it may not recover from.
“However, although Atiku did convincingly win the 2019 election by nearly 2 million votes, Abba Kyari used INEC’s Mahmood Yakubu, a man he single handedly and strategically appointed, to thwart Atiku’s victory– and nothing happened.
Kperogi, also a newspaper columnist, stated in the article that nearly three years after the election, INEC has still not given a state-by-state breakdown of the result of the election on its website like Attahiru Jega’s INEC did.
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“INEC has not had the courage to share the raw data of the election with the public because the numbers won’t add up. The numbers won’t add up because they are not even remotely faithful to the outcome of the votes cast on Election Day.
“An indication of the discomfiture of the “owners of Nigeria” about the outcome of the 2019 election was evident in the fact that no past living head of state or president, except the unfailingly genial Yakubu Gowon, honored Buhari’s inauguration. They all withheld their symbolic stamps of approval from it. That was a first.
“Josef Stalin once said, “I consider it completely unimportant who… will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”
“Instead of begging the “owners of Nigeria” to give him a chance to be president, Egbon Dele Momodu should tweak Abba Kyari’s formula: influence how the vote is counted.
“Since he can’t influence Mahmood Yakubu like Abba Kyari did, he should lend his weight to calls for transparent, on-the-spot electronic transmission of election results, which should be stored on a server that INEC can’t disown at will later—like it did in 2019.
“If that becomes institutionalized, everyday Nigerians, and not a shadowy cabal of influence peddlers, could become the “owners of Nigeria.”