【尼日利亚每日信任报·尼日利亚】A wrong move by some northern lecturers

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A wrong move by some northern lecturers








原文原文 / Original Text

The reported endorsement of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s re-election bid by more than 600 senior academics from some universities across Northern Nigeria is a disturbing development.

According to reports, the lecturers gathered in Kaduna at a meeting convened by Ibrahim Masari, special adviser to the president on political matters, and declared their support for Tinubu’s second-term bid with several northern governors and federal ministers in attendance.

At Daily Trust, we consider this development particularly dangerous given the role academics have traditionally played in Nigeria’s electoral system.

We do not dispute the right of individual academics, or indeed any group of Nigerians, to associate with and support a political cause of their choice. That is a constitutional right. What concerns us is what a collective, partisan endorsement of this kind means for the credibility of the electoral process, particularly because universities and their senior academics have for years supplied personnel for the conduct of elections.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) routinely engages academics, including vice-chancellors and other senior university officials, as returning and collation officers. Their selection rests partly on the confidence that their professional standing and presumed neutrality can accord credibility to the process. It is difficult, then, to reconcile that role with an open endorsement of one of the principal contestants in the same election.

INEC must take this seriously. The commission should investigate the identities and roles of those involved and establish whether any are likely to serve as returning or collation officers in the 2027 elections. Where an individual has publicly taken a partisan position in favour of a presidential candidate, INEC should weigh carefully whether entrusting that person with collating or declaring results involving that candidate is compatible with public confidence in the process.

This is not simply a question of whether an academic can be personally trusted. Elections depend not only on actual impartiality but on the perception of it. If people who have publicly endorsed a candidate are then presented as neutral arbiters of the contest, the commission risks sowing avoidable doubt about the integrity of the process.

The African Democratic Congress has already raised this concern, urging INEC to review its use of politically exposed academics as returning and collation officers.

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来源：Daily Trust Nigeria (https://dailytrust.com/)
原文链接：https://dailytrust.com/a-wrong-move-by-some-northern-lecturers/
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