GHANA AWAITS As NPP Continues To Fiddle And Fiddle

By George Ashitey-Mensah.

12 long days have passed since the December 7th polls and the whole nation is anxiously waiting for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to bring up its evidence showing that the elections were rigged.

President John Dramani Mahama

 All that the party and its leaders keep doing is threatening that they will go to court to get an order either declaring Nana Akuffo –Addo as president -elect or canceling the results of the elections.

When asked what evidence they have, they simply say it will shock Ghanaians.

It has become apparent that there is a game plan and it is only aimed at chipping the legitimacy of the Mahama administration away without doing what is legal and proper.

If indeed the NPP has the evidence of poll rigging then what is it waiting for?

On the other hand if it is now searching for the evidence then why is it so emphatic that the elections were rigged?

Either way, the NPP is becoming extremely ridiculous and even some of its members including Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby are beginning to feel embarrassed.

Indeed, there is proper evidence that NPP polling agents from the polling station level to the strong room of the National Electoral Commission authenticated the results the party is now disputing.

Chief Justice Georgina Wood

What happened to all these agents?  Did they go to sleep?

The NPP claims that it could not be vigilant and that its lack of vigilance led to the rigging of the elections must be troubling for all those who voted for the party.

If the NPP with its huge elections machinery could not prevent being cheated in the elections then can we entrust the destiny of 25 million Ghanaians to it?

What does this say about the competence of Nana Akufo-Addo as President of the Republic of Ghana?

In any case, when will the NPP come to grips with the fact that the whole world has accepted that the elections were free, fair and transparent?

The NPP must do itself a favour by ending its cacophonous claims and getting back to the drawing board to prepare for 2016 with a better candidate and strategy.

EDITORIAL

Who Should We Hold Responsible?

NDC Chairman, Salisu Musa

On the Front Page of the Insight last Monday, 17^th December 2012, we carried the picture of Mr. Salisu Musa, the Ashanti Bekwai Constituency Chairman of the NDC, at the Emergency Department of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital with his neck clad in a device to save him from dying after NPP thugs attacked him.

The sad story behind this rather pathetic picture is that, last Thursday December 13^, persons believed to be NPP Supporters attacked the Bekwai constituency Chairman with cutlasses and left him for dead because he was believed to be one of the few NDC officials in the Ashanti Region who worked so hard that he snatched victory for the NDC in the NPP stronghold of the Ashanti Region.

As at the time of going to press, there has not been any show of remorse from the thugs or the NPP.

There have been other attacks by NPP thugs on innocent people all over the place. Last Monday, NPP supporters attacked Journalists of Joy FM in front of the residence of their Flag bearer, Nana Akufo-Addo who signaled the All-die be die doctrine. Just about a week ago, a taxi driver was murdered in La bone in Accra by political opponents from the NPP.

It must be remembered that, when Political analysts pointed out that, the All-Die Be Die- edict was a license for NPP die hards to attack innocent Ghanaians in situations such as what the NPP flag bearer has created after the election, NPP leaders said that was not true.

Now that it has turned out to be true what should we do? The ball is now in everybody’s court!

As Akufo-Addo Goes Down

…World Leaders Celebrate Mahama

By Nana Akua Tweneboah-Koduah

Kofi Annan has congratulated President Mahama

You don’t need to be a sage to conclude that Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the NPP’s unsuccessful presidential candidate in the 2012 elections is gasping for his last political breath. And you also don’t need to be a politician to conclude that most Ghanaians have had enough of Akufo-Addo’s bluff and are moving on without him.

Elections are conducted throughout the world and when it’s over and winners are declared life returns to normal. But this does not happen in Akufo-Addo’s world as he had always tried to create unnecessary tensions anytime he goes down in a presidential race. He did it in 2008 and as history had always repeated itself, Akufo-Addo is doing it again in 2012.

Gradually, those who did not believe it before that Akufo-Addo has an insatiable taste for political power are falling in line. Akufo-Addo’s thugs who have started causing mayhem with the murders, beatings and stabbing of some NDC supporters has served as an eye opener to Ghanaians that Akufo-Addo’s paramount interest solely rest in political power and nothing else.

