A former chairman, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Professor Chidi Odinkalu, has described the strings of appoints by President Muhammadu Buhari as ‘overwhelmingly nepotistic’.
According to him “I don’t think that there is any question that President Buhari’s appointments have been overwhelmingly nepotistic. Even his most ardent admirers are not likely to defend him against charges of nepotism. On that, he has not much changed since he was last in office between 1984 and 1985”
On the reappointment of the INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu he said “ This his is the first time that any INEC chair would seek to be re-nominated and the first time that a President is re-nominating one under the presidential system that we have had since 1979. An INEC chair who wants a second term could use his or her first term to make the president feel good. That is not a good thing. Whether that has happened in this case is for people to determine. It is not for me to tell Nigerian citizens whether or not they should feel excited about this kind of appointment. The country has to determine for itself what value we place on independent constitutional institutions”
In an interview Sunday Punch he talked about his impression of INEC s far “ The performance of INEC under the current leadership has been, at best, mixed in my opinion. I could do worse. In 2015, the country hailed advances in data management under the then INEC chair, Prof Jega. You could also see that in the leaps in improvement in electoral legitimacy. In 2007, about 86.35 per cent of all votes ended up in the election tribunals. In 2011, with barely 10 months to organize the elections, Jega’s INEC reduced the number of ballots that ended up in the tribunals to just under 52 per cent. In 2015, for the first time in our history, the presidential election did not end up in court and also for the first time in our history, we ended up with less than 50 per cent of all contests going before the tribunals. Indeed, only about 42 per cent of the contests ended up in court in 2015. In 2019, we were back up to about 51 per cent of all offices going before the courts, just about the same number of contests as in 2011. Unlike in 2011 when Jega’s INEC had 10 months to prepare, Yakubu’s INEC had four years to prepare for 2019. That was not a distinguished performance, to put it modestly. I could go into more details here but that is not necessary to make my point”.
NEC chair. He set the commission, the electoral system and the country back a lot and I don’t want to waste energy discussing him. But, on the part of your question that I can answer, it has not been entirely a tyranny of professors in the position of chair of INEC. Chief Michael Ani was not a professor. Justice Victor Ovie-Whiskey and Justice Ephraim Akpata were judicial figures. Abel Guobadia was a diplomat. So, we have had a mix of figures and skill sets in that position. I guess what has made it look like a tyranny of professors was the innovation brought in by Prof Jega to have professors as high-profile collation officers in various levels of elections under his watch. Some of those professors have not really covered themselves in glory.