WHEN ACADEMICS ENDORSE A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
Nick Dazang
Recently, not less than six hundred (600), academics, drawn from all public universities in Northern Nigeria, were reported to have endorsed the second term ambition of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The announcement was made by the Vice Chancellor of the Kaduna State University(KASU), Professor Abdullahi Ibrahim Musa, at a meeting convened by five serving Governors, namely: Uba Sani of Kaduna State; Dauda Lawal of Zamfara State; Mai Mala Buni of Yobe State; Babagana Zulum of Borno State; and Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe State.
Others in attendance were: the Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters, Ibrahim Masari; former Governor of Katsina State, Aminu Bello Masari; Minister of Housing, Muttaqha Rabe Darma; and Minister of State for Defense, Bello Matawalle.
It is crucially important to note that the announcement, at the Umaru Yar’Adua Center, Kaduna, was made by the Vice Chancellor of KASU, a university recently embattled and awash with controversy.
In recent past, his university, and several other state-owned ones, went on strike due to unresolved welfare demands and failure to implement agreements.
Academics from such universities and their beleaguered leaderships are thus vulnerable to pressure. They are also susceptible to the wiles of politicians who are desperate to show that they possess clout and that they can tilt elections in certain directions.
It is intriguing that prior to this announcement, the meeting which led to this purported endorsement, took place behind closed doors. Additionally, the fact that the endorsement was said to be contingent on the Tinubu administration’s response to legitimate criticism and its addressing high food and transportation costs, unemployment and insecurity, suggests clearly that the buy-in of the alleged six hundred academics had not been fully secured.
This is underscored by the disclaimer immediately issued by the President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU), Professor Chris Piwuna. He had insisted that the union remained apolitical and that it would not endorse any political party or candidate.
The ASUU President’s disclaimer notwithstanding, the academics have the right to associate with and endorse any candidate of their choice.
But while conceding their inalienable right to associate and to hold opinions and ventilate same, this development is a novelty an augury. Never in the annals of the Fourth Republic, which was inaugurated in 1999, have politicians so brazenly pressured or corralled academics to endorse a candidate. It also raises a number of concerns.
If six hundred academics from Northern Nigeria are said to have endorsed President Tinubu, how many of their counterparts in the North have endorsed other presidential candidates? How many of these academics in the South have endorsed the President? By the same token, how many other academics, across the board, have endorsed other candidates jockeying for the presidency?
Agreed, these academics have the right to endorse a candidate of their choice. But by so doing they have automatically become partisans. Ordinarily, this should not be the source of any botheration.
Incidentally, these academics are usually co-opted to return election results. Their partisanship thus brings complications and colorations to the conduct and outcome of elections which demand neutrality, impartiality, integrity
and professionalism.
Recall that since 2011, the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC), on Professor Attahiru Jega’s watch, had begun to find recourse in academics to return the results of our elections.
Professor Jega, a distinguished academic and a former President of ASUU, had sought, assiduously, to add value to our elections by taping into the integrity and excellence quotients for which academics are renowned.
In the first two election cycles (2011 and 2015), in which academics were deployed to return election results, they, no doubt, added considerable value. This in part had to do with the fact that members of the academic community paid zealous fealty to their kind who helmed the Commission, at the time, and who exuded some measure of integrity.
Besides, those who were co-opted were vigorously vetted in advance of their appointments.
By and by, unscrupulous politicians began to reach out and to compromise these academics. Some lost their innocence and succumbed to the lure of filthy lucre. For instance, two Professors, Peter Ogban and Ignatius Uduk, of the University of Calabar and University of Uyo, respectively, were convicted by courts of competent jurisdiction for manipulating and falsifying election results.
Even though these incidents could be said to be few and isolated, given the large number of academics deployed in returning election results, their conduct remains a blight on the integrity of our academics. Their conduct raises the question as to whether INEC should continue to restrict its recruitment of Returning Officers to the academia or it should cast the net further afield.
This question acquires both urgency and significance given this reported endorsement of a presidential candidate in the 2027 election by academics. In this situation, how can the Commission establish, with certainty, which academics are politically exposed and which are not, and are therefore above board?
This task is made an uphill one when we consider that the Kaduna convention, in which President Tinubu was endorsed, did not take place in full public view or glare. Only the communique was.
Neither was a list of the academics who endorsed the President supplied or published. Besides, these 600 academics are the ones who have shown sufficient moxie and temerity to out themselves. What of those lurking in the shadows?
To get out of this quandary, INEC must find recourse in its Staff. Apart from being professionals, they, by training and orientation, subscribe to certain sublime values. Some of these principles are: impartiality, neutrality, integrity and excellence. As it is, these academics, who have “gone rogue” or “turned coat” as far as the electoral process is concerned, can hardly be expected to deliver on these values on Election Day.
Second, INEC Staff, apart from the aforementioned values, swear to an oath of neutrality before the conduct of each election. This oath reminds and informs them of their bounden duty to be fair to all contestants.
Third, a recourse to INEC Staff puts the Commission in good stead and in a vantage position. It can bring to heel any Staff who comes short or tries to circumvent the law/process.
Fourth, a resort to INEC Staff will be in tandem with one of the recommendations of the Justice Muhammadu Uwais Report on Electoral Reforms, namely, that State offices should be superintended by Directors of Election. As civil servants, such officers, at the peak of their positions, would hardly wish to do anything that would either tarnish or truncate their carefully cultivated and manicured careers. Such a resort will thus be a win-win for our elections and the Commission.
The Commission can ill-afford to carry in its ranks persons whose integrity it cannot vouch for and persons whose allegiances are to politicians rather than to the electoral process. This is especially so when the Commission itself has trust issues.
