Build on Yakubu’s legacy, IPAC tells Amupitan

The national chairman of the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Yusuf Dantalle, has called on the new chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash Amupitan, to build on the legacy of his predecessor, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu. Speaking in Abuja yesterday during a colloquium on ten years of Yakubu’s leadership as INEC chairman, he […]

The national chairman of the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Yusuf Dantalle, has called on the new chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash Amupitan, to build on the legacy of his predecessor, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu.

Speaking in Abuja yesterday during a colloquium on ten years of Yakubu’s leadership as INEC chairman, he said the electoral reforms introduced by Yakubu made election manipulation difficult.

According to him, “that doesn’t mean we are where we need to be, but we are not where we used to be. But we’re challenging whoever is coming after him to build on what he has done because he has done tremendously well. I’m saying this on behalf of political parties.

“We saw an election where a sitting governor lost an election to the Senate. It happened in Enugu, Benue and Kebbi because votes counted. We saw a Peter Obi who did not have councillors or local government chairmen anywhere defeating the incumbent president in Lagos because votes counted.”

In his lecture titled ‘INEC under Prof. Mahmood Yakubu’, the keynote speaker, Prof. Emmanuel Aiyede of the University of Ibadan, said: “Yakubu’s real legacy lies not in the machines themselves, but in the institutional mindset that now governs their use. He helped shift INEC from seeing technology as a novelty to treating it as infrastructure, as integral to electoral governance as polling booths and ballot boxes.”

Executive Director, Centre for Transparency Advocacy, Faith Nwadishi, said Yakubu “institutionalised continuous voter registration, expanded stakeholders’ consultations and strengthened the commission’s internal systems. Importantly, he opened INEC’s doors wider to civil society, media and other groups, and prioritised transparency in election management.”