French President Hollande:"Ghana is beacon of hope for Africa"

As Akufo-Addo steams and demonstrates that apart from being a sore loser who has no match in Ghana’s political history, he is also a cry-baby who cries about nothing. Don’t you think that if the NPP people indeed have glaring evidence about being robbed by the Electoral Commission or the NDC they would have gone to court the very next day after the elections were called in favour of President Mahama and the NDC? Its five days today but the NPP have not yet gone to court but just making mere buzzing noise.

But there is good news for President Mahama. The world has taken note of the elections in Ghana and apart from concluding that it was free, fair and transparent, Mahama has also been given the recognition that he was indeed the winner.

Ghana elections were credible-President Barack Obama

That is why World Leaders have started to celebrate President John Mahama. The US President, Barak Obama has sent in his congratulatory message to President Mahama for winning the elections. We have also heard from the British Government as well as the AU Chairman, Yayi Boni. In the case of the latter he personally flew in to Ghana and tried unsuccessfully to persuade Akufo-Addo to accept the will of the people who voted for President Mahama and concede defeat.

The Nigerian President, Mr. Goodluck Jonathan has also thrown in his hat to President Mahama, whilst the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Ms. Catherine Ashton also showed her support for President Mahama. I cannot leave out former UN Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan who is of the view that President Mahama had won the elections hands down.

Ban Ki Moon congratulates Mahama

If Akufo-Addo had not been reading or watching TV lately, I will encourage him to do so because power has indeed fleeted away from him. If you win national elections and you have these world power brokers falling behind you to declare their support, then you have nothing to worry. For the purposes of educating Akufo-Addo and the NPP supporters, I will say that Ghana is being showcased as the beacon of democracy in the Africa and to some extend Third World countries.

Therefore, there is no way the world will stand by and allow Akufo-Addo to run amok with his paid thugs to cause fear and mayhem in the country. The behaviour of Akufo-Addo within the past 5 days has clearly left sour grapes in the mouth of some even die-hard NPP supporters who have regretted voting for him. They have come to terms that Akufo-Addo does not care about anything apart from political power. Anything short of political power does not exist in his vocabulary.

Otherwise, how can somebody like Akufo-Addo go down in a presidential election with more than 3 percentage points against him falsely claim to his supporters that he won the elections?  Only in Akufo-Addoland will such issues happen.

“Obama, Biden are war criminals”

Joe Biden(L) and Barack Obama (R)

By Dave Lindorff

Most Americans, their minds focused at the moment on the tragic slaughter of 20 young children aged 5 and 6, along with five teachers and a school principal in Connecticut by a heavily-armed psychotic 21-year-old, are blissfully unaware that their previous president, George W. Bush, along with five key members of his administration, were recently convicted in absentia of war crimes at a tribunal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

They are unaware because the US corporate media have ignored the story, just as that same corporate media have failed to note that the crimes of which Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five White House lawyers, were convicted all could apply equally well to current President Barack Obama and his administration.

Bush, Cheney, White House counsel (and later Attorney General) Alberto Gonzalez and others were found guilty earlier this month of war crimes and crimes against humanity relating to the executive orders that launched the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as of authorizing and failing to punish torture and other war crimes by US forces, including the military and the CIA.

But as international law expert Francis Boyle, a professor of law at the University of Illinois, notes, under the Geneva Convention, failing to take action to prosecute those guilty of war crimes such as the “Crime against Peace” (invading a country that does not pose an imminent threat to the attacker), and torture, are war crimes in and of themselves.

Speaking last week at a Summit Conference on Human Rights held at the University of the Sacred Heart in the US island colony of Puerto Rico, Boyle said US authorities, including President Obama, are engaged in an “ongoing criminal conspiracy under international law” both to cover up and protect criminals like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and to continue the commission of war crimes by the US government.

Support for both the Malaysian Tribunal’s judgment against Bush, Cheney et al, and for Boyle’s charges against Obama and his administration, comes, interestingly, from President Bush’s own White House counsel Gonzalez. As I noted in my book The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006), about Bush’s and Cheney’s war crimes and impeachable offenses, Gonzalez, writing in a Jan. 25, 2002 memo in support of the torture of captured terrorist suspects, warned President Bush that “it is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based upon” the Geneva Conventions and the War Crimes Act.

