“Amupitan is President Tinubu’s agent provocateur. He was sent by the president to ignite fire in the camp of ADC, and he is gladly doing so. A wise electoral umpire will not do what Amupitan is doing. He is an overzealous recruit trying to outperform the man that sent him on the odd errand.”
We did not quite know the man, Joash Amupitan. That was why his appointment as the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was received with cautious optimism. But the job, testy as it has always been, has just exposed his fragile underbelly. We are just getting to know that he is a jay in borrowed plumes; a reprobate mistaken by those around him for a sound mind. Just a few months on the hot seat of the electoral commission, the ugly stuff that he is made of is staring us nakedly in the face. Amupitan, both in appearance and delivery, does not inspire confidence. His ordinariness is stark and undisguised. He belongs to a particular category of Alexander Pope’s dunces whose problem borders on intellectual mediocrity. His public appearances so far represent a dumbing down of both moral and intellectual integrity. In him, dullness is being passed off as merit.
We have, no doubt, had reprehensible elements in the past as chairmen of our electoral commission, particularly the master dissembler called Mahmood Yakubu. But if Yakubu was able to hide behind the mask for a reasonable length of time, Amupitan is as predictable as day and night. He is not pretending about his bias and sympathy for the man that appointed him. He is at once timid, immature and unwise. If Amupitan were wise, he would not have stepped out so carelessly as he has done. It is only a man without the power of mind that can openly go to war with an institution that he superintends over the way Amupitan has done with the African Democratic Congress (ADC). With the open hostility that he has shown to the political party, Amupitan has, wittingly or unwittingly, rendered himself morally lame and unfit for the job he is called to do as INEC chairman. Given the ugly scenario that he has created, how will Amupitan escape the charge of bias in an election where one of the political parties involved is his avowed enemy? How can ADC itself go to an election with an umpire that is decidedly against it?
But we understand where Amupitan is coming from. He was appointed into office by a president that has run Nigeria aground. In proper climes, President Bola Tinubu will, by now, be considering himself lucky to have occupied the exalted office of president at all. With his incredibly poor performance in office, Tinubu would have been winding down. But rather than seek to leave office honourably, this president wants to stay on to inflict more injury to the country’s body politic. To ensure that he returns, Tinubu went shopping for a pliant individual who would do his bidding. He found one in Joash Amupitan. This is the surface appearance of Amupitan’s appointment.
However, considering the sensitive nature of the assignment that Amupitan has been appointed to undertake, he should have brought some finesse and creativity to bear on the job. His first focus should have been on professionalism. There is a reason why intellectuals are usually the ones appointed into the office of chairman of our electoral commission. The assumption is that a highly educated mind will operate with a high level of circumspection. He will not be led by the crowd. He will engage in a series of deciphering in order to arrive at the doorstep of reason. He will not be swayed by the position of the anonymous public. A thorough-bred intellectual is the master of his environment. He cannot be led by the nose. A person entrusted with the onerous task of a returning officer in a presidential election should have these redeeming qualities. That is the ideal. Regrettably, however, this has not always been the case in practical terms. Quite a number of those who served before Amupitan failed this litmus test. But then, they were somewhat creative in their delivery. But Amupitan is incredibly bland. There is no art to his servility. If anything, he is operating like a bird of prey. He is ready to break all the rules in the bid to regurgitate the content of the handout given to him.
Amupitan, with his present disposition, is endangering the country’s democracy as much as Tinubu is doing. It will be a pity if Amupitan throws his hat in the ring without reflection. A little bit of reflection would have pointed the way for him if he were the intellectual we thought he was. Any Nigerian whose senses are functioning even at a very minimal level will easily decipher the fact that Tinubu is out to destroy Nigeria. He came into office fully prepared to give Nigeria the worst. In doing whatever he is doing, Tinubu does not care about what anybody is saying or is threatening to do. He is single-minded in his pursuit of a divisive agenda.
No Nigerian leader who means well for the country will cajole and hound all the governors into his political camp the way Tinubu has done. A president who has done so badly in office ought to be shunned like a plague. But Tinubu will have none of that. He must present to the world a false sense of the true state of affairs in Nigeria. Even when it is evident that his line of action could be catastrophic for Nigeria, the man is not relenting. He is not batting an eyelid. He must push on even when the unpleasant outcomes are boldly etched on the landscape. No patriot operates that way. Someone who means well for his country will read the mood of the people and act appropriately. But Tinubu does not care a hoot about that. He is a typical bull in a china shop.
Sadly, Amupitan is President Tinubu’s agent provocateur. He was sent by the president to ignite fire in the camp of ADC, and he is gladly doing so. To imagine that this is happening in an election season is most unfortunate. How do we approach a national event as fractious as an election with volatility? That will be cataclysmic. A wise electoral umpire will not do what Amupitan is doing. His level of immaturity is amazing. He is an overzealous recruit trying to outperform the man that sent him on the odd errand. The battle is not his but he has decided to appropriate it with his entire energy.
Whatever may be the case, the burden is Amupitan’s. He has a responsibility to purge himself of the indiscretion that is weighing him down. Even though he is just a factotum who was given a handout on the job that he was invited to do, he can still work towards self-redemption. He still has an opportunity to save himself from himself. The starting point is for him to stop behaving as if his office is an arm of the Presidency. If he perseveres in error, history will not just remember him for his moral bankruptcy, posterity will consign to the infamous corner of nation-wreckers who ensured that Nigeria remains a laughing stock in the eyes of the world.
