Back from the political trenches (lI)
What the heck, INEC? I first got acquainted with Professor Mahmood Yakubu, present chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), back in the eighties when he was a student at Oxford University, United Kingdom. I was then Information Attache at the Nigeria High Commission, London. My schoolmates during my university days at Bayero University […]
- What the heck, INEC?
I first got acquainted with Professor Mahmood Yakubu, present chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), back in the eighties when he was a student at Oxford University, United Kingdom. I was then Information Attache at the Nigeria High Commission, London.
My schoolmates during my university days at Bayero University Kano, the late Tajuddeen Abdulraheem (may Allah continue to bless his departed soul) and Yakubu Aliyu along with my elder brother Shehu Othman, were then schooling there. When I met the late Tony Akinola, who was then regarded as the doyen of Nigerian students at the university and asked him the whereabouts of Yakubu, his question was ‘’which of the Yakubus; the one from Bauchi or the one from Gongola?’’ Taken aback a little I retorted that I wanted the one from Gongola of course, but would not mind seeing the one from Bauchi as well.
The Yakubu from Bauchi turned out to be Mahmood Yakubu, a shy, self-effacing chap pursuing a postgraduate in History at the university. In contrast to his boisterous, bon vivant Nigerian colleagues, Mahmood Yakubu’s face was almost always unanimated and inscrutable. I could see he was the introverted type, saying little as the political debates about Nigeria were raging around him ferociously. But I could also discern that he was drinking in everything that was being said to the minute detail and scanning those around him with his bulging alert eyes.
Fast forward years later as INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu has remained as unmoving and impervious as I knew him back then as accusations have continued to swirl around the INEC he heads over the conduct of the 2023 elections. This is rather unfortunate as he had a chance to write his name in gold with this epochal national assignment.
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Yes to his credit, under him INEC has introduced some far-reaching technical innovations like the BVAS to improve the electoral process. But on the flipside however, there have been some inexcusable lapses on the part of Mahmood Yakubu’s INEC which the electoral body must own up to and for which he must take personal responsibility.
I am a living victim of this sloppiness on the part of INEC.
How on earth can INEC explain why it omitted the logo of my party the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) on the senatorial ballot paper of southern Taraba of which I was a candidate? This is despite a judgment from a court of competent jurisdiction which directed INEC to open its portal and include my name as a valid candidate for the senatorial elections.
As the matter is subjudice I would not want to comment further, but this is one more example of the numerous actionable infractions that INEC committed in the course of the 2023 elections which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of court cases against the electoral body.
- Wetin Lawyers de do sef? This is taken from a sticker one frequently sees on cars and vehicles on the road.
Everyone knows that the period after elections is a boon period for lawyers as they get prepared to handle lucrative briefs from political parties, politicians and related institutions.
The electoral process certainly cannot do without lawyers as they are needed to argue and unravel knotty legal issues concerning some of the cases involving political parties and political figures.
But then just as there are serious and well-grounded lawyers who know their onions when it comes to electoral and constitutional matters, there are also the run-of-the-mill lawyers who are on the lookout for the fast naira one way or the other.
In my own case, this was brought home to me when a lawyer advised me to recruit and fund thugs to snatch ballot boxes and also destroy same when possible in addition to other dark tactics as part of my campaign process. As he said this to me matter-of-fact without regrets, I was reminded of the above sticker.
A lawyer asking me to go against the law? I asked myself. I rest my case as the saying goes.
5.Campaigning through the boondocks.
Boondocks is an American colloquial term used to describe remote off-the-beaten-track areas that are invariably isolated from well-travelled, favourite destinations of visitors from far and near.
It is no gainsaying that as a vast country, there are many areas that qualify to be described as such in Nigeria.
Apologies for sounding condescending, but I would say that in my state of Taraba, there are probably many of such areas than there are in the whole of Nigeria.
In the course of my campaign, I ventured through some of those areas which in many instances were needless to say inaccessible and utterly devoid of basic civilizational amenities. And to say they are dangerous is an understatement. We passed through scores of destroyed and deserted villages and settlements resulting from periodic sectarian violence and activities of criminal elements. In some areas, we had the eerie feeling that hostile eyes were watching us from behind the dense vegetation and ready to pounce at once.
In one particular location the car in which I was got stuck in sandy mud in the middle of nowhere at around 9 o’clock in the night. We alighted from the car and started to scoop the sand and push it out. We did that in the knowledge that this was viper country and we could be fatally bitten by those venomous snakes.
My conclusion from my experiences on the campaign trail is that you could shoot down the moon, and Nigerian politics will always remain the same. I could write volumes and volumes about some of the unbelievable, incredible things that happen in Nigerian politics and one could be sure that very little would change unless the entirety of political actors comprising all the stakeholders in the political firmament agree and commit to a fundamental attitudinal change in the way we do politics in the country. (Concluded)