Review & Outlook: Election, Leadership And A Boiling Conundrum – Nigeria’s Haunting Malady

By Lanre Fadahunsi

Our country just went through fire and it refused to burn. Not because fire was not meant to burn but because of inventions that changed the world. Nitwits guess they are smarter until they encounter superior intelligence which dwarfs their wise wiles. 

GORDON Rattray Taylor, the Consultant editor of the publication, The Inventions That Changed the World, an illustrated guide to man’s practical genius through the ages in his introduction titled, The Roots of Invention, says “from man’s inventiveness has risen the vast difference between his ways of life and that of animals.

Who are the geniuses who made our civilization possible? Of the billions of people who have peopled the earth, less than one percent – have had the creative genius to conceive something new and useful. 

Their inspiration did much more than raise our standard of living. It changed the size and distribution of population, brought about great shifts in the location of political power, created new class systems, transformed education and much else, in ways which few of us fully appreciate. Population, shift in political power both happening to us in Nigeria now puts to test what we have done or refused to do with inventions that changed the other worlds for good.

A survey of the lives of inventors reveals that they have aspects of character which are relatively rare in combination. Taylor opined. In all of these we were made to know that there were a lot of heroic failures in the drama of inventiveness. They each wrote their history as ken . S.G Brown, American inventor had 235 patents on telegraphy, radio and gyro compass design; he once said, “ if there were any control over me and my work every idea would stop.” Their conviction is almost mystical that there are more elegant ways of doing things. And above all, an extreme independence. Lee de forest another great radio inventor stated that he found it difficult to work “under conditions short of complete autonomy”

Thomas Alva Edison, John Logie Baird took a cue from Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone who sold his invention for cash.

 The main man of the moment in Nigeria today is Mahmood Yakubu, a professor of some academic kind. My mood changes with Mahmood each time I see him on the political history of Nigeria. Repeatedly, this set man of history assured the world of how prepared he was to change the course of Nigerias’ political narrative for good. By extension chatting an enviable pathway for the entire continent of Africa

 Wherever and whenever the opportunity presents itself to boast of the ingenuity swing of Elections 2023 in Nigeria it gives one a great pride. In fact according to him, over 12 million new voters registered to be part of the 2023 debacle. 

Quoting Mahmood Yakubu at the Chattam house, shattering every iota of doubt regarding a successful election in Nigeria, he said,”…this informed an early choice of a new voter accreditation technology using an electronic device called BIVAS. Tested in several bye elections and governorship Elections that makes polling units results available for public viewing which has always been a major demand by citizens and election observers. Falls into this early of election technology. He cited before the Chattam house select crowd the uploading of 105 Constituency bye elections results real time from August. He told the crowd how fortified IRev is to Elections 2023. He even told politicians to compare the results on the results sheet from the party agents with what is on the IRev portals of INEC. Before that elite gathering, Professing Mahmood said he was sure that the IRev was 99.99% accurate. He was loudly applauded. He smiled to this. 

Fast-forward to the 25th February, Presidential and National Assembly elections one begins to wander what removed the soul of a great nation from the umpire and brought out the ghost of Frankenstein. Bad enough it’s scary worse of it is that it’s horrid

 Did INEC not want to supritend  a free fair and credible election? My answer is Yes at some point when it still had its independence. At the point of intimate closed door alliances the independence was lost and morbid alliances took charge. However, it will require an evil genius to beat technology because often at that level like fire that doesn’t respect the lighter of the conflagration tech will always outsmart you. It is man against machine. The Chairman who boasted that the August, 2022 results and the July 16, 2022 governorship election results could still be viewed real time on the IRev portals. 

When shall we three meet again, the witches asked rhetorically, in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. “ In thunder , lightening or in rain.  When the hurley burley is done, when the battle is lost and won. “ 

 

Mahmood Yakubu’s INEC has set the mood and tone for his own place in history of politics in Nigeria. He has been praised for having supervised some averagely  good elections in the past unlike the recent one adjudged as falling short,(of average) by all assessment. By reason of changing her own rules in the middle of the game and going even to seek an opportunity to reconfigure what he told the world at Chattam house, at BBC news interview and her own  invitation of world press about fake news that his organization would not upload results from polling units. To cap it all, now INEC purportedly doesn’t want the court to hold the approval for Labour Party and PDP to inspect her records of the electoral process. 

CNN over decades now have been using stories tagged as eye witness reports and as such, due to technology, eye witness reports of the election is a huge indictment of INEC and it’s process. INEC removed the goal post after a goal was scored. Who does that. In that election that we were told it would be impossible to snatch boxes, we saw people “snatch boxes and ran with it” No security whatsoever. However, superior intelligence will always remain superior and it is only a matter of time. 

 

This sword is dishonored, repugnant and a morbid embarrassing scepter to hold for it lacks splendor. To a lot of people it looks like a selection than an election. It was a case of INEC against INEC and it’s the spirit, body and soul of INEC in disharmony. This conundrum is a bubbling Cyclone ready to burst on all it’s seams. Just a matter of time. Now the hurley burley is done. The battle is defined now, let’s wait until we see who wins…the people or some persons. 

Oh time alone oh time will tell, think you’re in heaven but you living in hell, weep no more my children weep no more…Bob Marley.

• Lanre Fadahunsi wrote in  from Lagos.