The 2023 vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Datti Baba-Ahmed, has called for the appointment of a credible successor to Mahmood Yakubu as chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Mahmood Yakubu’s second five-year term in charge of the electoral commission, which began in 2020, ends on November 9, 2025.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Friday, Baba-Ahmed revealed that the country does not need an election rigger in charge of elections after Yakubu’s tenure.
According to him, Yakubu himself has not performed well as INEC chairman because he presided over different kinds of irregularities in the 2023 presidential poll that produced President Bola Tinubu.
He stated that the next chairman must be someone who will avoid rigging and abide by the constitution during the general polls.
“All I want is a credible person, not somebody who will clearly rig what the constitution provides: 25% in at least two-thirds of the states of the federation and the FCT, and go ahead to breach the constitution and put Nigeria into what Nigeria is today. Just one individual.
Throughout human history, individuals make or break societies,” he said.
Datti further argued that flawed elections is to blame for Nigeria’s current challenges; therefore, the next appointment must be the right one.
He concluded by saying that the era of leadership recruitment being the foundation of our problems must be over once and for all.
“Our leadership recruitment is the bane of our problems.
Electoral fraud is the single most important fact to be addressed in our lives as a nation, even beyond insecurity. Insecurity is derived from electoral fraud.
The Nigerian election gave birth to the kind of insecurity we have today. Corruption is aggravated by electoral fraud. The destruction of our youths, of the system, is aggravated by electoral fraud,” she added.
