Convincing Nigerians to participate in future elections conducted by the INEC under Mahmood Yakubu, will be an uphill task. The INEC chairman and his team should go.
The mistake Nigerian leaders make is in thinking that the citizens easily forget. But that is wrong. Times have changed. With improvements in technology and other electronic devices, errors by the leaders are kept, to be served them at appropriate moments, often in harsh measures. In other words, the evil that men do, now lives with them. Some call it nemesis, others say it is natural justice at work. Whatever it is, the lessons are instructive.
Days to February 25, 2024, social media platforms were awash with flyers urging Nigerians to keep the date in mind for reflection and as a sad reminder of the electoral heist committed against them by Prof Mahmood Yakubu-led Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in 2023. Netizens were asked to say silent prayers on that day, that never again would the country be afflicted with the person and likes of Yakubu in any of its national institutions. That was a solemn declaration that should give any right-thinking man cause for concern.
In Igbo cosmogony, such declaration amounts to ritual cleansing, often carried out by communities when heinous crimes have been committed against the land. On such occasion, the scapegoat, a he-goat upon whose head is symbolically placed the sins and transgressions of an entire community, bears the burden of atonement for sins it did not commit. It is left to wander about, uncared for but unharmed by any member of the society, as a remembrance for the ugly past.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, usually marked on 27 January, approximates to that. The Day reminds of the killing of six million Jews, two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population, and millions of others by the Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, in its sordid attempt to implement its “final solution” to the Jewish question. A commitment to guard against a recurrence of the bizarre action, has given rise to various activities, including the Never Again Movement.
It is on this ground that the true meaning of the social media flyers preceding the February 25 anniversary of the 2023 presidential election, can be appreciated. We may recap the events of that day to drive home the anger of traumatized Nigerians, especially the youths. February 25, 2023 was a day of Nigeria’s presidential election; the day that the hopes by Nigerians for enthroning enduring democratic culture were dashed by Prof Mahmood Yakubu’s INEC and the former President, Muhammadu Buhari.
Before the fateful date, Buhari and the INEC Chairman, had fooled Nigerians, promising them free and fair elections. Buhari had at each juncture, announced to the world that he was working towards instituting a legacy of credible electoral democracy in the land. At every forum, he kept advertising the pledge.
Yakubu followed suit, beating his chest that the days of election manipulation were over. He had particularly flaunted the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV), as safeguards against rigging. Nigerians, old and young, who had yawned for transparent election, believed them.
But when it mattered most, it became glaring that neither the erstwhile President, nor the INEC chair was prepared to keep to those promises. They rather showed that they had a hidden agenda at compromising the poll. Yakubu was nowhere to be seen, while Buhari mocked Nigerians by brandishing his ballot paper, showing that he voted for the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu.