INEC Chairman, Prof. Yakubu
Two critical elections confront the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), whose chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has been under fire for under-performing since he took over from Prof. Attahiru Jega, who is generally seen to have performed above average; the new INEC boss has chalked up a lot of embarrassing inconclusive elections. Although he has stoutly defended his own records – who will not? – saying more conclusive than inconclusive elections had taken place under his watch, the postponement of the Edo governorship election, which now comes up today (Wednesday), has not helped matters for him. The fact that the postponement was instigated by security forces, exactly as they did last year to help ex-President Goodluck Jonathan postpone a presidential election he was sure to lose, has raised apprehension that monkey games were being played with the Edo election by the government-in-power. We wait with baited breath to see whether the election will go well today in Edo. It is important that voters are allowed to decide, for it is only then that leaders can be held answerable to the people. Votes must count for the dividend of democracy to stand a chance of being delivered to the people. Leaders will this way also be restrained from playing god. Otherwise, we invite anarchy! The All Progressives Congress controls the levers of power in Edo State as well as at the Federal level while the Peoples Democratic Party, once the ruling party, is the leading opposition party. Will APC abuse their privileged position or build upon the successes of the Yar’Adua and Jonathan Federal administrations which allowed the will of the people prevail, even when it ran against their grain?
In November, another governorship election is due in Ondo State; as in Edo, the two leading parties are APC and PDP. PDP’s Gov. Olusegun Mimiko has imposed one of his erstwhile Commissioners, Eyitayo Jegede, in a farcical party primary, as the PDP flag bearer. Whereas the APC primary is to be preferred to the PDP’s in its openness, transparency, inclusiveness and respect for internal democracy, it has, nevertheless, divided the party. Godfathers who were demystified as well as anointed godsons who got dazed have kicked up dust; it will take the wisdom of Solomon and the political maturity and sagacity of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo (to quote ex-Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon), for the winner of the APC primary, Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN, to ride the storm; keep everyone within the house; and also get them to work assiduously for his victory at the poll. Akeredolu has an uphill but by no means impossible task. Mimiko has sorely let Ondo state down; the governor’s second term performance is seen by many as below par. He has not been able to pay salaries as at when due despite that as an oil-producing state, Ondo enjoys 13% derivation funds. Efforts to leave a stooge behind are seen as a desperate attempt by Mimiko to cover his tracks and prevent the kind of sordid revelations oozing out of Jonathan’s can of worms! As for Akeredolu/APC, the lacklustre performance of the APC at the Federal level is an albatross. At no time in the history of this country has suffering been this much in the land. A government that promised so much has so far delivered so little. The deafening silence of Yoruba leaders who sold the APC dummy to their people is also seen by many as betrayal of trust to serve selfish interests.
Trust my Ondo people: They are up to the task! But is INEC also ready? The INEC chairman recently blamed the ills bedevilling our electoral system on the “attitude” of Nigerians. Asked why there is always a lock-down on Election Day whereas this is not so in other lands; why the incessant time-wasting, and money-gobbling supplementary elections when other countries have found neat ways around the problem; why so much tension attend elections here unlike as in, say, Switzerland, where “they finish election and they count at the polling units; they stop a taxi, put the ballot box in it and tell the taxi driver to take it to the collation centre unaccompanied”, the answer was “our attitude”! Why can’t the registration of eligible voters be done round the clock; how will INEC cope with the deficit of funding in a depressed economy without compromising service delivery; when shall we attain maturity for e-voting; and when will politicians here respect due process? The answer was “when we change our attitude”! But what is “attitude”: Innate, in-born, God-given, and immutable; learned, un-learned, and the sum total of our experiences or a mix of these? What is the state of the human mind at birth – a tabula rasa, a personality already fully- or partially-formed or a mix? Are we as Nigerians created differently by God from other people who behave themselves appropriately? To quote the INEC boss, do we carry special genes that define our “attitude as a people and as a nation”? Taking a cue from a character in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, is the problem in us or in our stars? Are there environmental factors here, which are absent elsewhere, that dictate our negative “attitude”? Why do Nigerians “misbehave” here but behave properly elsewhere? Citing impunity, which he said allows people get away with anything here, Yakubu hit the nail right on the head when he said: “Any nation that does not punish violators of its own laws is doomed and that is what we are seeing in Nigeria”. I dare to add, not only with elections but also in all facets of our national life – economy, private and public sectors, social life and sport, driving on the highway, fighting corruption and criminals, citizen versus citizen, government versus citizen, Government versus government; name it. Without law and order and respect for due process in all things and at all times, regardless whose ox is gored – we go nowhere.
