The euphoria that greeted the nomination of an academic maverick and a union leader of high repute, Professor Attahiru Muhammadu Jega as the new chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has virtually overshadowed the undercurrent circumstances that threw him up.
Personal integrity was the principal characteristic canvassed by Nigerians of various shades of opinions and political ideological leanings for a man or woman that would be saddled with the responsibility of conducting the 2011 general elections. It was a firm belief of all such Nigerians that it is only a person with personal integrity that would conduct elections that would be considered reasonably as free, fair and credible.
Talking about personal integrity which naturally stems from honesty, Thomas Fuller, in his Gnomologia went into extreme when he said "He that resolves to deal with none but honest men must leave off dealing, meaning that, for him, there are no honest men around.
However, Shakespeare, in Hamlet softened Fuller's view when he said "Ay, sir: to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand." One dares say that in Nigeria, a honest man is the one picked out of a million!
It was the obvious loss of confidence by Nigerians in Professor Maurice Iwu, based on alleged loss of personal integrity and honesty that snowballed into his eventual removal as chairman of the INEC.
The nation-wide acknowledgement of the choice of Professor Jega by President Goodluck Jonathan to replace Professor Iwu and node-of-head for same by members of the Council of State, therefore, was based primarily on his much touted personal integrity and his apolitical stand in the nation's scheme of things, even though, he is an excellent political scientist.
In the process of the search for a new helmsman at the INEC, a few identified men and women of genuine personal honour and integrity popped up and got listed for the plum job, on the bases of expectation of Nigerians. These few ones cannot but be celebrated in a country like Nigeria where corruption and all other negative vices run deep and which have placed it in the bad book of international communities.
It needs to be repeating that while the nation jubilates over the new INEC boss, the build-up to his nomination needs to be celebrated and embraced.
The current minister of information and communication, Professor Dora Akunyili was one of those whose name was paraded for the INEC's top job.
Professor Akunyili had distinguished herself as chairman of National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC). She was not only believed to have shunned all types of corruption, mostly in terms of huge amount of hard currencies as bribe while heading the anti-drug trafficking agency, but was subjected to all manners of threats and even an unsuccessful attempt on her life by agents of fearful drug barons.
It is on record that if Akunyili was to be "other Nigerian", she would by now, have been a multi-billionaire, with fat Swiss accounts, State-of-the-art duplexes in choice areas in Nigeria and Europe. Akunyili must have been a good student of the Indian revolutionary icon, Mr. Mahatma (Mohandas) K. Gandhi who said: "It is difficult but not impossible to conduct strictly honest business...what is true is that honesty is impossible with the amassing of large fortune."
There is also the immediate past Vice-Chancellor of the University of Abuja, Professor Nuhu O. Yaqub who was believed not only to be a strict disciplinarian and a principal adherent of "due-process' but a man who keeps corruption and corruptive tendencies at an arm's length.
A story was told of how Professor Nuhu got a huge sum of money as ester code to travel overseas for an official assignment and that when he came back to Nigeria, he simply returned the excess of the money he didn't spend from the ester code. The surprised Bursar was said to have asked him to keep the unspent money which rightly belonged to him as it had already been approved for the journey, but the professor insisted that the money should be returned to the institution's coffers to be utilized for other viable ventures.
There was also Mr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) who was a former President of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA). Agbakoba is regarded generally as an icon in human rights activities. He founded and run the Civil Liberty Organization (CLO), a foremost civil society group which sprang up during the dreaded military regimes.
Agbakoba deployed his legal savvy to fight against arbitrariness the military people were unleashing on the civilized citizenry, risking his personal safety and comfort.
During that era, the Agbakoba's CLO acted as an unofficial mouthpiece of the cowed citizenry and served also as unofficial opposition body to the military government.
There was also the former military Administrator of Kaduna state, Colonel Abubakar Umar Dangiwa (rtd) who later turned into social critic and human rights activist.
Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim, who also made up the list is the Director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), a none-governmental organization in Abuja. He is one of the fire-brand activists who uses his NGO for civil society activities.
Talking about integrity, in far away Philippine, one of the five children of Emmanuel Pelaez (a Philippine Congressman, Senator, Vice President and Ambassador to United States), Mr. Ernie, at a ceremony in honour of his father, spoke glowingly about his father's integrity; a quality that was clearly illustrated in the Nacionalista Party convention in 1964 where Pelaez was overwhelmingly expected to emerge as the presidential bet.
Pelaez lost that convention and the presidency to Ferdinand Marcos who used a combination of money and force to coerce delegates to give him their votes. Mindanao's favored son refused to buy votes even if he had the money to do so because he had forged a gentleman's agreement with Marcos to keep the nomination process clean.
Ernie said, "Maning Pelaez chose to keep his integrity in 1964 even if it meant political death. He chose to be true to himself rather than live a life of eternal compromise thereafter."
Analyst are of the view that these men and women of integrity who could not all made it to the INEC top job need not only to be celebrated but be offered the position of National Commissionership in the electoral body, except if any of them declines.
Yusuf Ozi-Usman is a senior editor/journalist with one of the national newspapers in Nigeria: Peoples Daily.
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