THE PROFESSOR IN MAHMOUD YAKUBU IS DEAD

OPINION

Gora Albehu Dauda

If the truth be told, the professor in Mahmoud Yakubu embattled INEC Chairman is now for all intents and purposes DEAD, a sequel to the tardy manner in which he programmed and is executing the 2023 General Elections.

The very title of professor used to send shockwaves down the spines of many particularly University  students. If there is any appointment outside of the walls of the University that a professor will pray to be appointed to, that should be INEC Chairman.Yakubu has no reason for the massive failures during and after the first phase of the general election as the problem is not about MONEY, far from it rather it is that the whole milieu in which he has been operating since his appointment as Chairman of INEC has been afflicted by massive corruption.

Nigeria has had the culture of appointing Professors as  Chairmen of electoral bodies but there is no evidence showing that the professor Chairmen brought anything new to the conduct of elections in this country. In my humble view or assessment, only Professor Mahmoud Jega managed to escape with minor injuries. Mahmoud Yakubu's first outing left in its wake a lot of jetsam or flotsam.  

The outcome of the Presidential vote back in 2019 in Kano State said to have had about very 4 million registered voter and who all turned out and voted exclusively for Muhammadu Buhari remains still an enigma. That not a single ballot was bad still remains to be explained by Yakubu. We may not get to the bottom of this until perhaps after he pens down his memoirs that is if he ever will remember.

In the face of the political alchemy which Yabubu and his co alchemist so beautifully executed inside the innermost sanctums of INEC by declaring Muhammadu Buhari president in that last election, he would simply have stepped down as Chairmen but he remained perhaps in the hope that he will correct what went wrong in the 2019 political fiasco. 

The 2023  election with only the Presidential and NASS content thus far conducted but which turned out a much more gargantuan albatross for Yakubu and everyone else including foreign election observers. Yakubu Mahmoud still continues playing the ostrich and in doing so fails to see that gapping holes in his armour.

Yakubu Mahmoud and the INEC he chairs have some explanations to make not only to Nigerians alone but to all watchers of election around the world.
Yakubu has to explain why in 2019, over 4 million registered voters voted in Kano State yet in 2023, with almost 5 million so-called registered voters in the same Kano State, only about a million voters turned out to cast their votes. 

What happened to the rest? In more populous Lagos State, said to have registered over 5 million voters, just about a million turned out to vote. Where did the rest travel to or did they stay away as a form of protest? On the whole, it is seriously reported that only about 10 percent of the registered voters turned out to vote. If that is true, it then means that there are very serious issues to be sorted out.

If Mahmoud Yakubu thought that he will serve Nigerians half cooked beans again in 2023 as he did in 2019, he got it all wrong. Chatting up a friend from the South East early today, he deployed a proverb typical of his Igbo kinsmen to express himself. He likened the whole saga to thieves who over time had gotten used to stealing from the people who apparently were either unaware or lethargic about it. The theft had now gotten to the point that the owners in 2023 somehow managed to have woken up from their near terminal slumber and have caught the thieves in the act.

For all the time the thieves had been stealing, they never thought that the owners will one day wake up to keep a watch. How wrong they have been because their game is up as the Nigerian people have cought the thieves and it will never be business as usual ever again.

I liken Mahmoud Yakubu and the election manipulators deeply entrenched in INEC and elsewhere to spiders building up their webs to trap flies for food but who unfortunately are now entangled in their own webs.
Elections have deliberately been rigged to produce specific  outcomes but in 2023 Nigeria is effectively at the CROSSROADS. 

This country cannot even attempt going backwards and going forward is as difficult. If Mahmoud Yakubu has been working to serve or protect the interest of the feudall.class from which he was sourced and not the interest of Nigeria, he must know that a new dawn is breaking. We have had enough of this nonsense and will not sit back and let it continue.

I have one little prescription to make intended for a panacea. It is that the Military carpentered for Nigeria a Constitution whose basic framework is for all intents and purposes a disaster. I have heard some people say that no Constitution is perfect to the extent it was drafted by mere mortals but the practice of any such Constitution can make the difference. The Presidential.system of government Nigeria is operating is  at the core of all the problems to the extent that complex as our society is, so much power is handed to one man called the President of the Federal Republic. This is the reason why during elections candidates are willing to do just anything to emerge winners. Before it is too late, I hold the view and strongly too, that Nigeria reverts to a Parliamentary form of government under which only deputies are elected and who proceed to electing the President or Prime Minister as the case may be. If whoever is elected does not deliver, the parliament can simply remove him/her in a No Confidence.Vote without having to get the electorate involved.

To God Be The Glory.