The 2023 vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Datti Baba-Ahmed, says Nigeria does not need an election-rigger to succeed Mahmood Yakubu, whose 10-year tenure expires as the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on November 9, 2025.
Baba-Ahmed stated this on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Friday.
Baba-Ahmed blamed Yakubu for some of the irregularities that marred the 2023 presidential election won by ex-Lagos governor Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
He said, “All I want is a credible person, not somebody who will clearly rig what the constitution provides: 25% in at least two-thirds of the states of the federation and the FCT, and go ahead to breach the constitution and put Nigeria into what Nigeria is today. Just one individual. Throughout human history, individuals make or break societies.”
Tinubu trounced LP’s Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), his two top contenders. Atiku and Obi challenged the election results up to the Supreme Court, but the apex court upheld the victory of Tinubu as declared by the electoral umpire, INEC.
Yakubu, a 75-year-old Professor of Political Science and former Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), emerged as INEC chairman in November 2015 following his appointment by then President Muhammadu Buhari.
Yakubu succeeded Attahiru Jega, who supervised the 2015 general elections. In 2020, Buhari reappointed Yakubu as the electoral commission boss for a second term of five years.
The onus to appoint Yakubu’s successors falls on Tinubu, but there have been talks about Yakubu’s replacement and the zone of the country his successor would come from, especially because INEC chairmen in the last 15 years have come from the northern region of the country.
Baba-Ahmed, who was Obi’s running mate in the 2023 presidential election, said electoral recruitment remained the bane of Nigeria’s democracy.
He said, “Our leadership recruitment is the bane of our problems.
“Electoral fraud is the single most important fact to be addressed in our lives as a nation, even beyond insecurity.
“Insecurity is derived from electoral fraud. The Nigerian election gave birth to the kind of insecurity we have today.
“Corruption is aggravated by electoral fraud. The destruction of our youths, of the system, is aggravated by electoral fraud.”
