USAfrica: Nigerians, INEC and culture of electoral banditry. By Bobo Sofiri Brown.
By Bobo Sofiri Brown.
Exclusve commentary to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet
Before the February 2023 presidential election, no one was talking about commensurate punishment for any infraction or rigging of votes by the hierarchy and staff of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
For all it is worth, government did not raise a whip hand to avert proven, continuous institutional incompetence.
Those factors seem to have led INEC to believe that Nigeria may even reward plain, serial highway robbery by our non-performing public institutions, with the usual back-slapping and perhaps award of national honours — in due course.
After all, the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, whose establishment has inflicted unprecedented torture on Nigerians and the national economy, is still enjoying “high five” salute and applause in the Presidential Villa!
It seems that such complacency and indifference could have misled Prof. Mahmood Yakubu chairman of the INEC and the INEC hierarchy this time around, during the disputed presidential and national assembly elections of February 25, 2023.
We didn’t hold INEC and her officials to serious interrogation and relevant purgation for under- performance and obvious cases of budget sqaunder or corporate mischief making.
We made INEC and its officials believe there will be no consequence for gross misconduct in the 2023 elections.
They probably said so to themselves: Is this not Nigeria?
It seems that from 2019, we exhibited 4 years of relative indifference, at home and in Diaspora.
But unlike 2019, the election of 2023 brought a new factor.
There is a national Movement to “Take Back Nigeria” from manifest incompetent personnel and suspected fraudsters serving as Chief Executives of public establishments.
They are people whose misconducts and corrupt actions are taking Nigeria backwards, daily, in every sector, locally and overseas.
This movement known by its popular identity of “Obidients”, is forged in the burning fire of an expanding demography of the deprived, aggrieved and increasingly alert members of our national population.
We chose Peter Obi and Baba Datti Ahmed as our national poster for the promise of a New Nigeria where voters count, so that logically, their votes must also count.
It is a manual to create a nation that is productive by a clear commitment to the dignity of all citizens and a duty to honour the rights of every Nigerian no matter the person’s region, religion, gender or social status.
Therefore, in 2023, INEC did not just give our nation a louder slap as described by Segun Sanni in his USAfrica commentary: INEC’s Mahmoud Yakubu, this Second Slap is Louder.
Sanni calls on Nigerians to wake up, now!
What to do now?
Support all measures to seek legal redress for this electoral robbery of 2023 (as provided in the relevant Laws and electoral guidelines).
Let’s demand that Prof. Yakubu and his management team proceed on suspension for a bad job.
This is standard procedurd in any serious corporate setting.
Why should we trust them to preside over the governorship and some legislative elections which Yakubu’s INEC on March 8 moved from March 11 to March 18, 2023?
As Chief Executive of INEC, the burden of poor performance is on Prof. Yakubu.
We should not let INEC Exco to tamper with evidence that will be required for both civil and criminal proceedings for alleged criminal alterations of election documents.
I believe that the credible allegations and proof of voting results forgery and video clips seen since February 25 deserve more serious national outcry against a culture of electoral banditry. Nigerians, please wake up!
— Bobo Sofiri Brown, editorial opinion contributor to USAfrica and USAfricaonline.com, served as pioneer Manager of PR at NAFCON Nigeria, founder of the SUNRAY multimedia group in 1992 in Port Harcourt and is currently CEO of GRAIN Consulting.
