You need Java to see this applet.
News, Politics, Sports
about Nigeria and all Africa
Custom Search
Get our News Update
fast, download  AE
Toolbar!
Click here to
download Now!
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
News
Online media
Newspapers
Evil Genius!
ADVERTISEMENT
____________________________________
By James Lornumbe
African Examiner | June 05, 2011
Letters
How sitting state governors rigged back
| More
Get our News Update fast,  download African Examiner  Toolbar
Click here to download Now!
US Visa Lottery cancels
results of 2012 lottery earlier
announced
By Our Reporter
African Examiner | May 15, 2011
SGF: Group Canvasses
Support For Agbakoba
By Chuks Ehirim, Abuja
African Examiner | May 15, 2011
Government moves to
return 9 million school
dropouts to schools
By Tunde Babalola, Abuja
African Examiner | May 14, 2011
Copyrights © 2007  All Rights Reserved African Examiner Online is owned by RD Frontline LLC, a state of Maryland registered company
P. O. Box 11582 Baltimore, MD, 21229, USA Tel: 443-904-1239. Editor-In-Chief: Oludare Sunday Fase
Leave a Comment
Disclaimer: Comments posted on this site do not reflect the views of African
Examiner.com.  Please avoid abusive, vulgar, racist or rude words. Any comment that
violates this term of use will be deleted and may be banned. Send report of any misuse
to editor@africanexaminer.com. Thanks
HTML Comment Box is loading comments...
_______________________________________________________________________
Like all virtual surfers, I cannot thank the inventors of the internet enough.
Reason: I had to read the opinion written by one Tarkighir Tor-Ifyer, and entitled,
“Benue: Suswam’s victory raises more questions than answers.” Actually, I also
have to thank one James  Uloko, who wrote a rejoinder to the piece in Peoples
Daily and Leadership sometimes back. Otherwise, I am not likely to have seen
it, and might most probably have missed that wonderful recollection of events on
that ill-fated day when anti-democratic forces conspired to arrest the march of
history.

Although he accused the said Tor-Ifyer of suffering from “gross factual error and
crass misrepresentation of facts,” I found Tor-Ifyer a rather engaging writer who
took time to give a poignant and encyclopedic account of what transpired on the
Black Wednesday Gov. Gabriel Suswam was declared winner of the
governorship poll by the officials of the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC). The reason being that as a Makurdi resident, I was in town
when INEC finally announced Suswam as winner. Of course, I, like many others,
recall that it was not actually an announcement per se, but a mere confirmation
as Radio Benue had already announced Suswam’s “victory” as early as mid-
afternoon of that day.

Nor do I agree that the Tor-Ifyer piece was itself not a study in informed
commentary/analysis, but “nefarious propaganda” or “self-delusion” as Uloko
would want the unsuspecting public to believe.

But then, Uloko advertised himself as the “Director of Media and Publicity,
Benue State PDP Campaign Team,” so it makes sense that he should continue
with PDP/Suswam’s disingenuous subscription to the Goebellian principle ie
that if you repeat a lie for as many times as possible, then it becomes true.
But Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, to whom the likes of Uloko bow in piteous
worship, did not fare long or well in his duplicitous trade; he did not only fall,
most ingloriously, from the heights of usurped power, he committed suicide! One
can only hope that the road the Ulokos and their masters have elected to take is
not the road to political perdition or political suicide.

Ordinarily, in spite of my discomfort with certain aspects of Uloko’s rejoinder, I
might have let sleeping dogs lie. But he took too many liberties with facts, and
when he summoned enough courage to own up to the facts, it was only to stand
them on the head or twist them so as to sustain the wobbly agenda of Benue
PDP as well as its strange clan of democrats who have a pathological aversion
for the democratic tenet of one-man, one vote. Strange! Strange!!
But before taking on some specifics or the big issues, I would need to  handle
one small matter Uloko raised. In Benue, like almost all human systems,
children do not name themselves; rather they bear the names that parents deem
it fit to give them. But strangely, Uloko started majoring in minors when he left
the issues that were etched in bold relief and started interpreting the names of
Tor-Ifyer as the “King of mischief.”

But since Uloko sounds like Idoma (it may even be an Igede name), it means a
Tiv man explained the meaning of Tor-Ifyer to him. But curiously, the Tiv speaker
or interpreter did not go the whole hog of interpreting other Tiv names to him. For
if he did, he might have explained to Uloko that, in the same Tiv language:
Torwua means “the king is a killer.” Or that Suswam means the double-edged
blade of a wild grass that cuts with wanton abandon. Of course, coming back-to-
back, this makes the names Torwua Suswam a dangerous combination! But
this is actually something minor, in fact, a digression, so I return to the main
issues.

Space constrains me, but let me touch on just or two issues in the Uloko
rejoinder.

He denied that a graveyard silence did enveloped Benue, especially Makurdi,
when INEC confirmed the Radio Benue scoop. But coming from the PDP, a
party that Nigerians acknowledge as suffering from chronic truth deficiency, only
few people may have believed him. But as one who was in Makurdi before,
during and after the elections to ensure that the ACN carried the day, I can
confirm that: yes, no celebrations followed Suswam’ victory. In fact, by 8 pm,
the city had shut down. It was the following day that it dawned on PDP
supporters that theirs was the only victory without a victory party; and it was
only then that they hit the streets in an orchestrated form of nervous celebration.
But even then, even then, they needed police protection!

So when Uloko writes of “a mammoth crowd from Agan Toll-gate to   High-Level,”
there is little doubt that he is referring to the fictional people from whom the PDP
got their fictional votes to recapture Government House Makurdi (GHM) and
other elective offices state-wide.

He also tried to hoodwink the public with his specious rhetoric, saying since the
PDP won 20 seats in the 28-member House of Assembly, eight out of the 11
House of Representatives seats and two of the three Senatorial seats, it followed
invariably that the voters also voted for Suswam. But of those victories, the
Tribunals have already been constituted. So whether PDP “won” the seats or
characteristically “captured” them, we will soon know. In any case, my name-
sake Uloko needs informing that the Nigerian electorate voted with delightful
discrimination in the April elections. A few examples suffice. In Lagos, the
electorate voted for PDP in the presidential election, but voted for ACN in the
guber poll. In PDP’s Imo, the people elected Goodluck Jonathan, but rejected
Ikedi Ohakim. In Bauchi, Kano, Katsina, the people voted for Gen. Muhammadu
Buhari but voted for credible PDP guber candidates. So Uloko’s argument holds
no water at all as Suswam was roundly rejected by Benue people.

Then, taking cover under PDP’s culture of impunity, the PDP underling  said if
the “ACN have no figures to disprove the vote tallies announced by INEC, they
should shut up and allow the people of Benue to have some peace.” Good talk
except that threats to public peace are coming from the direction of his party,
which is intent on capping voter-intimidation with voter-persecution. But as the
great Zik was fond of saying, “history will vindicate the just while God will punish
the wicked.”

Lornumbe, a self-employed graduate lives in Makurdi