Jega, the baby, the bath water

Today, Nigeria has what has been described as a Jega problem. It has to do with the fact that a very influential and high-level segment of the political elite has concluded that the biggest national project on the horizon, the 2015 polls, should not be superintended over by the Professor of Political Science and immediate past Vice-Chancellor of the Bayero University, Kano.


To be sure, there have been several problems with the Jega tenure. However, this is not an apology for the out-going INEC boss. And on a personal note, this correspondent who has voted in every election since 1999 should be the last person to ‘defend’ the Professor given that on account of some of the failings of the Independent National Electoral Commission that he presently leads, your correspondent, sadly, is not a registered voter in the 2015 polls.


However, beyond the individual hurts that Nigeria has caused us must be a deeper commitment to the broader interests of the nation. And this today has to do with the worrying trend to demonize the office and person of the Chairman of the Independent National Elections Commission.


At this point, history must be our guide. And here we recall that Nigeria has had a long roll of electoral commissioners being vilified. From Esua in 1964 to Ani in 1979, Ovie Whiskey in 1984, Guobadia, Iwu and now Jega, INEC Chairmen have actually not had their ride easy. In the run-up to the 1983 election, Ovie-Whiskey was so harassed that he had to publicly ‘swear’ that he had never seen a million naira in his life!


For Jega today, the accusations have been similarly heated. He has for example been accused of taking actions to favour the North and for good measure, the leading candidate of northern extraction in the polls, General Muhammadu Buhari (retd). For one who supervised the 2011 polls where the same Buhari was defeated by the incumbent, this 360 degrees shift has to be explained. If Jega did not go out of his way to promote the interests of Buhari in 2011, what changed?


The Nigerian political environment being what it yet is today, it is clear that some of these difficult-to-add-up postulations would be heard now and again. What is more worrying however is that within this confluence of ‘all-is-fair-in-the-jostling-for-political-and-personal-advantage,’ we are now seemingly becoming a people who stand for nothing, who dispense with ethics and truth so cheaply and who throw away the baby with the bath water so casually.


The present elections will come and go with one of either Goodluck Jonathan or Muhammadu Buhari becoming President. But for some of us, that is only the beginning. We will next have to roll up our sleeves and get on with the tough work of building a maximally functional nation, complete with institutions that work and systems that thrive.


And it is here that we return to the Jega tenure. For example, Jega’s emergence in 2011 was a moment that was cherished. Here was a competent and accomplished professional coming to fill a void that had been waiting to be filled. And so unanimous was his appeal and the mood of the nation to help him succeed that, when he asked for a seemingly incredulous sum of money to do the first voters roll for the 2011 polls, the nation rose up to a man to say, ‘give it to him, we want the job done.’


Perhaps this was part of the problem. That Nigeria was too generous to Jega; that he got away with his primal request so easily; that he was Nigeria’s spoilt child, that the national Assembly did not perform more of the oversight that was required of it, that….


There were also other ‘problems.’ In an interview this correspondent had with Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe weeks into the Jega appointment, he pointed to the fact that one problem Jega could have in delivering on his mandate would very well be that the average INEC Chairman is usually brought in from above and then introduced to a team that has already been put in place for him to work with! The implication of this, he reasoned, is very clear: he has limited elbow room within which to manouvre.


Abaribe’s point can be given flesh today in what is clearly the Ogun dilemma. As we write, the National average for voter cards collection is well over 80 percent. But Ogun is only now just struggling to close on 50! So what is the problem here? Many reasons have been adduced for this lag but this writer who lives in Ogun and who had tried to register there knows that Ogun INEC is structurally today a most incompetent organization where gratification is requested of communities before electoral officials are sent to register them!


But there have also been global positives in the Jega years. The introduction of youth corps members in the electoral process, the use of professors and vice chancellors as returning officers, the search for and insistence on modernizing the electoral infrastructure as it has to do with say the Permanent Voters Cards and the Card Reader machines; these are positive developments that should be sustained and built further upon even in the post-Jega era.


Has Jega been fantastic? No. Has he been totally terrible? This is arguable. But for Nigeria, the struggle surely continues. And this includes the struggle to not throw away the baby with the bath water. Good night, Mr. Jega. Of course you know by now not to hope for a renewal of your tenure as it lapses in a few weeks’ time.



This piece was first published in www.hallmarknews.com