The 2023 vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Datti Baba-Ahmed, has stated that Nigeria should not have an individual known for rigging elections take over from the current Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu.
Yakubu’s tenure is set to conclude on November 9, 2025. He held Yakubu responsible for some of the issues that plagued the 2023 presidential election, which was won by Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
“I simply want a credible person, not someone who would deliberately manipulate what the constitution requires,” Baba-Ahmed said.
He referenced the constitutional requirement for a presidential candidate to secure 25% of the vote in at least two-thirds of the states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). He claimed that the failure to adhere to this rule has led to the current state of the nation.
Tinubu’s victory was contested in court by his main opponents, including Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). However, the Supreme Court ultimately upheld the results announced by INEC.
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Mahmood Yakubu, a 75-year-old professor of political science, was first appointed as INEC chairman by the late President Muhammadu Buhari in November 2015 and was reappointed for a second term in 2020. The responsibility of appointing his successor now falls to Tinubu.
The conversation around who will take the position has included discussions about the geopolitical zone from which the new chairman should be appointed, given that the last two chairmen have been from the northern part of the country.
Baba-Ahmed argued that the process of selecting leaders is a fundamental problem in Nigeria’s democracy. “Electoral fraud is the most critical issue facing our nation, even more so than insecurity,” he said.
He further contended that insecurity and corruption are direct consequences of fraudulent elections, which he believes contribute to the decline of the youth and the overall system.