He went on to caution that in the event that the president were some day so prosecuted and convicted of war crimes, the potential penalty could “include the death penalty.” In the same memo, sounding more like a mob lawyer than a judicious legal advisor, Gonzalez told the president that as the president’s legal counsel, he was making a determination that torture of suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban captives would be legal in order to provide the president and his staff with legal cover that “substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act.”

As it turns out, Bush and Gonzalez needn’t have worried. Though Obama, when initially campaigning in 2008 for the presidency, vowed that he wanted to restore the respect for the law and the Constitution, once elected President, he and his attorney general Eric Holder quickly made it clear that they were “looking forward, not backward,” and that there would be no prosecutions or indictments for war crimes of any Bush administration people.

The thing is, at that moment, both President Obama and AG Holder became war criminals themselves under the UN Charter and the Nuremberg Principles, which declare that covering up war crimes by prior government and military leaders, and failure to prosecute such war crimes, are in themselves war crimes.

But as Boyle noted in his address in San Juan, P.R., Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, and the various secretaries of defense and state, the head of the CIA and the Pentagon Chiefs of Staff, as well as other Obama administration personnel, are also guilty of perpetrating ongoing war crimes themselves.

Boyle accuses the Obama administration of continuing to conduct a “bogus” war on “international terrorism” including the ever escalating campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and other jurisdictions. He termed the president’s program of “targeted killings,” in which President Obama himself draws up the “kill list,” to be simply a case of “pure murder” under both traditional British common law and international law, and says these attacks constitute a “Crime against Humanity under Article 7(1)(a) of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court.”

It would seem that it is unlikely Nobel Peace Laureate Obama will be prosecuted by any country, at least while he remains president, but the recent Malaysian tribunal conviction of Bush, Cheney and several Bush administration legal advisors suggests there could be similar tribunals and convictions of current administration personnel in years to come.

While America’s outsized military and economic power for now make it unlikely any retired American leaders will find themselves in the dock at the Hague like war criminals from Serbia, Bosnia or Rwanda, it is possible that these kinds of charges and convictions could, at a minimum, make them, like former Nixon administration Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, reluctant to travel internationally in their dotage.

Israel's deep cover agents inside the IAEA

IAEA Chief Yukiya Amano

By Jim W. Dean

Oh yes, I said it. And I will say it again. The IAEA is an ongoing fraud. Why? Because it has become totally politicized and I strongly suspect, an intelligence asset for somebody. I will give you a homework assignment of figuring out who.

In intelligence analysis you generally use a dual track approach of reviewing what can be seen, and then, what is often more revealing, what you don't see that you should.

The IAEA's main qualification for the Nobel Prize fake international agency medal is its many years of secret service to the Israeli weapons of mass destruction programs. And what service is that, you ask? It is giving the Zios a free pass on any mention of their decades long programs, in effect putting their stamp of approval on offensive WMD proliferation.

Excuse me if I have a little problem with this. I cannot think of another organization that has failed so miserably it its appointed purpose. But therein the plot begins to thicken. Why would the IAEA continue to be funded while not being able to discover and report to the world about the Zionist weapons hoard that we all knew they had?

After all, American intelligence, declassified and classified, has always concluded that Israel had had complete conventional military superiority over all of its neighbors. This left only one reason for its long running investment in all of these WMD programs...their offensive threat value.

Now why would an organization like the IAEA not want to discover a threat like this? Could it be that it is working with a group that is selective about what threats are spotlighted and which are not? After all, the Israeli WMD was an obvious incentive for surrounding nations to try to have some kind of a retaliatory deterrent.

Every country would have a right to such deterrent, and their military is fully justified in not leaving their country totally defenseless in the face of such a threat. After all, Israel was a state born out of terrorism and military conquest. That is on the record. So does the IAEA budget not cover an in-house historian on such matters?

Why would such a charade be allowed to go on for decades, where even the entire U.S. Congress, over many different administrations, never exposed the biggest WMD threat in the Mid East or lifted a finger to do anything about it?

Was this because they approved of it, and knew that admitting it would disqualify Israel from our military aid? Has the American Jewish Lobby blackmailed all of them all of these years to keep them quiet?

Or are they addicted to their Lobby compaign donations to the point where they would dishonor themselves en masse by breaching their oaths 'to defend the country from all enemies, foreign and domestic'.

