The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability.
If you have a morbid fear of being stupid or being perceived as stupid by your peers and associates, you are suffering from stupidophobia, aka stultophobia. Many well educated people suffer this condition because it directly affects their claim to social relevance and intellectual depth.
In the last 100 years, very few intellectuals have devoted their time and analytical peregrination to stupidity as much as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a humble pastor who warned his countrymen about the rise of Hitler and his fellow butchers. He argued that stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than evil. Whereas one can expose evil and protest against it, stupidity is a more formidable enemy because it can be found perched, at times, on the throne. In that case, neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here.
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In all this, the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and easily irritated. One has to be more cautious when dealing with a stupid person than a malicious one. It is not only senseless but also dangerous to try to persuade a stupid person with the force of reason.
Now, it is difficult to explain how a university professor would put his career and life on the line for a Nigerian politician. Could it be stupidity at play? How else does one explain or rationalise the abandonment of a prestigious career in academia in favour of a new one as ballot rigger or, to be more sympathetic, victim of Nigerian politicians’ notoriety for bribing all bribables and staining otherwise clean persons who have the misfortune of having to transact business with them.
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I don’t know why Mr Ignatius Uduk, a professor of Human Kinetics at the University of Uyo (UniUyo) got mixed up in the case of electoral fraud in the 2019 elections, which earned him three years in prison. His case was quite unfortunate as a review of the story shows.
He was the Collation/Returning Officer for the Essien Udim State Constituency seat in the 2019 general election. In sentencing him, Justice Bassey Nkanang said: “His (Uduk’s) conduct particularly is a disservice to the course of democracy in our country and reproachable breach of trust against INEC who paid him for this job he ended up sabotaging.
“On March 10, 2019 he had earlier submitted a handwritten note detailing the incident at the election, how he was chased away from the collation centre and that he was forced to announce the result.
“Less than 24 hours later, he generated another result, came up with the official final result, now declaring the winner for the election.
“He returned a winner for an election in which there was no collation in any of the levels. No collation from the Polling Unit, no collation from Ward Level, none at the local government area level before it got to him as Returning Officer.
“Yet the professor made a return for that election and had the audacity to appear before the Election Tribunal to validate that same false election result. He was invited by INEC to justify his result. He threatened to take INEC to court then.”
The trial was initiated during the tenure of the fiery former INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Mike Igini, who often seized any opportunity of media engagement to pledge that election fraudsters would be prosecuted under his watch. It took five years to bring Professor Uduk to justice.
On the judgment day, he came to court in a wheelchair. He tried to win the sympathy of the court by pointing out that his employers, the University of Uyo, had forcefully retired him in 2020 because of the scandal.
“My services were terminated by the University of Uyo and I was forcefully retired in 2020. Also because of this case, my salary was stopped since 2020. So, I am appealing to this court to give me soft landing,” he begged.
It took the court about 90 minutes for the judge to narrate why the convict was going to be separated from his freedom. Now, as they say on the streets of Abuja, he has been sent to eat Iron Beans for three years.
The conviction of Professor Uduk is one indictment we shouldn’t allow to slide like many of such that happen and are quickly swept under the carpet by highly placed accomplices. For once, an election fraudster was apprehended and prosecuted. The former Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mike Igini, deserves commendation for his persistence. The outcome of this case shows that we can indeed change things, one man at a time.
Now, you may ask, where is the beneficiary of Uduk’s electoral fraud? That was the question that compounded his case. Having forged the result, he carelessly insisted that his records were accurate and even threatened to take the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to court. If only he had bothered to check, he would have found out that the Court of Appeal had voided the results of that constituency and the beneficiary had been removed from the legislature.
One of the counsel asked in bewilderment, “So, how come a professor in the university despite the Court of Appeal judgment that was still standing, come before another court of competent jurisdiction to still insist on validating an invalid false result, bogs my mind.”
INEC’s lawyer, Mr Onwuenwunor (SAN), in a post-judgment appraisal noted that: “His (Uduk’s) conduct particularly is a disservice to the course of democracy in our country and reproachable breach of trust against INEC who paid him for this job he ended up sabotaging.
Well, at least the society is able to draw lessons from Uduk’s incarceration. Fraud does not pay. When you’re put in a position of responsibility, don’t betray the trust. If all the election riggers nationwide had been given the Uduk treatment, we would at least have been sending signals to the younger generation that what is bad is actually bad. But when the wicked prosper, when riggers rule the roost, when there is a shortage of good examples nationwide, what hope does the upright operative have?
Pardon me if you feel personally affronted, you may be the best man in calculus, but that is no insulation from stupidity. We must allow Bonhoeffer to guide us in this quest:
“If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations.
The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability.
What else, if not stupidity, would propel a professor, a man of great intellectual attainment, to forge election results and insist on the integrity of his ghosted figures until he was shown the colours of the prison gates? Alas, education cannot insulate you from stupidity!
The fear of stupidity, I insist, is the beginning of wisdom.
Wole Olaoye is a Public Relations consultant and veteran journalist. He can be reached on [email protected], Twitter: @wole_olaoye; Instagram: woleola2021
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