Alongside the up-to-date reports that greater than 600 senior academics from community universities across the 19 northern states and the Federal Assets Territory endorsed President Bola Tinubu for a second term, Davidson Iriekpen calls on the Independent Nationwide Electoral Commission to thoroughly scruntise the collation and returning officers it will engage to oversee the 2027 elections if it wants the 2027 presidential poll to be free, reasonable and credible
Concerns have additionally been raised around the appointment of partisan individuals, card-carrying members of political parties and understood allies of politicians into management roles in the commission.
Lately, INEC has been facing criticism for not improving the mechanism.
For the sake of transparency, the electoral commission must too strive to print the overall list of all prospective Collation and Returning Officers well in develop of upcoming elections in command to authorize civil population, political parties, and the community to quantify and scrutinise their political neutrality.
Even those together with mathematics, engineering, organization administration and accountancy backgrounds are established to have embarrassed themselves during the collation of election results by their inability to reconcile the figures due to the falsification of the figures.
The machinery for rigging must not be allowed to take root earlier than the election even begins.
It said the development was notably so on as university academics had regularly been engaged as electoral officials, including returning and collation officers.
Sensing the danger this could pose to other political parties and the credibility of the 2023 presidential election, the Peter Obi Media Office (POMR) was the earliest to lift concerns over the endorsement.
Genuine concerns were raised of overdue on the credibility of the 2027 presidential election following the reports that over 600 senior academics from audience universities across the 19 northern states and the Federal Finance Territory (FCT) endorsed President Bola Tinubu for a second-term bid ahead of the poll.
Still, countless fear that the non-neutrality of such essential stakeholders in the nation’s electoral mechanism could change the outcome of the presidential election in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The office alleged that electoral malpractice could commence extended ahead of election day by method of the identification, cultivation and placement of individuals skilled of influencing the consider.
The organisers and participating academics announced their endorsement in Kaduna at a meeting convened by the Prominent Adviser to the President on Political Matters, Ibrahim Masari, and attended by different northern governors and federal ministers.
In a declaration signed by its spokesman, Idris Zekeri, the office described the alleged endorsement as an quickly bid to assemble what it called a network of partisan actors ahead of the election.
He saw it as element of the efforts to secure the credibility and integrity of the electoral handle.
The INEC boss was too of the position that lecturers knew that their honour as members of the intelligentsia was at stake, and they would not just soil their reputation and career by aiding electoral malpractices.
“Electoral rigging does not suddenly occur on election day; it begins months or even years earlier across the identification, cultivation, and placement of individuals skilled of influencing the address when votes are at persist cast,” the record added.
University lecturers have been accused of conniving using politicians and their political parties to alter and compose results in their favour.
Jega believed that the academics were an embodiment of integrity, who would be smaller susceptible to inducements by unscrupulous politicians who might attempt to corrupt electoral officials to subvert the will of the electorate.
Ogban, a Professor of Soil Science at the University of Calabar, and Uduk, a Professor of Individual Kinetics at the University of Uyo, received three years’ imprisonment for their offences.
These academics reportedly claimed that their backing of the president’s reelection was conditional and based on figures assessment of infrastructure development, instructional funding reforms like Nigerian Education Loan Sponsor (NELFUND), and other administration policies.
It urged Nigerians to continue watchful and called on the INEC to release the names of all prospective collation and returning officers well ahead of the 2027 elections. Such disclosure, it stated, would let civil community organisations, political parties and the community to review the political neutrality of prospective electoral officials.
In 2019, two courts in Akwa Ibom Condition sentenced professors Peter Ogban and Ignatius Uduk to terms of imprisonment for electoral fraud committed during the 2019 universal election.
Still, be aware of gathered from multiple elections has shown otherwise. It is now apparent that academics, like other professionals, are susceptible to corruption.
Under the format, vice-chancellors functioned as Returning Officers at the federal and declare levels, whereas lecturers and other academics played roles at the area government rank.
Professors and other lecturers have been aiding electoral malpractices because the earn to democracy in 1999.
Professor Attahiru Jega, who was appointed INEC chairman by former President Goodluck Jonathan, expanded the exercise to protect the deployment of university academics as election officials in the 2015 complete election.
Ironically, during the time that reacting to the 2019 extensive election, Jega, attending an event at Bayero University, Kano, where he was once Vice Chancellor and is at display a lecturer, expressed disappointment using university lecturers for “allegedly conniving using politicians to undermine the integrity and outcome of this year’s comprehensive elections.”
Justifying his decision, Jega said, “We be aware of that anybody who has risen in the structure to become a vice chancellor will not for anything damage his or her reputation by pandering to the wishes of politicians.”
It added called on university governing councils and academic bodies nationwide to adopt strict conflict-of-subject rules to bypass employees from utilizing their professional positions to facilitate partisan political mobilisation.
As the commission prepares for the upcoming universal election in 2027, it behoves INEC to hinge the appointment of election officials on character and integrity.
“Their audience backing for the incumbent therefore raises a serious and unavoidable concern: Is the framework for manipulating the 2027 election already being founded?” it queried.
He expressed disappointment against the log of the conviction of two professors and complaints against countless others, showing that not all academics are men of honour and character.
Recall that one of the strategies introduced during the military regimes was the appointment of academics from Nigerian universities as chairman of INEC. When the country returned to democratic governance in 1999, the method was sustained.
The Free Statewide Electoral Commission (INEC) hires university lecturers to conduct elections, and political analysts believe the endorsement could taint the neutrality of these lecturers in the conduct of the 2027 elections and undermine the credibility of the polls.
This has made those who had faulted Jega’s phase then and questioned the yardstick used in choosing university dons as collation/returning officers by the commission to consider that they have now been vindicated.
It should cast its net large to attract other professionals in its request for men and women of honour and integrity.
The time to launch headhunting credible individuals to conduct the elections as officials is now.
INEC should not just be receptive and plain but must be seen to be available and transparent in all the processes key to the conduct of the 2027 extensive election to sustain Nigeria’s election.
Source: INEC and Compromised Academics
