Farewell, Mahmood Yakubu

The idea of being in public service—working for the government of one’s country at any level or in the public sector as an elected, appointed or career official—carries with it a moral and cultural significance that neither money nor fame can match because it entails deploying one’s talent and labour in the service of something […]

The idea of being in public service—working for the government of one’s country at any level or in the public sector as an elected, appointed or career official—carries with it a moral and cultural significance that neither money nor fame can match because it entails deploying one’s talent and labour in the service of something greater than oneself: the common good. Many U.S public sector lawyers, for example, could earn several times more working for Wall Street firms, but choose to remain in public service because they find enough fulfilment in its ethos.

In Nigeria, that ethos—the public above the self—is rapidly disappearing in our public life, but can still be gleaned in the careers of a few. It is in this context of reclaiming the lost glory of public service in our country that we must situate and assess Mahmood Yakubu’s career, not just as the nation’s longest serving “Ballot Boss” so far, but as a public servant in the proper sense of the term. Anyone who looks with clear eyes at Yakubu’s entire public service career will see quite emphatically that his accomplishments in high office are designed for the most long-term public impact, not at all for himself, but for the national good.    

It is no trifling claim to say that the current public university system in Nigeria is largely the creation of Mahmood Yakubu, warts and all. Largely is not entirely, of course, but the most consequential developments of the past 15 years in our federal and state universities owe their funding, if not ideation, to TETFUND, which in turn, became a truly impactful agency following Yakubu’s reforms. Its predecessor’s broad mandate, “to intervene at all levels” of our educational system soon became its most serious limitation, as resources were spread thin across thousands of primary, secondary and tertiary education institutions, not to mention the duplication of strategy and effort with UBEC. Consequently, the Educational Tax Fund (ETF), as it then was, could not make the strategic impact on our education sector as envisioned.  

Yakubu changed all that. He argued that the ETF should narrow its focus to the tertiary education tier only, where infrastructure, research, and staff development were critical needs, leaving UBEC to focus on the primary and secondary tiers. President Goodluck Jonathan agreed, and this strategic division of funding resources became enshrined in law as the TETFUND Act 2011. This shift in focus, in effect well before the legal change, enabled Yakubu to roll out new or expand existing policies that remain the fund’s core interventions to date: massive expansion of the campus infrastructure everywhere, human capital development, funding for research and academic publishing, increased transparency in funding allocation, disbursement and utilisation, institutional innovation and geographical equity, etc.  

Consider, the Academic Staff Training and Development (AST & D). This is simply one of the most successful and impactful policies ever to come out of any sector in Nigerian in recent memory. Since its commencement, in 2009/2010, it has sponsored some 23,938 lecturers for PhD, and a further 17,700 for master’s degrees, making a total of 41,600 beneficiaries across all three categories of federal and state tertiary institutions in the country. My favourite metric for assessing public officials in Nigeria is to ask: has he done something that will benefit other Nigerians but which he himself cannot directly benefit from? The AST & D fits perfectly.  

The enduring impact of Yakubu’s TETFUND reforms is that they guarantee about 85 per cent of the costs of infrastructure, academic staff training, research, and sundry things other than staff salaries in a typical Nigerian university. This, in turn, has emboldened the federal and many state governments to establish over 60 additional universities between them from 2011 to date. In short, while at TETFUND, Yakubu played a significant, sometimes leading, roles in virtually all the education policies of the Yar’Adua/Jonathan administrations, from the Needs Assessment of Nigerian Public Universities policy, to the ASUU-FG 2009 Agreement that remains the point of reference for industrial relations between the two, to Jonathan’s Almajiri model schools and nine federal universities which ensured one for every state of the country.  

That Yakubu’s work at TETFUND has had enduring impact, more than a dozen years after he left, should therefore, be in no doubt now. Yet, for those who look with clear eyes, the same thread of long-term impact runs through his ten years of service at INEC. For lack of space, let’s take just the Electoral Act 2022 which was largely spear-headed by INEC under his leadership. That Act, though not perfect, has been a real game changer in Nigerian elections, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future, barring major reversal of gains at the new INEC. It has corrected so many problems with our elections, but three merit special mention.  

First, the extant law before the 2022 Act was ambiguous about the legal position of election technology, perhaps a deliberate lacuna by politicians to game the system. The 2022 Act removed this ambiguity and declared that INEC had every right to use technology in the conduct of elections in the country, from voter registration to result transmission. Secondly, INEC put the Act into practice on election technology, and rolled out a series of technologies that expanded or complemented existing systems, from BVAS, to IVED, and IREV, all of which in turn led to better overall election management outcomes that were emphatically evident in the election results, despite the challenges and room for improvement.  

Third, the Act stipulated a clear timeline for party primaries, submission of candidates and for the conduct of the main elections. In the context of past experience in Nigeria, these are sea changes. And the impact told in the election results. For example, in the 100-year history of election in Nigeria from 1922 to 2023, opposition political parties have never performed better against an incumbent party than they did during the 2023 general elections. That record is due to the strict timelines for party primaries which enabled the opposition parties to have nearly a whole year for campaigns. Opposition presidential candidates like Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso then had enough time to break away from their former parties, take over new parties, build movements, and mount a strong challenge in their strongholds.  

They would have had just about two months before Election Day for all these under previous rules. The Electoral Act 2022 is, therefore, a law for all parties and for posterity, and will be strengthened further with INEC’s 143 new recommendations for election management in the country. In the meantime, it remains an electoral law with strong teeth. Its operation over time will likely result in a change in overall political culture in Nigeria by compelling all actors in the game like politicians, political parties and voters to all play by the rules consistently. This is the long-term intent of the law, and hopefully it comes to pass. As Yakubu exits the stage then, we can say to him with a strong conviction that barring any reversal of gains at INEC, the world of Nigerian elections will get better tomorrow because you did your part today.