Mass media, just the shreds and tatters of it left now, abandoned their fourth estate duties by joining the 'we no talkie' brigade. Academia has said nothing, as have most all of the major religious groups. No major veterans group has ever uttered a word about it. Why, why, why?

Is it because they all know it is a fraud and that they can somehow escape complicity by remaining silent? Or do they believe their own country has betrayed them by having assisted in the creation of the Israeli WMD threat, in violation of their own laws?

And the last question is, what will it take for the rank and file citizens of the world to wake up one day and say, 'We are not going to take this being treated like morons, anymore. And we are going to start by stopping to be morons'. When is the public going to demand accountability for all involved, including the phonies at the UN and IAEA?

The newest version of the Fake Nukes scam surfaced in the early reports prior to the IAEA meeting December13th, with their Iranian counterparts. These focused on putting new wind into an old diversion boogeyman, the new construction at the Parchin military complex, hinting at explosive nuclear triggering testing.

David Albright's new think tank front, the ISIS, Institute for Science and International Security had their Parchin article out first. My how they do love these high sounding titles for their front orgs. Albright, by the way is a former weapons inspector consultant.

His ISIS article was a dressed up scare piece complete with recent satellite photos showing construction at the base. Imagine that. Who has ever heard of such a thing, construction going on at a military base? Impossible!

All the articles on the Parchin hoax used the same meaningless half innuendos where they say nothing that could keep them employed as an intelligence analyst past lunch time on their first day.

Nuclear weapons expert Clinton Bastin, briefed us fully on the Iran nuke scare fraud two years ago. Even with my very old chemical engineering undergrad work I had to have a few repeat passes to get my arms around it all.

As a bonus we later learned he had worked with David Albright in the past on nuclear proliferation. Bastin was one of the top experts in the world at the time. Clinton had addressed the explosives testing ruse in an article I did for VT on April 9th, 2012... in a letter he had sent to Netanyahu and interested parties:

“High explosive tests being conducted at a military base in Iran are not needed for a gun-type weapon. The IAEA should correct the claim that the tests indicate a possible nuclear weapon-related activity.”

No one seemed to be listening at the IAEA. And as it turned out, we discovered that they don't really have people there who understand how nuclear weapons are built and work, in particular David Albright. Said Clinton Bastin in another letter:

“ I called David several months ago to correct inaccurate information attributed to him by New York Times reporter William J. Broad. I also mentioned that Pakistan probably did not have many nuclear weapons because gun-type weapons require about 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium. David said that he had seen drawings of Pakistan’s weapons and they had solid cores but were implosion, not gun-type. With that statement, I realized that David did not understand basic concepts of nuclear weapons.”

I hope you all grasp what a shocking revelation this is. If not read it again, please. You will understand why Clinton Bastin is now treated like he never existed. Such are the wages of truth, but he did this for all of us, and we honor him for it, a fellow Marine.

Clinton went on to say that there was 'no one' at the IAEA who really knew anything about nukes. Inspectors were just given lists of things 'to look for'...like inventory fraud accountants. Gordon Duff and I were both shocked. But our experience had taught us that this situation never happens by accident.

Unqualified people are easier to manipulate and never challenge the home team plan. You always find them in disinfo operations as you don't want people who can see through the scam out in the field. They can end up testifying before a Congressional inquiry some day.

So with that said, maybe the folks at the IAEA really don't know anything about Israelis WMD, as they would not know it if they saw it. But if that was the case, why does the UN and IAEA have them out there playing make believe on finding weapons threats when we know they are corrupt to the bone by ignoring Israel's?

The IAEA owes the World an explanation. VeteransToday would like to put a small panel of experts together to grill some of their top people with the TV cameras rolling so we could bring you irrefutable proof of all I have covered above. Mr. Albright, the 'expert' woud certainly be invited.

By the way, David Albright (suprise, surprise) carries an Israeli passport, is treated as a VIP when he visits there, and has a very nice ocean view condominum in Haifa. Was he Israeli's deep cover agent inside the IAEA when he worked with them?

Is he one of of the many think tank operatives with multiple and we fear, questionable loyalties, that we find heavily populating the phony think tanks in Washington that crank out disinformation reports on request? Don't forget, the ISIS folks revealed the secret nuclear weapons program in Burma of all places, in 2010. I am not kidding. We are still laughing about that one.

