By Prince Tony Akeni
"Labour Party, in particular, will forever remember Prof. Mahmood Yakubu's pretentious cooperation in matters of justice in political parties' internal leadership affairs. While pretending to follow due process in enabling Labour Party to resolve its Julius Abure led tenure rebellion, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood in another hand, in unashamed treachery, actually connived to betray justice for the party to the last minute of his exit. Prof Mahmood deliberately retained the name of the Supreme Court sacked Abure on INEC website as the party's national chairman, clinically sabotaged the Labour Party from participating in crucial elections throughout the country by unlawfully delisting the party from fielding candidates in the 2025 local government elections of various states, the Abuja municipal council elections coming up in 2026 and all other tiers of election across the country to the end of his tenure...
"As many Nigerians who are not yet under the collective hypnotism of APC's baptism of delusion *WILL ASK* , what rationale, except the opium of corruption harvest, made Prof. Yakubu Mahmood to retain on INEC's portal the defunct Julius Abure led leadership of Labour Party in spite of having the certified judgment of the Supreme Court and its corroborating interpretation of the Abuja Federal High Court, both of which unequivocally ruled that the Julius Abure leadership of the Labour Party had irreversibly ended?
"That is the Prof. Yakubu Mahmood the Labour Party and 230million Nigerians remember, and history centuries away will also remember and wrinkle their noses at his final resting place."
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Prof. Joash Ojo Amupitan has a fate larger than life thrust at his feet. To either redeem the largest democracy in Africa or further mutilate and bury its corpse which the ballot master-liar of all time, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood, has left behind as INEC chairman.
Above the pecks, glamour and glitter of the highly visible office which Prof. Amupitan now occupies, he must choose what he wishes to achieve and be remembered for.
He must choose who he will serve and the legacy he wishes to leave behind for his name and posterity.
He must choose whether to be honoured by more than 230million Nigerians who employed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu or to serve the unconstitutional wishes and caprices of a single man, Tinubu, who appointed him.
To help him make that choice, Prof. Amupitan will do well to reflect how more than 230million Nigerians at home and all over the world will forever remember his immediate predecessor, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood.
Under the Obasanjo years, when Nigerians' thought Prof. Maurice Iwu, the INEC chairman at the time, was the worst electoral referee that happened to Nigeria, Prof. Attahiru Jega happened to Nigeria and erased that record. This was to the extent that one Elder Godsday Orubebe, who was the Minister of Niger Delta in the Jonathan administration of the time, screamed blue murder and embarked on a one-man rampage against INEC at the 2015 presidential election collation centre in front of the world press and international election observers.
At the close of that era when Nigerians' thought that it was impossible to manufacture a worse election overseer than Jega, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood came to mortally mar the mood and seal the hopes of Nigerians that elections could ever be free, fair or credible in our country, destroying the last vestige of Nigeria's electoral integrity almost to the point of no redemption.
Before Mahmood's tenures as INEC chairman, Nigerians merely lamented if their votes would count but with some reservoir of hope. However, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood buried that hope and made it a proverb of despair set in concrete, creating an endemic voter apathy throughout Nigeria that has no comparison in any other country in Africa and almost the whole world.
In the run-up to the epic 2023 general elections, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood promised Nigerians and the world in countless media briefings that ballot results would be transmitted in real-time from the polling units and entered from BIVAS records to the IREV servers for global integrity.
Mahmood promised this would be a process that shall not be compromised, violated or accepted by INEC, only to brazenly take the opposite stand against his sworn process by dismissing BIVAS results as non-compulsory in the collation of election results. He and his returning electoral commissioners across the country then uploaded insanely mutilated and duplicated result sheets supplied by the ruling party to announce the 2023 results, stood by those mutilations at the post-election tribunals, and returned the snatch-and-run-with-it concoctions of the presidential election, numerous governorship and countless National and State Assembly results as winners against the actual landslide presidential victory of the Labour Party and similar victory by other opposition political parties at different tiers of the polls.
As his last achievement for the ruling APC, at the end of which President Tinubu gave him a parting send-off with the national award of Commander of the Order of the Niger, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood also successfully pulled off a historic pre-election heist to make rigging easier for the ruling party in 2027 by manufacturing out-of-the-world phantom records of new voters registration in President Tinubu's home state of Osun.
Mahmood awarded a record 393,269 new voters in Osun state alone against just 1,998 new voters in the entire five South-East states combined. Nearly half a million new voters in the single state of Osun which has a population of 4.6million citizens, and less than 2,000 new voters in all the five states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo which command over 36million citizens!
Labour Party, in particular, will forever remember Prof. Mahmood Yakubu's pretentious cooperation in matters of justice in political parties' internal leadership affairs. While pretending to follow due process in enabling Labour Party to resolve its Julius Abure led tenure rebellion, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood in another hand, in unashamed treachery, actually connived to betray justice for the party to the last minute of his exit. Prof Mahmood deliberately retained the name of the Supreme Court sacked Abure on INEC website as the party's national chairman, clinically sabotaged the Labour Party from participating in crucial elections throughout the country by unlawfully delisting the party from fielding candidates in the 2025 local government elections of various states, the Abuja municipal council elections coming up in 2026 and all other tiers of election across the country to the end of his tenure. Mission accomplished, national award received, evil done and dusted, APC's 2027 victory guaranteed! So they think.
As many Nigerians who are not yet under the collective hypnotism of APC's baptism of delusion, what rationale, except the opium of corruption harvest, made Prof. Yakubu Mahmood to retain on INEC's portal the defunct Julius Abure led leadership of Labour Party in spite of having the certified judgment of the Supreme Court and its corroborating interpretation of the Abuja Federal High Court, both of which unequivocally ruled that the Julius Abure leadership of the Labour Party had irreversibly ended?
That is the Prof. Yakubu Mahmood the Labour Party and 230million Nigerians remember, and history centuries away will also remember and wrinkle their noses at his final resting place.
For the Labour Party, the first all-important litmus test that the new INEC chairman, Prof. Joash Ojo Amupitan, will pass to prove that he has come to serve Nigeria in ernest of his oath of office is to remove the last dust and trace of Julius Abure and his defunct council members from INEC's portal and replace them with the Nenadi Usman led council which the statutory NEC of the party has submitted as its executive council. This will be in accord with the Supreme Court's judgment that the leadership of political parties is strictly the result of the internal decision and processes of parties. This also complies with both Nigeria's and global conventions which forbid leadership vacuum in the management of public institutions.
As Prof. Joash Amupitan steps into the shoes of his departed predecessor, he must realize that he is not only on the radar of Nigerians but the entire civilize world, the West and emerging democracies of the world which look unto Nigeria for good or bad examples.
Amupitan must prove to the world that he is not another election puppet out to serve the dictates of incumbents and ballot vampires for his personal enrichment at the expense of Nigeria's international image, global respect, progress and advancement, like most of his predecessors, but a true electoral umpire out to serve and save our country's long troubled democracy.
What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? Nothing but eternal condemnation. Both the Holy Bible and the Holy Quran agree on this at Mark 8:36 and Q57:20 respectively.
Joash Amupitan, get off the gory road of power vapour and walk the glory road of eternity's favour.
Prince Tony Akeni,
Labour Party National
Publicity Secretary (Interim)
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