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PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA This Year’s Election And Hakeem Baba-Ahmed’s Challenge
Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed may not exactly be a household name but many Nigerians, certainly most Nigerian politicians, will probably remember him as the executive secretary of the Independent National Electoral Commission who was their favourite whipping boy for the disastrous general elections of 2003. Last Saturday Baba-Ahmed, the scholar-turned-bureaucrat and currently the permanent secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rose stoutly in defense of INEC’s handling of those controversial elections. The occasion was the presentation of a posthumous collection of the essays of his friend, fellow baZazzagi, and an academic colleague in their halcyon days at the University of Sokoto – later renamed Uthman Dan Fodio University – Dr. Shehu Usman Lawal.
Both Hakeem and Shehu had followed pretty much the same career path since graduating over 25 years ago. Both were brilliant students who served as graduate assistants upon finishing their National Youth Service. First Hakeem and then Shehu joined the Sokoto University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and immediately made strong impression on Faculty and students alike as formidable scholars. Several years later they left for their native Kaduna State civil service, served in its highest ranks before finally moving on to the federal government.
As much a workaholic as he is brilliant, Hakeem must have impressed his bosses at the Office of the Secretary of the Federal Government where he had worked for a while for them to have moved him to INEC to serve as its executive secretary – a most sensitive, thankless and high risk job, if ever there was one. It was in that position that his path once again crossed that of Shehu when Shehu was appointed one of INEC’s resident commissioners and posted to Nasarawa State.
Given the relationship between Hakeem and Shehu, the organizers of the presentation of the latter’s book couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate person as guest speaker. When, on that tragic night in October 2004, two armed thugs snatched Shehu’s official jeep in Kaduna and shot him in the neck at close range, it devolved on Hakeem as secretary of INEC to handle Shehu’s case. Hakeem, by common consent, couldn’t have done better. Two months later, however, Shehu died. This was in spite of the superlative attention he received at the National Hospital, Abuja, and in Germany.
As guest speaker, Hakeem displayed the stuff true scholarship is made of. Speaking eloquently for about half an hour without a written paper or even a note, he paid great tribute to his fallen friend, moving back and forth effortlessly between English and Hausa. True scholarship, he said, lies not in having great knowledge but in putting it to use. Shehu, he said, proved himself a true scholar precisely because he put to practice the great knowledge he possessed. Not only was Shehu a great scholar, Hakeem said, he was also a great leader. For just like true scholarship lies in putting one’s knowledge to work, true leadership lies not only in preaching the virtues of leadership but in living those virtues. Shehu, he said, lived the virtues of leadership.
Hakeem gave two examples to back his judgment of his friend and fallen colleague. The first was when the Makama Nupe, Alhaji Shehu Ahmadu Musa, himself an icon of public service, and at the time the de-facto deputy chairman of INEC, instructed that Shehu, then serving in Nasarawa, should not be redeployed out of the state at a time resident commissioners were being cross-posted. Nasarawa was then considered somewhat of a punishment posting because of its on-going ethnic and sectarian strife. The Makama’s instruction was, however, paradoxically a vote of confidence in Shehu because he believed he was among a few with sufficient skill and integrity to bring the peace among the feuding groups in the state that would enable INEC to conduct a voters’ registration.
Shehu was left behind in Nasarawa and he proved the Makama right.
The second example was when the then INEC chairman himself, Dr. Abel Guobadia, asked Hakeem to post Shehu to his own Edo State to conduct the 2003 elections. When Hakeem asked why, Guobadia reportedly told him he wanted the election in his own state to be a showcase he would be proud of even if generally speaking the elections were to be considered a failure. Shehu, Guobadia reportedly said, was the one person among the resident commissioners that fit his bill.
Hakeem then told his boss that if he was looking for someone who would do anyone’s bidding, Shehu was the wrong choice. In any case he would ask Shehu to see the chairman to discuss maters further. True to Hakeem’s testimony, Shehu told the chairman that he would be more than willing to go to Edo provided there were no strings attached. Shehu indeed exceeded Hakeem’s testimony by requesting that his terms of deployment to Edo are reduced into writing!
Shehu eventually went to Edo under the conditions he stipulated, albeit not in writing. He went, he saw but, unfortunately, he could not conquer the state consistent, as it were, with the general misconduct of the 2003 elections nationwide. The report of the Edo elections, according to Hakeem, said, “The elections left much to be desired but the integrity of the resident commissioner was absolutely unquestionable,” or words to that effect.
After paying fulsome tribute to his friend, Hakeem seized the opportunity of his guest lecturing to defend not so much the integrity of the 2003 election as the integrity of several of those who conducted it. If, he said, highly respected Nigerians like the Makama Nupe, Professor Shehu Galadanci, Hajiya Fati Mu’azu and Alhaji Ladan Baki - all of them eminent national electoral commissioners between 1999 and 2003 - would conduct elections and Nigerians would reject those elections as they did those of 2003, he did not know who and who else can conduct any election Nigerians would find acceptable. “Nigerians”, he said with apparently sarcasm, “never lose elections. They are always rigged out”.
As I listened to Hakeem I said to myself at this point that in trying to defend the 2003 elections was it not ironical that the lesson of his tribute to his fallen friend and colleague seemed lost on himself? The brilliant scholar that he is, I thought, couldn’t he have seen that the deservedly universal condemnation of the 2003 election was not necessarily a reflection on the integrity and competence of the hierarchy of INEC? After all did the same report that criticized the conduct of the Edo election not testify to the integrity of his friend, Shehu?
Hakeem was present at the last Trust Annual Dialogue which held last month and whose theme was “Free and Fair Election: Getting it Right.” One of the three lead speakers at the dialogue was Professor Maurice Iwu, the controversial chairman of INEC. Hakeem would recall that the kernel of Iwu’s incisive paper was that it is not enough for the men and women at INEC to be of high integrity if we want to get our elections right. INEC may have people of the highest integrity in charge, he said, but unless Nigerians fulfilled two other conditions, the country will never get its elections right.
The first was that there must be “sincerity in the action and disposition of the political actors and the stakeholders.” The second, which Iwu said was more “critical”, was that there must be “an uncompromising determination by the larger society to resist the machinations of the political class that has long substituted the common interest of the people with their selfish interest.”
Hakeem, I am sure would agree with me that Nigeria did not fulfill Iwu’s two conditions during the run-up to the 2003 elections. He would agree with me even more that matters have only taken a turn for the worse – much worse – since then. Not only have political actors become worse since 2003, especially the political actors in the ruling PDP who have become law unto themselves, the larger society seem to have given up even trying to make them accountable.
Actually Hakeem, more than agreeing with me, did indeed say so in a way by throwing a challenge to those who believe they are good people to join politics. Politics, he said, is too important to leave to professional politicians alone. Joining politics now, he said, is no longer a duty, “it has become an act of worship” for every Nigerian, big or small.
In saying this, Hakeem could not have thrown a more important challenge to Nigerians. We can have people of the highest integrity manning INEC but unless we all go out there on election day and ensure that a few selfish politicians do not hijack our future, we will never get our elections and, by extension, our entire politics right.
And no one has yet put this challenge more succinctly than General Muhammadu Buhari, the ANPP presidential candidate when he flagged off his campaign in Aba last week.
“My message to the people of Nigeria,” he said, is “*Go out, queue and vote *Ensure your vote is counted *Protect the Result *Reject a false Result”
Whether it is Hakeem, Iwu or Buhari saying it, the challenge before Nigerians for this year’s election is clear. We will have no one else, not even INEC, to blame if we fail to rise to that challenge.
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