VANGUARD
Vanguard can authoritatively confirm that there is a plot to compromise the 2027 general election through the instrumentality of appointing a yes-man as a replacement for Professor Mahmood Yakubu, the National Chairman of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
Yakubu’s tenure ends in November of this year when he will have served two terms.
What Vanguard cannot confirm is when the plot began.
At press time, Vanguard investigations revealed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is yet to be fully boarded on the plot’s platform.
However, forces pulling the strings from outside Aso Rock Presidential Villa are known friends of the President.
They are also working with powerful Aso Rock insiders.
The arrowhead of this move is a former South-South governor and a member of the class of 1999.
This comes at a time the credibility of the Election Management Body is suffering a massive discount due to the 2023 general elections and the off-season elections it has conducted since then.
One option being pursued for the plot to succeed is the nomination and confirmation of a malleable individual as Yakubu’s successor.
A number of names (withheld by Vanguard) is already being put forward for possible consideration.
Unfortunately, the individuals positioned by the plotters had served as National Commissioners of the Commission, and Resident Electoral Commissioners, RECs, who did not dress themselves in shining armour during their tenure.
In fact, the seemingly plausible consideration for their choice is the extent of their malleability, which would mean an erosion of INEC’s credibility in conducting free, fair, and credible elections.
Nigerians recall with nostalgia how the 2003 and 2007 general elections went, culminating in the public admission by a beneficiary of the 2007 sham presidential election, late President Umar Musa Yar’Adua, that there were flaws in the election that brought him to power.
Flouting constitutional provision
Under a democracy with a written Constitution, unlike the British parliamentary system where the Constitution is unwritten, the power exercisable by any elected or appointed state official like the President must derive from the Constitution; otherwise, it is null and void.
That is why Section 1 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) declares unambiguously: “This Constitution is supreme, and its provisions shall have binding force on all authorities and persons, (including the President) throughout the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
INEC is established under Section 153 of the Constitution.
The mode of appointment of the Chairman and members is provided for under Section 154(1) and (2) of the Constitution only. In exercising his power to appoint the Chairman or members of INEC, the Constitution mandatorily says, “the president shall consult the Council of State”, and such appointment again “shall be subject to confirmation by the Senate.”
The Constitution established INEC as genuinely independent and clearly stated under the Third Schedule, Paragraph 14, that its members “shall be persons of unquestionable integrity” and “shall not be members of a political party.”