…Mahmood Yakubu’s exit at INEC a test case for Anambra’s November 8 Governorship Poll
The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (https://intersociety-ng.org) has observed that Nigeria is yet to produce a better and top rated Back-To-Back Democracy INEC Chairman in the past 26 years or since May 1999. In other words, the country’s electoral midwifery had been better managed by previous National Electoral Commissions’ helmsman who held sway during Nigerian military’s inglorious epochs especially since the adoption of Presidential System from the United States of America in 1978, leading to formation of first Presidential System Government in 1979. It is on indisputable record that the best National Electoral Commission helmsman among the military eras’ National Electoral Commissions’ helmsmen is Prof ABC Nwosu who is also the overall best since the first indigenous elections across Nigeria commenced in 1959.
On the other hand, trio of former INEC Chairmen: Profs Mahmood Yakubu (Oct 2015-Oct 2025), Maurice Iwu (June 2005-April 2010) and Attahiru Jega (June 2010-June 2015) shared the list of Nigeria’s very lowly performed and rated INEC Chairmen. Going by unbiased and detribalized rating of the trio, it was found that the misconducts characterizing the era of Prof Attahiru Jega were lesser or ‘mortally sinful’ than those that characterized eras of Maurice Iwu and Mahmood Yakubu which worsened and became ‘immortally sinful’. For instance, under Attahiru Jega as INEC Chairman, the National Register of Voters was allegedly tainted, tempered and flooded with millions of persons of underage and aliens as ‘bearers of Permanent Voters’ Cards’ especially in the North as against in the South, where millions of eligible voters were schemed out, denied registration and PVC validation and issuance allegedly on the grounds of ethnicity and religion.
It must be acknowledged that Prof Attahiru Jega was ‘somehow a better INEC Chairman from 2010 when he was first appointed to 2013 and allegedly changed tribally and religiously from 2014 ahead of the 2015 General Elections which some leading Northern politicians have recently confessed about ‘how they brought millions of Muslim aliens from black Muslim African countries’, with many of whom have their names smuggled into the National Register of Voters and thereafter issued with PVCs to vote in the 2015 Presidential Election; during which they were allegedly allowed to vote alongside millions of persons of underage. In other words, Attahiru Jega’s era as INEC boss, from 2014 to 2015, was nothing to write home about. However, Prof Attahiru Jega as INEC Chairman must be given some credit for cleaning up the grossly tainted and tempered National Register of Voters inherited from Prof Maurice Iwu from June 2010.
Prof Iwu’s era as INEC Chairman is historically remembered for maintaining a National Register of Voters with more than half of the names in the Register being inanimate objects including logs of wood, wooden windows and doors; human skulls and pictures uploaded from photo studios, and across African countries including images of public figures from South Africa, Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, etc. We had prior to the Anambra State Governorship Election held in Feb 2010 discovered massive flooding of the State’s Register of Voters with hundreds of thousands of imported and impersonated pictures and inanimate objects and animal images. The above was to the extent that pictures of Chief Gani Fawehinmi, Prof Wole Soyinka, Dr. Beko Ramsome-Kuki, among others from faraway South-West Nigeria were flooded in the Register as ‘registered voters in Ekwulu-Mmili electoral ward’,, Nnewi South part of Anambra State.
These shocking discoveries forced our legal team at Intersociety to drag then INEC Chairman and others to Federal High Court, Awka Division. In the end, it was shockingly found that out of ’1.86m registered voters for Anambra State’, flooded in the Register, only about 600,000 were identified as ‘living registered voters’ and the remaining 1.26m found to be fake, bearing inanimate objects, animal images and fake photos and passport photographs. INEC was as a result, forced to use the 600,000 living registered voters for the poll, out of which about 301,000 persons voted, with the winner (Peter Obi) scoring 93,000 votes. Over ‘1m votes’ were also cooked up in the botched April 2007 State Governorship Poll from the Register and credited to the ‘winner’, after which courts quashed it and ruled that ‘no vacancy existed at Anambra Governorship Seat’ when the poll was conducted.
From available records at our disposal needing not repeating here owing to freshness of the gross misconducts trailing the era of the immediate past INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, the era recorded the worst electoral process management and midwifery in Nigeria since May 1999. Prof Yakubu’s era as INEC Chairman should have been the best if scientific and technological evolution and advancements at his maximum disposal including ‘comfort-room’ and polling unit-scene electronic or digital voting were neutrally, positively, patriotically and nationalistically utilized or deployed. The most tragic of Prof Yakubu’s era as INEC Chairman was alleged importation and deployment of tribal, ethnic and religious divisions and manipulations into the midwifery of Nigeria’s electoral process management; whereby it appears to have remained the decision of the ruling oligarchs that ‘a Christian Southerner is tabooed to be President of Nigeria even in 2027, if not forever’; which seems to have been foisted on any INEC Chairman in Nigeria.
The above advocacy position of ours is therefore taken following our long period of monitoring Nigeria’s electoral process and democratic governance since 2009, in addition to having twice (2009 and 2023) gone to court on the ground of Public Interest against the top management of the Independent National Electoral Commission; with the most striking part of it being the release of the Intersociety’s 27-Page report against the Commission in December 2022 exposing 22 major rigging plots ahead of the 2023 general elections which were later, as correctly predicted and seriously feared, widely rigged using INEC’s in-house man-mental-machine; during which, contrary to previously militarized and violence-prone polling units’ open rigging and manipulations; a new dangerous rigging technique (in-house computer and electronic paper rigging) was introduced and massively applied using computers, papers and inks as well as compromised and manipulated internet, extranet and intranet facilities.
Mahmood Yakubu’s Exit A Test Case For Anambra’s Nov 8 Poll: It is also our position that the exit of Prof Mahmood Yakubu as INEC Chairman stands the chance of singling out Anambra State as the greatest beneficiary ahead of the State’s Nov 8 Governorship Election especially if the new INEC Head decides to directly or vicariously turn the Commission’s rigging table offside down. Feelers electronically received across the State and South-East in the past 24 hours strongly indicate that continuation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu as INEC Chairman would have scared and remained a bad news for many registered voters especially those bearing PVCs who have decided not to vote again under Mahmood Yakubu as INEC Chairman; but good news for election riggers including some candidates contesting for the Nov 8 Governorship Poll, who would have wanted the immediate INEC helmsman to remain as INEC boss for the poll to be manipulated under his vicarious watch. It is therefore observed that Prof Mahmood Yakubu’s exit as INEC boss has the capacity of rekindling hopes including voter participation involving hundreds of thousands of PVC-bearers and voters across the State only if the new INEC boss in charge of the Nov 8, Poll will have a clear departure from an inglorious epoch of Prof Mahmood Yakubu as INEC Chairman.
Yours Faithfully
For: International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (InterSociety)
Emeka Umeagbalasi, MSc.
Criminologist-Researcher
Head, International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law
Chidinma Udegbunam, Esquire
Human Rights Lawyer/Head, Dept. of Campaign and Publicity
International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law
Digital Contacts:
Mobile/WhatsApp Lines: +2348100098016, +2349130156872
Email: info@intersociety-ng.org, Website: https://intersociety-ng.org
