FLOWERS FOR MAHMOOD YAKUBU

                           Sammy Johnson argues that Yakubu has done exceedingly well

In the last few days, his name has been popping up in the news as a likely successor to Mahmood Yakubu, the erudite Chairman, Independent National Election Commission(INEC)who ended his decade-long tenure on October 7, 2025.Predictably, President Bola Tinubu last Wednesday nominated Professor Joash Ojo Amupitan,SAN, as the new Chairman of the electoral body.The professor of Law hails from Kogi State, North central, Nigeria.The two immediate electoral chairmen were of the Northwest and Northeast extraction.

Undoubtedly, Yakubu can be said to have come, saw and nearly conquered.His first tenure began in October 2015 and renewed in October 2020. He managed numerous elections including two presidential elections (2019 and 2023) and several off-cycle elections: governorships, National Assembly and State House of Assembly to varying degrees of success. There were tepid and sometimes, trenchant criticisms of INEC regarding result transmission and credibility. There were also reported cases of bare-faced violence, vote buying, ballot box snatching, intimidation of Returning officers and other electoral officers. INEC did the needful in each peculiar situation using extant rules governing the conduct and announcement of results. Overall, the score is above average for the electoral manager.

But when the real test came – The Presidential and National Assembly election during the 2019 general elections, Yakubu stumbled and nearly fell. All was set for the most consequential election in the series. There was no room for error. But that was exactly what INEC gave to stunned Nigerians as the election was postponed few hours to its commencement! Slated for February 16, it eventually held a week later on February 23. The one-week time-frame was tense and people waited with bated breath as the electoral body reeled out the reasons for the paused exercise: Logistical challenges –difficulties in distributing electoral materials to some areas on time and operational issues – Errors in mixing sensitive and non-sensitive materials which complicated the sorting process.

As cogent as the reasons appeared, including a court order pertaining to a Primary election exercise by the All Progressive Congress (APC) contenders in Zamfara State, many Nigerians saw these as “na wash”- a local parlance with the deeper meaning of hogwash (puns meant). 

So what happened? How could INEC, the only agency of government which is fully funded to the tune of billions of Naira put the nation in such a quagmire? But most importantly how can such sloppiness be avoided in future? We would come back to these later.

It is instructive to note that the electoral body delivered on its promise as the election held on the rescheduled dates for the Presidential and National Assembly and the Governorship and State House of Assembly. Pundits credit Yakubu with administrative sagacity, management prowess and organisational dexterity for the success recorded in the exercise. 

Critics however, raised issues of violence and insecurity citing the loss of dozens of lives in the course of the exercise; alleged electoral malpractices with the European Observation Mission (EOM) reporting “severe operational and transparency shortcomings.” But overall, the election met the threshold stipulated by the Electoral Act for INEC to declare the results with Muhammadu Buhari emerging as President for the second and final term. The same criticisms, even more trenchant trailed the 2023 general election which produced the incumbent President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Still, as the INEC helmsman bowed out last Tuesday, there is much going for him. More than any other chairman, he introduced far reaching innovations and technology to make the work of the commission nimble and smooth-sailing. These include but not limited to the Biometric Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to improve the voter verification process; Electronic Transmission of results to enhance transparency and the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal for real-time transmission of results.   

Others are: Comprehensive and predictive Election Monitoring and Support Centre (EMSC) dashboard that reports over 1,000 election monitoring indicators which integrates all the Commission’s election monitoring tools comprising the Election Management System (EMS), the Election Operation Support Centre (EOSC), the Electoral Risk Management Tool (ERM) and the INEC Security Alert and Notification System. 

As exciting as these advanced technologies appear, they did not insulate the election process from some glitches associated with the manual era – late arrival of materials to polling units,and voting into the night in some places. Issues of vote buying and allegation of rigging were accentuated by politicians. Hence we must give Yakubu his flowers for ensuring that INEC has left the manual age for good. 

A few suggestions will be worth considering by the new INEC chair to deepen the reforms of Prof. Mahmood Yakubu. One, electronic voting should be embraced in a holistic manner so that voters can vote from the comfort of their homes. The technology backbone has been laid by Yakubu. Two, early voting especially in difficult terrains should be adopted in the first instance. Finally, the sequence of elections should deploy the play book of Chief Michael Ani’s 1979 Federal Election Commission (FEDECO) of bottom-up approach starting from the piecemeal elections and building up to the Presidential election.

 INEC should jettison the top-bottom approach which have caused so much heartache since its adoption in the 1983 general election (remember bandwagon effect, landslide and moonslide?) introduced by the then FEDECO chairman, Justice Victor Ovie-Whiskey. The aftermath of that election is too grim for it to have been adopted by subsequent election umpires since the rechristened INEC in 1999. 

The time for change is now.

Johnson writes from Lagos