What do you all think? Let me know in the comments as I am really trying to find out why so many people are taking this lying down. It depresses me, and the herbal medicine is not working.

White dominions, brown colonies

Eric Walberg

France and Britain have begun to circle Syria like vultures (my apologies to vultures, who politely wait for their prey to die), as they plan to save Syria from chemical bombs - a surreal replay of Suez 1956, where France and Britain cooked up a pretext to invade Egypt with the US posing as the more restrained gang member.

NATO

Meanwhile, Canada once again sings on demand for its US-Israeli sponsors. The Canadian government solemnly announced this week it is ready -- if asked by NATO -- to deploy the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit, which handles chemical, biological and radioactive attacks. Canada will also send a Disaster Assistance Response Team to provide clean water in Syrians, as well as engineers and staff who can help set up a field hospital. A friendly navy frigate is already offshore.

Once again Prime Minister Stephen Harper plays his supporting role in the NATO-scripted drama unfolding in the Middle East. He takes “the threat of chemical weapons in Syria very seriously”, but demurs on whether Canada will send CF-18 fighter jets over Syria, as it did in Libya to enforce a no-fly zone, or put combat troops on the ground. He has not yet given the current opposition coalition, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), his blessing, although US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton formally recognized the opposition at a Friends of Syria summit in Morocco on Wednesday, joining the Euro crowd.

The Canadian government has no foreign policy anymore, doing exactly as it is told by its Israeli advisers, so the reason for Harper’s coyness must be found there. Israel itself is in a quandary about Syria.

Israeli policy during the past three decades has following the divide-and-conquer Yinon Doctrine, playing various forces among its Arab neighbors against each other -- Maronite and Orthodox Christian, Sunni and Shia Muslim, Druze, etc -- in order to keep the Middle East weak and unstable.

French President Hollande

In Syria, that even meant quietly supporting the Muslim Brotherhood during its ill-fated uprising in 1981, not because Israel wanted an Islamist Syria, but to keep the Syrian government off-balance. The secular and nationalist Baathist regime, together with Egypt, fought a war with Israel in 1967. These secular governments were the big threat, and it was only natural to try and cripple the regimes of Egypt and Syria, even if that meant working with Islamists.

Today, the West is eagerly arming the SNC, where Islamists predominate, even as Israel dawdles.

Not only is Egypt now rediscovering its Islamic, very anti-Zionist roots, making Egyptian Islamists the main enemy, but there is no guarantee the SNC will defeat the Syrian army, and unlike far away France, Britain and the US, Israel must live chock-a-block with whoever is in Damascus -- and Cairo -- when the mustard gas clears.

Ha, ha. Only joking. What about the chemical weapons threat? Syria is one of the few countries that has not signed the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). But Assad has made it clear he will not approve their use on civilians.

However, who can blame him if he drops a few on invading Brits, French, and yes Americans? It would be a perfect way to ‘celebrate’ the centenary of WWI, where holier-than-thou Germany, Britain and France pioneered their use, despite having signed the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 banning them. Britain used chlorine against the Germans in 1915. (It was a disaster as the wind blew back on the British trenches -- a case of ‘friendly gas’.) The US took their use to new heights in Vietnam with Agent Orange. Only the one-time US ally Saddam Hussein was ever brought to justice for using them. The US and Russia still have stockpiles (not to mention nuclear and biological weapons), despite their obligation under the CWC to destroy them all.

The Syrians would get special satisfaction from gassing the French, who carved up and invaded Syria in 1920. Syria was promised France by Britain as its reward for the 1.7 million French who died in the WWI bloodbath that killed 16 million (Britain lost ‘less than’ a million). The only ‘positive’ outcome for the Allies was the destruction and occupation of the Ottoman Caliphate and the creation of a Jewish state there.

This was an outrageous betrayal of the Arabs, who had arguably tipped the balance in WWI -- at great loss -- in Britain’s favour, on the promise of post-war independence. But, as the Spanish say, ‘You don’t dance with the devil; he dances with you.” Britain wanted Iraq for its oil and Palestine for a Jewish state, “the hill citadel of Jerusalem” according to geopolitical theorist Halford Mackinder, the last link in the British empire. With a wink and a nod from Britain, France invaded Syria in 1920 and crushed a heroic uprising in 1925--1927, killing thousands. Greater Syria was divided into southern Turkey, French-occupied Lebanon/ Syria, and British-occupied Jordan/ Palestine.

