A Conversation With Maurice Iwu

By Wale Okediran

Maurice Iwu “The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

THE VIP lounge of the Leopold Senghor International Airport, Dakar, Senegal was the least place I expected to meet, perhaps, Nigeria’s most controversial man of the moment, Prof. Maurice Iwu. But there he was that balmy February afternoon waiting to catch a flight to Conakry, Guinea for an undisclosed official engagement.

The last time we met was at the premises of the National Assembly when the House Committees on Finance, Electoral Matters and Appropriation had invited the INEC Chairman to defend his budget prior to the highly contentious April 2007 elections. That day, he was very ebullient in high spirits and full of fervour and confidence as he answered our questions.

However, less than a year later at the waiting room of the Dakar Airport, he was not that good-looking. He had lost some weight - even appearing slightly shrunken in his jacket and shirt attire. As we exchanged pleasantries, he appeared weary and aged. He cut the picture of a boxer who had taken too many punches and was praying for the bell to signal the end of the contest.

Also in the waiting room were two other highly placed Nigerians - one a retired Army General noted for his fiery anticorruption posture, as well as a former Ambassador. The setting was a writer’s delight and I was praying that our flights would be delayed long enough for what I hoped would be a very educative if not combustive encounter.

Initially, our conversation centred on the issue of the HIV/AIDS advocacy, which was the object of my trip to Banjul, The Gambia. It seemed that the professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry was more interested in speaking about HIV than politics, as he spoke glowingly of his past activities in the research into the herbal treatment of HIV/AIDS. He advised me to visit the Molango Centre, a medical institution based in Fatick (about 150 kilometres from Dakar) where he claimed that the herbal treatment of the HIV scourge had reached an advanced stage.

And as the discussion continued to dwell on HIV, I earnestly looked for an appropriate opening to take up the INEC chief on some political issues.

He offered the opportunity himself a few minutes later when he put the blame of the electoral malpractices that accompanied the last elections on the Nigerian political class, whom he accused of having an insatiable appetite for power and would do everything possible to get to office.

According to him, “Both sides of the political divide didn’t want the election to hold, but I had to stick to my guns.”
In the process, he observed that some of his aides had taken sides on the issue making it difficult for him to know whom to trust. This was what dictated his decision to contract the job of printing the ballot papers to the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company.
He denied my allegations that some election results were announced in Abuja while elections were still going on in some states of the federation. As he put it, “The announcements were based on the results sent in by resident electoral officers from return forms duly signed by representatives of all political parties at the different collation centres.”
The INEC chief observed that the decision to announce such results from Abuja was predicated on security reports that some political parties had procured radio transmitters with which they were going to announce their own versions of the election results.
According to him, he did all he could to make sure that the election was not a one-side show by trying to settle rifts among the opposition parties. At the end of the whole exercise, he felt bad that the election was skewed to the side of the party in power.
He equally debunked the retired General’s observation of the rumours making the rounds that he was heavily bribed to win the elections for the ruling party.
When pressed further on the issue, he retorted, “I am not happy that a good intellectual discourse is not going on regarding the last elections. All I have been reading in the press are rumours and emotional outbursts.
“For example, nobody has asked how some state election commissioners were appointed and how it was possible for some opposition parties to win in some states.”
The retired General in his own remarks heaped a lot of blame for the confusion over the eligibility or otherwise of some candidates on EFCC’s “selective anticorruption crusade” under Nuhu Ribadu. He believed that Ribadu’s decision to go after some political candidates on the eve of the elections was part of the script written by the ruling party for Ribadu’s execution.
On the way forward, the retired General believed that the solution to electoral fraud in the country was a constitutional amendment which would correct certain lapses in the document. He believed that as a living document, the constitution should be regularly reviewed just as India had done over 50 times since its independence.
This view was also supported by the Ambassador. I, however, criticized the suggestion since I believed that the essential problem with Nigeria was not the constitution per se but the way it has always been bastardised by the powers that be.
My observation generated another round of animated discussion and before long, emotions and voices rose, prompting my Senegalese colleague to jokingly remind us that we were not in Nigeria.
Obviously warming to the debate, the INEC boss suggested leaving INEC out of the conduct of any election at the state level so that it could concentrate on its proper supervisory role. He also advocated for the staggering of future elections in order to enable INEC the ability to marshall all its resources to handle such elections.
And as Prof. Iwu continued his pontifications, he tried to paint the picture of a misunderstood and fair- minded electoral arbiter, a far cry from the portrait of “a devil incarnate” which many com-mentators have painted him. I told him as much. He laughed, throwing his head backwards and for the umpteenth time, lamented what he considered to be “a dearth of cerebral debate on the last election”.
He called my attention to the late Prof. Ayodele Awojobi whom he respected so much for his critical and objective views on national issues. “Since Awojobi’s demise, all we have been treated to on the pages of newspapers as far as national issues are concerned are puerile and unintelligent opinions,” he added.
He sounded so convincing that for a moment, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Such a position coming from a man whom many Nigerians have come to see as the architect of our last “comedy of errors” was absurd to say the least.
However, much as Maurice Iwu may try to defend himself, with the overwhelming public and international outcry over the shoddy performance of INEC in the last elections, he certainly has a formidable task on his hands.
In fact, when I intimated some of my friends of my decision to write this piece, only very few of them gave my suggestion a grudging approval.
Most of them were of the view that Maurice Iwu was a “bad story” who should not be touched with a foot-long-pole, warning me not to “lend a veneer of credibility to a man who conducted the worst election in Nigeria’s history”.
“You must not be seen as an apostle of revisionist image laundering for a diabolical cabal,” one of them added.
Another former female federal legislator was even more acerbic. “How does one even have a conversation with Iwu talk less of allowing him the opportunity to defend himself? How can anyone write anything about such a man that treated Nigerians in the manner he did? If he had an iota of decency, he should have committed suicide by now,” the lady thundered.
As the conversation at the Dakar airport continued on that auspicious evening, my flight was suddenly announced. And as I said goodbye to the INEC chief, he appeared more relaxed and happier than at the beginning of the conversation. It was as if the brief encounter had allowed him the opportunity to unload some of the burden on his chest. “Don’t forget to visit that herbal hospital,” he reminded me as I took my leave. He gave the impression of a cassanova who was already tired of his mistress and was eager to go back to his former love. However, with the current mood in the country, Nigerians do not seem ready to allow him that luxury.
• Dr. Okediran is the President, Association of Nigerian Authors.