Electoral umpires in Nigeria have a long history of dalliance with academics so much so that it has almost become a rule for a professor, the discipline notwithstanding, to be appointed chairman. Granted, some non-academics sometimes find themselves in the saddle, but that is more of an exception.

So, the 1959 federal election, which preceded independence, and was strictly the business of the departing colonial overlord – Britain – was conducted by the Electoral Commission of Nigeria, ECN, which was inaugurated in 1958 and headed by a British, Ronald Edward Wraith.

After independence in October 1960, the Tafawa Balewa-led government set up the Federal Electoral Commission, FEDECO, which replaced the ECN and in 1964 appointed Mr Eya Esua as the chairman. Though not a professor, Esua, nevertheless, was a reputed teacher.

Then after a ten-year hiatus following the January 15, 1966 military coup that sacked the First Republic, General Olusegun Obasanjo, in preparation for the Second Republic, appointed Chief Michael Ani, a career civil servant, to head the 24-man FEDECO re-established in November 1976. He was succeeded by Justice Victor Ovie-Whiskey who was appointed by President Shehu Shagari in 1980. Like Esua, Ovie-Whiskey, reputed for having led the 1944 Kings College boys’ strike against the colonial government, also had a short stint as a teacher, before gaining admission to study law at the University of London. At the time Shagari tapped him to take over from Ani in 1980, he was the Chief Judge of the defunct Bendel State.

But it was General Ibrahim Babangida, the self-acclaimed evil genius, who, in his merry-go-round transition programme, glamourised the appointment of professors. In 1987, he appointed Eme Awa, a professor of political science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, as chairman of the electoral body which he renamed National Electoral Commission of Nigeria, NECON. But after resigning in 1989 due to disagreement with his appointor, Babangida replaced him with Humphrey Nwosu, another professor of political science at the University of Nigeria, who sadly stepped on the banana peels that his predecessor sidestepped by walking away.

After wilfully annulling the June 12, 1993 presidential poll and dismissing Prof Nwosu, the embattled Babangida appointed Okon Uya, a professor of history at the University of Calabar, and diplomat, who served as Nigeria’s ambassador in Argentina, Peru, Paraguay and Chile, to head NECON and conduct a new presidential poll by March 1994.

He was yet to fulfil that mandate when General Sani Abacha stepped in as the Commander-in-Chief, sacked him and appointed Chief Sumner Karibi Dagogo-Jack, who, incidentally, served as a member of the Nwosu-led NECON between 1989 and1993 and overtly superintended over the Abacha transmutation agenda.

When Abacha suddenly died on June 8, 1998, his successor, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, not only jettisoned the transition programme that was designed to actualise his self-succession gambit but also appointed Justice Ephraim Akpata to head the newly created Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. That was five years after he retired as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. Justice Akpata was saddled with the responsibility of superintending over the 1999 elections that, once again, ushered in democracy after a 16-year military interregnum.  

But it is in this Fourth Republic that the issue of appointing academics as INEC helmsmen has become a tradition, literally. Apart from Sir Abel Guobadia, who was appointed the second chairman of INEC in 2000 by President Olusegun and retired in May 2005, thus becoming the first chairman since independence to complete his tenure, all his predecessors are professors.

Even at that, Guobadia, Nigeria’s first resident Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Korea, though not a professor, was, nevertheless, a university teacher, having taught at both the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and the University of Lagos where he headed the department of physics. He also worked at the National Universities Commission as director of academic planning and subsequently, executive secretary.

But ever since, it has been an unceasing rein of professors. First, it was Maurice Iwu, a professor of pharmacognosy, who was also appointed by Obasanjo in 2005 to succeed Guobadia, and became the second umpire to serve out a five-year term. After him came Attahiru Jega, a professor of political science and former vice-chancellor of Bayero University, Kano, who was appointed by President Goodluck Jonathan. When Jega completed his tour of duty in 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari, who initially toyed with the idea of making Mrs Amina Zakari, substantive INEC chairman, rescinded his decision after public outcry and instead appointed Mahmoud Yakubu, a professor of political history and international studies at the Nigerian Defence Academy, NDA, the new chairman. He subsequently became the first INEC chairman to serve two terms from 2015 to 2025, and in the process caused maximum damage to the integrity of elections, a devious record that his successor, Joash Amupitan, a professor of law, seems determined to make a child’s place.

So, of the 13 people that have headed Nigeria’s electoral commissions since 1964, seven were university professors. If Dr Guobadia, who headed an academic department is thrown into the mix, then the number will be eight.

Beyond these numbers, Prof Jega, as INEC chairman, went a step further to hand over the commission, literally, to academics by introducing a policy of deploying professors as returning officers during the 2011 general election. That policy has been sustained by his successors. Jega claimed that using academics with supposedly high reputations for integrity, rather than relying on local officials who might be susceptible to political influence, would enhance the credibility of election results.

But that has not happened. Instead, elections have become worse, and the so-called integrity of academics shredded almost beyond redemption. We have seen professors of statistics unable to read out election results they supposedly collated. We have seen others stutter while reading out figures they collated because they simply don’t add up.

Several years after Jega’s harebrained scheme that was never going to work, elections under the watch of integrity-challenged professors have become worse, to such a degree that two of them have so far been tried, convicted and sentenced to prison for electoral fraud during the 2019 elections in Akwa Ibom State.

First, Peter Ogban, a professor of soil science at the University of Calabar, was sentenced to three years in prison in March 2021 by a State High Court in Uyo. Ogban, who served as a returning officer for the Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District, was found guilty of falsifying election results in two local government areas. On April 30, 2025, the Court of Appeal sitting in Calabar upheld his conviction and sentence.

Second, Ignatius Uduk, a professor of human kinetics at the University of Uyo, was sentenced to three years in prison on February 5, 2025, by an Akwa Ibom State High Court. Uduk, who served as the returning officer for the Essien Udim State Constituency election, was convicted for announcing results where no collation took place, thereby committing perjury.

But they paid the price for their iniquity because they were unfortunate to have worked under the no-nonsense Mike Igini, who prosecuted them on behalf of INEC as the Akwa Ibom Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC. There are many more professors, who have been busy professing fraud and polluting the electoral landscape. They are getting away with their atrocious behaviours because there are few Mike Iginis around.

Truth be told, elections have consequences. The good people of Abia State are living witnesses to that truism. Today, the state is throttling on the development highway at a supersonic speed. And that is because Prof Nnenna Oti, the Vice-Chancellor of Federal University of Technology Owerri, FUTO, as the returning officer in the 2023 Abia State governorship election, refused to compromise the outcome of the election despite intense pressure from sundry quarters.

If only other professors drafted to clean up our elections will step up to the integrity plate. But how can they when they have bosses like Mahmoud Yakubu to whom glitch has become an eternal badge of dishonour and his successor, a professor of law, whose interpretation of the Latin phrase, status quo ante bellum – the state existing before the war – has left many scratching their heads in bewilderment and wondering what his brief as INEC chairman is.