The comic antics of Mahmood Yakubu, a professor and head of INEC, would have been really entertaining were it not a disgraceful penkelmesi, peculiar mess. Just let us wrap ourselves around the details. The said professor and his cast of comedians were given three long and endless years and billions of naira to plan, organise and stage national elections. And Yakubu and his cast of jesters woefully failed, not just his nation, but most disgustingly himself.
As to the humongous material and financial black hole Yakubu & Company plunged the country, it has been so clearly and severally stated, it is not worth repeating. But what compounds the public misery are the rationalisations the professor forges. And that includes logistics.
One question is thus indicated. Does it then follow that the professor is blissfully ignorant what elections are all about? How did we get this low? The fact is insistent that, in operational terms, elections amount to nothing other than logistics. That is to say, elections constitute nothing other than tabulating and projecting numbers, moving materials, men, shepherding them, and building and test-running scenarios, etc. And besides these fundamentals, the point is that all other electioneering schedules are contingent, not central to conducting elections. In other words, an election commission is a logistics body simplicitas. It is only that it is unlike FedX, say, it is not run for profit. Thus an electoral commission is a form of social entrepreneurship in logistics, if you like. Yet, our professor rose to his high and powerful position despite his ignorance of all it entails.
So, how can a man and his cast of characters who were hired to solve logistical problems say that his problems are again logistics? Or can a bird, which is released into the skies, say his problem is gravity? But this is Nigeria and all kinds of strange things and even stranger human beings happen. Yakubu is one of these “quantum-sociological” strangeness, if you liked.
And to worsen matters, Yakubu had the temerity to begin to explain, sorry, rationalise his disgraceful failures. And he begins to tell his urban myths of how he slept in airports and was nearly hit by ghosts on runways. Meanwhile, it profited him to forget to tell us he was drawing or not drawing his allowances, for overtime, for the hazards of sleeping and waking up on runways, etc.
One can state with all due sense of responsibility that this cannot happen in any self-respecting country. If it were in Japan or South Korea for instance, the minimum the Yakubu man and his top crew personnel would have done, is to appear in public drenched in tears and full of apologies. And just a moment later, they, especially he, did jump. In Korea that jump could be from the tip of ice capped mountains. In Japan, he did do seppuku. In all, these jumps are ritual admittances that they are no longer worthy to linger in a civilised society. That is, the most urgent need of civilisation now and here is their absence, however they concoct it.
Nobody calls for seppuku, but the minimum is that the man admit to his total and embarrassing ignorance of the job – logistics – he is hired to fix. And offer his apologies to the Nigerian nation and also his resignation. Those are the minimum. Otherwise how does one explain the twisted realism of a professor professing sophomore rationalisations?
But this is Nigeria. All the professor is interested in, granting his blissful ignorance about the nature of his brief, is in awarding and signing contracts. And the figures run into tens of billions. Meanwhile, has Yakubu ever postponed any INEC contracts or suffered logistical constraints in awarding them?
And key parts of these contracts are the provision of peacock life of luxury for Yakubu and his princelings at INEC. Reports have it that they all drive in rose tinted limousines, live in choice and tony estates, pay themselves sinfully enriched allowances, etc., all at public expense. Yet, they don’t understand the nature of their commission, which is logistics.
Were the material costs all the loss we bear, we may at least endure. It is that this failure of Yakubu, who it is said is a professor of history, is yet proof again that Nigerians, whether a professor or a foreman, are lost before any real problem, before any complexity. That is to say that being a Nigerian professor is not sign enough the guy has stopped being a foreman – mentally. Anyway, that is the opinion of many white kids as it regards blacks. And Nigerians are blacks. See Professor P. Lumumba, etc. And Yakubu is confirming their prejudices.
So, with Yakubu, the joke that the black man is a failed specimen gets a new poster boy. But the point is that, amid the Western capitals, some Afro-optimists are of the opinion that, given time and education, Africa will come of age. And here is Yakubu, he has been give three long years, resources and he has education, a PhD and a professorship in tow, yet … His, is the worst tragedy in careerism: a professor who is remunerated as if he is a prince, who has billions of naira contracts to dispense, yet he does not know why he has been hired.
Just the other day, I spoke with one Afro-optimist white fellow friend. And he was crest-fallen. What is wrong with Nigerians, he asked me. I had no answer, so I kept my peace. And he sighed away. Yes, thanks to Yakubu, we have lost one European sympathiser of the African condition, his optimism of Africa, of the black man, proven wrong. By Yakubu.
And lest we forget, Yakubu and his princelings in INEC should remind themselves that India, an “ancient” democracy, comes to elections services deliveries impeccably. Yet, India has millions more people and has more varied and implausible geographies. And India has been at elections delivery before ICT made the world easy to run. Yet, India, despite all these, has delivered.
So, there are no reasons at all to pardon Yakubu or even for Yakubu to pardon himself. If he is still in doubt, let him go to Korea or Japan and learn how those who failed in their commission, do conduct their affairs thereafter. That is all we have to say.