It was not till 1946 that the French were finally booted out -- kicking and screaming. Post-WWII Syrian politics is a litany of coups, egged on by the US, until the army and socialist Baathists finally settled on Hafiz al-Assad in 1971. Trying to pick up the pieces after the brutal French occupation and living next door to permanent nightmare Israel are not conducive to the charade of western-style pluralism, so the subsequent harsh dictatorship of Assad I and the new-improved Assad II are not surprising.

The SNC alternative has no prospects for ruling a united Syria. Syria’s future under the SNC is already being played out in Iraq, though Assad is far more popular and sensible than several other Arab leaders, and his downfall will take down much of the Syria social order with him.

It is fine from an Israeli point of view as long as the Islamists are kept busy fighting their coalition ‘allies’ within the SNC. But if the Islamists dominate in the SNC, and if the power vacuum allows al-Qaeda to take root (it already has), this could be a problem for Israel.

Look what happened to the Islamists in Gaza, where they surged and triumphed in elections in 2006 and remain strong. Israel has only to look south to Egypt to see how a revolutionary coalition can turn into an Islamic government which is not nearly as pliable as the secular ruler it replaced. This is what keeps many Israelis rooting for Assad.

When France was colonizing Syria a century ago, Canada was already the great colonial success story as a ‘white dominion’, and was allowed to join the ranks of the imperial rich, unlike Syria et al. (Lawrence ‘of Arabia’ lobbied Churchill to create a united Arab British mandate as the first ‘brown dominion’, with no success.)

The Syrian Army and People stand by President Assad

As a former colony of both France and Britain, the loyal ‘white dominion’ of yesteryear, Canada may look like the perfect intermediary today: ‘Be nice and you too can graduate from colony to dominion.’ However, the flip side of white dominion status is that, like Israel or South Africa, you have built your society on the bones of the ‘brown’ natives. So it is not surprising that this week, even as Harper was toying with recognizing the SNC (who cares?), he faces ongoing protests over government neglect of Canada’s First Nation.

Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence began a hunger strike in Ottawa charging the government with “marginalizing our political leadership, along with the enforced segregation of our people so that our rich heritage can be wiped out and the great bounty contained in our traditional lands be made available for exploitation by large multi-national companies.” But Canada’s First Nation -- what’s left of them -- can thank their lucky stars they weren’t born in the ‘brown colonies’ of the Middle East.

Memo to Doyin Okupe: What is President Jonathan Hiding? (1)

By Chido Onumah

President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan

I refer to your press conference of Thursday, December 6, 2012, in which you tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to do a cleanup of President Jonathan’s anti-corruption credentials. You would agree that your presentation was all fury and little substance. I know as the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, your responsibility is to make the president look good in public. In your press conference, you listed a number of things that the government has done (and is doing) to show that President Jonathan is serious about fighting corruption.

To save space, I shall focus only on one. In a sense, the issue I have chosen for discussion appears to be the most important. Not only because it was the first in the list of accomplishments you enumerated in your speech, but because it is pivotal and at the heart of whether the president has the “political will” to fight corruption and whether we should believe him or not when he claims he is fighting corruption. I am talking here about the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA).

This is what you said about the FoIA: “The signing of the Freedom of Information Act into law by President Jonathan in May 2011 represents a watershed in the anti-corruption crusade in Nigeria.  This piece of legislation, which had been virtually stalled by successive administrations since 1999, was signed into law by Mr. President to usher Nigeria into the league of countries where transparency (emphasis mine) in governance is entrenched and citizens are granted unfettered access to information (emphasis mine) about government activities.

“This is the fulcrum upon which good governance rests in all known democracies and it is noteworthy that the present administration took the bull by the horns to lay this very important foundation for the war against corruption in Nigeria in the early months of its inception and 24 hours after the bill was presented to him by the National Assembly. You will agree with me that without a legal framework for whistle–blowing, the fight against corruption would be meaningless.”

