How did Jega become PDP’s mortal enemy?

SIR: Prof. Attahiru Jega, the Chairman of INEC has become enemy number one to the withering cabal in the PDP and all those that invested in the continuation of the malfunctioning Jonathan presidency and his endangered party, the PDP. The other day, PDP’s paid jobber Ezeife was threatening that there would be no election except Jega quits as INEC chairman.

He was simply re-echoing the views of a so-called Southern Leaders Forum, a ringside front for supporters of PDP and Jonathan who, on the day the National Security Council met and vetted Jega’s preparedness for election, organised a press conference somewhere in Abuja, demanding the sack and arrest of Jega.

Like commissioned jobbers, these shadowy enablers of Jonathan/PDP did not advance any coherent crimes Jega committed that warranted their extreme demand. At best, what they advanced were mere regurgitations of the disheveled afterthoughts the PDP hastily assembled against Jega and his INEC the moment they saw defeat starring them in the presidential election.

Since the Jonathan presidency and the PDP walked away with a gratuitous six weeks extension, it had embarked on a wild window shopping for measures that will vitiate their dwindling electoral prospects. Chief among these measures are targeted against the electoral process and in their wild permutations, what they need to hang on to power is the removal of Jega and the removal by fiat of any credible impediment to the kind of ravaging electoral fraud which feeds the soul and body of PDP and its 16 years dominance of power in Nigeria.

Recall the electoral fiasco of 2011 and how Jega rode on the back of that electoral charade to become PDP’s poster boy for ‘free and fair election’. Remember that when the then CPC went to the tribunal in 2011 to challenge that confounding result, this same Jega was to make a stunning entry in his defence at the tribunal that subjecting the results he claimed were actual votes to forensic examination, as CPC sought to do, amounts to endangering national security. The rest became history but suffice it to remind that the judge handling the case was removed midway into the case, retired and a pliant judge imposed to see through the wishes of the PDP at the tribunals. While Jega was approving thus deliberate larceny to favour the PDP, he was the best thing God created for mankind after pure water!

So what really has changed? Today, Jega is a marked man. What really is Jega’s offence? What mortal sins did he commit so lately in the game that he must be sacrificed? • Peter Oparah, e-mail: Peterclaver200@yahoo.com