Curse For Mahmood And Our Endless Quest For The Saintly INEC Chairman

Last Sunday was February 25, exactly one year after the last presidential election. Posts were trending on social media announcing it as a day to pronounce curse on the INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, for what is seen as a grand electoral fraud that took place under his watch, leading to a compromised outcome in the presidential polls.

I’m not exactly sure of what the protagonists of that online protest believed they would achieve with it. However, I know for sure that such emotional venting helps in managing bad feelings. Nigerians are experiencing very harsh times and it’s only natural that their frustrations would lead them into such animosity against anyone perceived as having a hand, directly or indirectly, in their suffering. Almost all our previous presidential elections had been adjudged as flawed and we never nursed this level of resentment against the electoral umpire several months after the polls, which points to the fact that the current hunger in the land is an important factor in the way we react to the last election.

Another likely intention of those who initiated the “day of curse” against the INEC chairman is to use such protest as an avenue for calling attention to our flawed electoral culture by shaming a man believed to have presided over a compromised election the last time. Under normal circumstances, this is a potent strategy of realising social change.

However, our circumstances are far from being normal. Evil has become so much embedded in our system that calling out a perpetrator has little or no impact any longer. For instance, a governor who was captured on camera collecting dollar notes from a contractor and stuffing them into his clothes was not only able to secure a second tenure but is today the chairman of a major political party. Similarly, a man who, as a vice president, was indicted for outrageous corrupt practices has since then been contesting elections to become our president. Worse still, while his accomplice, an American politician, has since been jailed by his country, our own man has always come close to becoming our president – and might have indeed actually won at the polls, at least on one occasion, if not for probably compromised results.

In 2019, famous investigative journalist, ‘Fisayo Soyombo, went undercover to expose the stinking level of corruption bedeviling our police and prison system. Along the line, his cover was blown as prison officers discovered he was not an ordinary detainee but a man who had made himself a detainee just to expose corruption. As the news of his ordeal in the hands of the prison authorities got to the editor of the Cable Online under whose auspices he was doing the investigation, the editor started running helter-skelter in search of a saviour. Eventually, the saviour happened to be the powerful chief of staff to the president, Abba Kyari. In a piece written by the editor after ‘Fisayo’s story had been nominated for an international investigative journalism award, he recalled that when he got Abba Kyari on phone and informed him of the journalist’s predicament and begged for his intervention, Kyari, a former journalist himself, said, “in advanced countries, such investigative reports help force government to implement change, but here we are just cursed.”

I have gone ahead to give this account in order to let the reader hear from the voice of a man who had experienced it both as a critic (journalist) and as a powerful member of the ruling class. Abba Kyari’s words succinctly paint the picture of our tragic situation where criticism and exposure of social ills come with little or no impact. The perpetrators are never moved because they anticipate no consequence. For one, since ‘Fisayo’s highly penetrating exposé was published, we have not heard of anybody being subjected to even the mildest questioning for their possible role in the exposed corrupt practices. Our police stations have remained a den of corruption irrespective of the highly expository video and photo evidence secretly captured by ‘Fisayo. But then if extortion and other corrupt practices have continued in our police force in spite of the fact that many of the acts are not hidden from the glare of the public, there was indeed very little ‘Fisayo’s secret cameras could have achieved.

Back to February 25 and the “curses” directed at Mahmood, I do sincerely think there will be little or no effect from them. Such naming and shaming comes with the intended effect only where evil has not become so much embedded in the system that it wears the appearance of the normal.

Again and more importantly, I think the whole drama of “cursing” Mahmood tends to convey a misleading impression that the root of our electoral problems is our failure to procure saints to be in charge of the process. However, if all the flawed elections we have had since the infamous 1964 polls happened because of the “evil” character of the chairmen of the electoral bodies, then saints must be quite few in Nigeria, hence our fate of always having “devils” at the helms of our electoral bodies. Besides, corrupt practices at our elections always occur at all levels and involving thousands of participants – polling officers, electoral officers, collation officers, security agents etc. So, if the root of our electoral failings is the character of those that drive the process, then our search for a saintly INEC chairman, if successful, may amount to a drop in the ocean, as we must also seek out saints to occupy these other thousands of positions down the ladder of our electoral institutional set-up.

But then where do we hunt for those saints? Is it within the same Nigerian system that has proven a difficult ground for hunting for saints? INEC staff members are part of our notoriously corrupt civil service. Similarly, ad hoc personnel mobilised by INEC at every election are not recruited from the moon; they are from the same country where every sector and every stratum reeks of corruption. Truth be told, our electoral system cannot but reflect our larger society. Expecting to have a working INEC in a non-working Nigeria is a pipe dream. It’s not a matter of “cursing” a Mahmood, a Jega, an Iwu or a Goubadia. For as long as these chief electoral officers are selected from this system, we will continue to have more individuals to curse.

Truth is that no nation is built relying primarily on the moral rectitude of individuals. Successful nations are built on the supremacy of the law, where the law ensures everybody complies with objective minimum standards of conduct. In other words, the foundation of a healthy nation is not the virtues of individuals but the strictures of the law and institutions. What we refer to as individual virtue or vice is sometimes a mere reflection of how the law and institutions function in the place where the individual is. This is why, for instance, Nigerians behave differently when they are in lawful societies vis-a-vis the way they behave when they are in our lawless clime. A Mahmood, a Jega, an Iwu or a Goubadia will likely behave differently if he is to find himself superintending over an election in a lawful clime where institutions have so much developed that they transcend individual idiosyncrasies. Sociologists are well aware of the powerful role of institutions in shaping human conduct. For some great insights see Peter Berger’s INVITATION TO SOCIOLOGY: A HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE (Penguin, 1963. Read chapter 5 “Society in Man”).

As it stands today, the legal and institutional realities around our electoral practices are such that will continue to reinvent flawed elections. The person of the INEC chairman may not have so much impact there. For instance, we have heard past presidents pledging to give us free and fair elections. This pledge was very loudly echoed by the immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari. But then in this pledge is revealed the fact that our electoral institutional set-up is such that is yet to place the power to conduct a free and fair election in the hands of the electoral body. INEC should be an independent body, as such the president should have no business determining how free and fair an election “independently” conducted by it should be. This is more so considering that the president is always an interested party in those elections where his party and/or himself will be on the ballot.

But then our past presidents who made the promise actually knew what they were saying; they knew where the power to conduct free and fair elections lies, just like the rest of us that took the promises seriously – that is, we citizens who believed that the quality of our elections would be dependent on how sincere those who made the promise were. In 2020, we saw Governor Obaseki of Edo State visit to thank President Buhari for allowing a free and fair election that handed him a second tenure following his fierce battle with his erstwhile godfather, Adams Oshiomhole. Why didn’t the appreciation go to the INEC chairman?

Even in the context of post-election litigations, everyone knows where the power to give justice actually lies. Not long ago, Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa state visited to thank President Tinubu after the Supreme Court affirmed his election following an anxious wait. Is Tinubu the Chief Justice of Nigeria?

In the final analysis, while I believe individuals should be held responsible for their conducts as electoral umpires, the search for remedy should go much beyond blaming the individual. It must be holistic by looking at the role.of the institutions as the custodian of standards. Otherwise, we may find ourselves tottering and fumbling unendnngly in our fruitless search for a saintly INEC chairman.

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.