Intervention just received a picture that triggered thoughts on accounting for an observable trend in Nigeria’s electoral democracy. It is the thought of the necessity for putting an early analytical eye on Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC)’s strategy of enriching electoral management/democracy through technocratic value added. Why might this be important?
One answer may be what Prof Adele Junaid did recently. He defended the commitment of a group of scholars around him to electoral democracy since Attahiru Jega’s tenue as Chairman of Nigeria’s INEC, a trend he said has continued under Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Shortly after him, President Buhari argued that he won because some electronic innovations into the electoral process made it impossible for him to be swindled. Uhm!
Beyond the prospects of enriching the management of electoral democracy and turn it from the current madness it is to a routine exercise it is in other climes, there is something in such a study for the study of the theory of ‘New materialism’ in social analysis. Nigeria can provide the kind of empirical evidence that can make it a hub of that theoretical lens.
In the days of Prof Abubakar Momoh, he would have been the best material to lead a research team, being the head of the research arm of INEC. Well, we should by now have come to terms that he is no more here with us.
If it were when Nigeria’s Prof Attahiru Jega were a regular academic, it might have been something he would have wanted to do. That is to lead a team of researchers to undertake a study of how much technocracy has added to purifying the electoral process in recent years. Jega would have been a suitable candidate for such a study because it was under him that the idea of calling technology and technocratic innovations to help the electoral process started. If he were loud mouthed, it is the sort of achievement he could have been claiming all over the place. Unfortunately and fortunately too, Jega is not a regular academic anymore, with all the claims on his time by public interventions, politician as well as policy.
But the point is that INEC appears immersed in ‘new materialism’ the consequences of which should be under close academic watch for a tentative conclusion that can guide the next phase! That’s what the cover picture here points at, just one of it!
Democracy, here we come!
