It is obvious that Prof. Yakubu rushed to announce Tinubu as the winner and also rushed to hand over the Certificate of Return to him to foist a fait accompli and a state of helplessness on the matter.
Prof. Yakubu has shown that he lacks character. He is pathologically a liar, and a disgrace to academia. He should be fired as the INEC chairman. What a disastrous country! Buhari is a disaster, the CBN is a disaster, Emefiele is a disaster, Malami is a disaster, INEC is a disaster, and now Yakubu is a disaster. However, INEC and Prof Yakubu are promising to deploy the BVAS again on Saturday. Can they be trusted this time? Well, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume they will do the right thing on Saturday. Already, Labour has secured an order of Mandamus from the court compelling INEC and Prof Yakubu to use the BVAS on Saturday for the Governorship and House of Assembly elections. The court order subsists, and if Prof Yakubu dares to disobey the court order, he will be sent to jail and the entire election will be cancelled. Having woefully failed last Saturday in conducting a free and fair election, INEC must live up to its name as a real “independent” electoral body on Saturday.
It should be noted that no democratic election is 100% flawless anywhere in the world. Even in the United States, the Presidential election is also fraught with electoral malfeasances and malpractices. For instance, in his often-cited classic work, Democracy in America, French historian and diplomat Alexis De Tocqueville who travelled to America to study American democracy, writes that democracy that is bereft of equality of conditions is bound to gravitate towards despotism. When democracy is said to liberate all men, it is on the assumption that there are political leaders with high moral principles ready to navigate democracy to a safe harbor. Unfortunately, most democracies in the world are not run by Plato’s guardians and ethically principled men. Most democracies, unfortunately, are in the hands of men of unruly passions and creatures of appetites. We know all this. But what transpired in Nigeria last Saturday is not just mere electoral malpractices and irregularities. What transpired in Nigeria was that INEC, which is supposed to be an unbiased umpire in the election, brought its full weight to bear in rigging the presidential election in favor of Emilakon Bola Tinubu.
As I earlier said, having woefully failed to live up to its bidding last Saturday, INEC should redeem its image this Saturday. Prof Yakubu should repent and allow the votes to count on Saturday. The political parties should desist from sending their touts to tamper with the results of the election. Is INEC and the Buhari government aware that the APC Lagos has instructed its agents and touts assigned to each Pooling Unit that they must “deliver” the unit by all means on Saturday? So, I foresee another APC rigging on Saturday. Therefore the Buhari government is respectfully advised to dispatch 2 or 3 well-armed soldiers to each Pooling unit in Lagos to safeguard the unit from election stealing. You see, democracy becomes a sham when the electoral body conducting the periodic election is not impartial. Above all, in our representative democracy, power belongs to the people, not President Buhari, let alone INEC. Put differently, sovereignty in our presidential democracy resides with the people. The American founding fathers aptly put it when they stated that “Governments are instituted among men deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” Therefore government simply means government with consent derived from the people. This consent flows from the radical notion of equal rights for all people.
If we are all equal and sovereignty resides with the people, then the will of the people should be allowed to prevail in the 2023 general election. The Buhari government should understand that it is legally and morally bound to do everything possible to enable INEC to discharge its constitutional obligations to Nigeria and its people, as provided for in the third schedule, Part 1, Section 15(a-i) of the Constitution.
A word for Nigerian voters: You must go out and vote on Saturday, as you did last Saturday. May voter apathy and melancholy not consume you and prevent you from voting on Saturday, March 11th, 2023. Amen! The #EndSARS young boys and girls should also turn out to vote on Saturday. Permit me to tell you one small thing that you may find interesting: If you refuse to vote on Saturday, you will be giving compromised INEC staffers another opportunity to connive with the APC and manipulate the results of the election once more. So, be optimistic. Do not be afraid. Weep no more. Nothing has been lost. Let me wipe away the tears from your eyes. Do not seek to flee Nigeria. This is our country. The revolution has begun. This is our chance. Lest you forget, our greatest asset is hope. So, do not lose hope. In no time, the songs of victory shall resound in the horizon. We would arrive at the end of our democratic journey, at our homeland, where suffering shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.
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