Abuja Nigeria’s capital, where the air hums with the frustrations of a democracy perpetually under construction, Professor Mahmood Yakubu quietly handed over the reins of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on October 7, just weeks shy of his decade-long tenure’s expiration.
The move, accepted with a flourish by President Bola Tinubu who bestowed upon Yakubu the Commander of the Order of the Niger, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors marks not just the close of an era but a stark admission of electoral bankruptcy. For a man who promised to drag Nigeria’s polls into the 21st century, Yakubu’s exit feels less like a graceful bow and more like a retreat from a battlefield strewn with broken promises and billions in squandered naira.
Yakubu, a soft-spoken academic plucked from relative obscurity in 2015 to helm INEC, arrived with the zeal of a reformer. Nigeria’s elections had long been a carnival of chaos: ballot stuffing, ghost voters, and results scribbled on schoolchildren’s slates. Under his watch, the commission embarked on an ambitious tech overhaul, betting big on gadgets to outpace the graft. The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), a fingerprint-and-facial-recognition device meant to verify voters in real time, became his signature innovation. So too did the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV), an online dashboard pledged to beam polling-unit tallies to the world, banishing the shadows of manual collation.
The price tag was eye-watering. For the 2023 polls alone, INEC budgeted N105.25 billion roughly $250 million at the time for BVAS procurement, a figure that exceeded market estimates by a hefty 30%. Add in another N117 billion earmarked in 2022 for anti-hacking software, server upgrades, and ancillary tech, and Yakubu’s digital gamble topped N222 billion over the election cycle. Proponents hailed it as Nigeria’s moonshot: a leap from analog anarchy to algorithmic accountability. “We are modernizing democracy,” Yakubu declared in a 2022 address to lawmakers, urging even more funding to fortify the system against sabotage. Off-cycle governorship races in 2024 showed glimmers of success fewer delays, smoother uploads lending credence to the vision.
Yet, when the curtain rose on the 2023 general elections, the stage collapsed. What was billed as Nigeria’s most tech-savvy vote devolved into a farce of flickering screens and phantom results. BVAS machines, touted as tamper-proof, faltered spectacularly: in Lagos and Abuja, voters waited hours as devices drained batteries or rejected biometrics, echoing the glitches that plagued accreditation in prior off-years. Worse was IReV’s abdication. Despite solemn vows of electronic transmission, results uploads crawled at a glacial pace some not appearing for days, others never at all. By the time Tinubu was declared victor with 37% of the vote, the portal had become a digital ghost town, fueling cries of manipulation from opposition heavyweights like Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi.
The fallout was seismic. International observers, including the European Union, lambasted INEC for “technical failures” that “undermined public trust.” Domestically, the chorus grew deafening: vote-buying thrived unchecked, over-voting scandals erupted in strongholds like Kogi, and collation centers morphed into midnight theaters of the absurd, where officials allegedly inflated tallies under cover of darkness. “Yakubu let Nigerians down,” thundered Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, a former presidential aspirant, in a recent jeremiad. Even as Yakubu defended the glitches as “unforeseen,” the damage was irreparable: turnout plummeted to 27%, the lowest in decades, and faith in the ballot box eroded to rubble.
Yakubu’s defenders and there are a few, mostly in ruling-party circles point to the headwinds he faced: underfunding from a cash-strapped treasury, relentless sabotage by political godfathers, and a judiciary that has overturned precious few of the 1,500-plus petitions filed post-2023. His innovations, they argue, were evolutionary, not revolutionary; BVAS curbed some fraud, even if it couldn’t conquer it all. But such apologetics ring hollow against the ledger of lavish spending and lean results. Why did devices cost 30% above market? Where did the anti-hacking billions vanish amid the portal’s paralysis? And why, after a decade of reforms, did Nigeria’s elections still feel like a relic of the ’90s military juntas?
As May Agbamuche-Mbu, Yakubu’s interim successor, assumes the chair, the onus falls on Tinubu to break the cycle. Appointing a truly independent figure perhaps from a pool nominated by civil society, as suggested by elder statesman Rauf Aregbesola could signal renewal.
But without tackling the rot at the roots the politicized appointments, the unprosecuted vote-riggers, the budget black holes Nigeria risks another “disaster,” as one analyst branded 2023. Yakubu’s legacy is a cautionary tale: technology alone cannot launder a tainted process.
In Africa’s most populous nation, where 200 million souls yearn for a vote that counts, the real innovation must be courage the kind that puts people over politics. Until then, the polls will remain a promise deferred, flickering like a BVAS in the rain.