Well said. I couldn’t agree with you more on the importance of the FoIA. Yes, it is to the credit of the government that the very first law the president signed was the FoIA. The problem, however, is that the law has been observed more in breach. And we can thank the president for his shining example. Perhaps, as a latecomer to the jamboree that is the Jonathan administration, you are not privy to certain things. Or is it a case of selective amnesia? The blustering presidential aide that you are, perhaps your impulsiveness got the better of you.

Whatever the problem, it is important that we set the record straight for posterity. Warily, to test the FoIA and the president’s sincerity, on July 28, 2011, almost two months to the day the president signed the FoI bill into law, the African Centre for Media & Information Literacy (AFRICMIL) sent a Freedom of Information request to the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) asking “to be allowed to inspect and obtain copies of the 2007 asset declaration of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan; the asset declaration of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan after the end of his tenure on May 28, 2011; and the current asset declaration of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan when he assumed office on May 29, 2011”.

AFRICMIL made the request in good faith and in accordance with Paragraph 3, Part I of the Third Schedule to the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended, which provides that “the Code of Conduct Bureau shall have power to: (a) receive declarations by public officers made under Paragraph 12 of Part I of the Fifth Schedule to this Constitution; (b) examine the declarations in accordance with the requirements of the Code of Conduct or any law; (c) retain custody of such declarations and make them available for inspection by any citizen of Nigeria on such terms and conditions as the National Assembly may prescribe (emphasis added)”.

Paragraph 11 of Part I of the Fifth Schedule to the Constitution provides that: “(1) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, every public officer shall within three months after the coming into force of this Code of Conduct or immediately after taking office and thereafter -- (a) at the end of every four years; and (b) at the end of his term of office, submit to the Code of Conduct Bureau a written declaration of all his properties, assets, and liabilities and those of his unmarried children under the age of eighteen years”.

Pursuant to the aforementioned constitutional provisions and Section 2 of the Freedom of Information Act 2011, which states that “Notwithstanding anything contained in any other Act, Law or Regulation, the right of any person to access or request information, whether or not contained in any written form, which is in the custody or possession of any public official, agency or institution howsoever described, is hereby established”, AFRICMIL made the request to the CCB to be allowed to inspect and obtain copies of President Goodluck Jonathan’s asset declaration.

Dr. Doyin Okupe

Regrettably, the CCB did not dignify the request with a response. After waiting patiently for almost three months and in line with the provisions of the FoIA, AFRICMIL filed a case at the Federal High Court, Abuja. In the suit (No FHC/ABJ/CS/877/2011) filed on October 21, 2011, on behalf of AFRICMIL by Ashimole Felix of Che Oyintumba & Associates, AFRICMIL sought an order of mandamus compelling the CCB to comply with its (AFRICMIL’s) request of making available to the public the asset declaration of President Goodluck Jonathan.

Mr. Lewis Asubiojo, who represented AFRICMIL in the suit, said “the organisation was concerned that even with the memo from the presidency that government agencies should subject themselves to the Freedom of Information Act, the CCB refused to act on its request”. He noted that “for a government that has proclaimed a transformation agenda and wants to fight corruption, it is important that President Jonathan leads by example, and one way he can do that is to make public his asset declaration”.

Since AFRICMIL’s request over a year ago, we have gone from the ominous silence of the CCB, to Reuben Abati, the president’s Special Adviser on Media, coldly confirming that “the president will not declare his assets on the pages of newspapers”, to the president himself conceitedly stating publicly that he did not “give a damn” about making his asset declaration public. The assumption, of course, is that the declaration is with the CCB and was made as and when due. 

In a June 2012 interview with SaharaTV’s Rudolf Okonkwo, to mark Democracy Day, Abati had referred Nigerians interested in the president’s asset declaration “to check with the Code of Conduct Bureau office”. Regrettably, it is the same CCB that has “gone rouge” on the president’s asset declaration. It is instructive to note that Sam Saba, chairman of the CCB, recently declared that the FOIA conflicts with the Constitution on the issue of making available to the public the president’s asset declaration. He called for “judicial intervention to know what the law says”.

President Jonathan says he is transformative leader. Unless he just wants to transform himself, I see no reason he should allow his asset declaration create so much uproar and overheat the polity unnecessarily. 

To be continued.