Immediate past chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Prof. Attahiru Jega yesterday passed a vote of confidence on his successor, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu.
Jega affirmed that Yakubu was a capable hand that could take the electoral umpire to another level.
The former INEC boss also commended President Muhammadu Buhari for considering Mr Yakubu for the revered position.
DAILY POST recalls that Yakubu was cleared yesterday by the Senate after a rigorous screening exercise.
Jega who was speaking at the first University of Abuja Public Lecture Series with the theme: “Electoral Reforms in Nigeria: Challenges and Prospects” said the 2007 elections was clearly the worst in the nation’s history.
He said: “From my experience, I quite often say that Nigeria has a special breed of politicians (Nee: ‘Militicians’). They generally tend to believe that political power through elections has to be ‘captured’ and this has to be done by hook or by crook; and by any means necessary! To them, winning election is, literally, ‘a do-or-die’ affair.”
Jega, who is now at the Department of Political Science, Bayero University, Kano, said the sad development remained a formidable challenge for future electoral reforms.
He said: “As long as politicians continue to have this unwholesome mindset, efforts at electoral reform and deepening democracy would remain constrained.
“INEC faced perhaps its greatest challenge in containing the predisposition and reckless mindset of Nigerian politicians. Any wonder then, that our political arena increasingly resembled a bloody battlefield, with maiming, killing, burning, and unimaginable destruction of lives and property.”
He added that navigating the “minefield” of “do-or-die” politicians as an impartial electoral umpire required nerves of steel.
“Compliance with the laws and insisting on same and respect for due process, as well as being non-partisan and transparent, helped the commission in navigating this ‘minefield’,” Jega said.
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