The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Professor Mahmood Yakubu has honored Professor Adele Jinadu as he marked his 79th birthday celebration in Abuja recently.
Prof Yakubu at the colloquium in honor of Professor Adele Jinadu titled: “Adele Jinadu and Electoral Democracy in Nigeria: Knowledge and Praxis” said his contributions to knowledge in general and to democracy and elections in particular within Nigeria and in Africa is unparalled.
He described Jinadu’s scholarship as a sustained engagement not just with writing and theorizing about the social world, but also about engaging and connecting with that world.
“For him, theorizing is a ‘lived’ and ‘living’ experience. It is, in the true sense of the word, praxis, an integral relationship between theory and practice.
Prof Jinadu’s contributions to democracy and electoral governance, defined as the attempt to understand the mechanisms, operation and interconnections of a broad ensemble of relations in an electoral eco-system is incalculable and has impacted all aspects of election management from EMBs, to political parties, civil society, security, media and the judiciary.
In his appreciation speech, Prof Jinadu said there are worrisome signs, particularly within the civil society, of a growing vicious attempt to discredit the leadership of INEC in a manner to bring about the reversals of advances towards the routinization of electoral democracy in the country, made under Attahiru Jega and now under Mahmood Yakubu.
“It must be realized that INEC is not the enemy of democracy but those who are afraid of INEC’s daring attempt to routinize electoral integrity as the core of our country’s electoral process and electoral governance and whom we must expose for their diversionary tactics to shift attention from their undemocratic, unpatriotic agenda,” he said .
