How Taraba Governorship Tribunal, Others Revive Old Political Concerns
RECENT judgments from the various
election petition tribunals threw up
mixed reactions as to the fidelity of
judges’ interpretation, analyses and
syntheses of laws and facts relating to
the elections as presented by the
petitioners and their counsel. The
common refrain was, is there corruption
in the judiciary or has the sliding
standard of education in Nigeria started
taking its toll on the nation’s judiciary?
Now, all eyes are turned to the Appellate
Courts for answers through judicial
review of the judgments.
Before various divisions of the Court of
Appeal begin work on the appeals, it is
necessary to examine how the jumble of
tribunal judgments reflected the old
bumps on Nigeria’s path to deepening
democracy and the electoral process.
The rulings by Akwa Ibom and Rivers
States governorship election petitions
tribunals generated much public outcry.
However, the judgment of the Taraba
State Governorship Election Petition
Tribunal raised the bar of general
complaint against the decision of the
panels.
By sacking the incumbent, Governor
Darius Ishaku of the Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP) and ordering that the All
Progressives Congress (APC) candidate in
the election, Senator Aisha Al-Hassan, be
sworn into office, the tribunal attracted
scathing comments.
Against the background of the
unrelenting contest for political
dominance of the country between the
APC and PDP, many analysts speculated
that the tribunal must have played a
script. Though having a female governor
in Nigeria is desirable, it should not be
done in a manner that offends
procedure, they say. In addition, some
legal minds chewed on the declarative
aspect of the Taraba panel ruling,
disagreeing that it was not married to
the stipulations of the Electoral Act of
2010 as amended.
Although the Taraba Governor became
the first state chief executive to lose his
exalted seat via tribunal ruling in the
present dispensation, the ruling
reminded of similar losses by such others
like Dr. Olusegun Oni, (Ekiti State);
Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, (Osun);
Prof. Osarheimen Osunbor, (Edo) and of
course, the celebrated case of Onwa,
Chris Nwabueze Ngige of Anambra State.
But unlike the cases of those governors,
the sack of Ishaku by the panel was
based on a pre-election matter having to
do with the nomination of the candidate.
The Supreme Court had in earlier
judgment declared that nomination of
candidates being the exclusive and
internal business of political parties, the
Court has no business interfering, unless
the process was faulted and complained
of by a member of the party.
For instance, in the celebrated case of
Rotimi Amaechi Vs Celestine Omehia, the
apex court looked into the complaint of
Amaechi that during the nomination
process, he was precisely the duly elected
candidate from the PDP primary, but
was substituted with Omehia, by the
party. But in the case of Ishaku and Al-
Hassan, the tribunal not only descended
into the arena, but bent over backwards
to fault the PDP primary election that
produced the governor as the flag
bearer.
Some observers have praised the
judgment as part of the change policy of
the present federal ruling party, while
others concluded that the judgment was
nothing short of an expansionist political
design of the APC to garner at least 30
states under its platform and diminish
the clout of PDP to stand up as a
consequential opposition party. But even
at that, some legal luminaries thumb
down the judgment as donating a relief
that was not solicited by the petitioner.
Lawyers that belong to this school of
thought contend that what the law says is
that in the event that the candidate who
won the election is found as not
qualified to stand the election on the
basis of Section 140 (2) of the Electoral
Act, the much the tribunal can do is
order for a fresh election. “In
jurisprudence, declaring the next
candidate with the highest number of
vote as the winner amounts to
authenticating the election even when
one of the candidates have been credited
with defects in his/her nomination,” they
said.
The other leg of the Taraba Governorship
Tribunal ruling relates to the holding of
the PDP primary election in Abuja.
Section 85 of the Electoral Act demands
that prior to holding a primary election
to select its candidates for an election,
the political party should give the
Independent national Electoral
Commission (INEC) 21 days’ notice.
It is debatable whether the opinion of
INEC confers on it the powers to
invalidate the primary or provide legal
bulwark for eventual corroboration
should a member of the party challenge
the process. Consequently, INEC’s
opinion after the election had been won
and lost loses creditability even if
supplied to the party that lost. That
argument flows from the intendment of
the law that the issues concerning
candidate selection borders on pre-
election matters, which when overtaken
like in the Taraba instance by the
holding of the election, becomes an
academic exercise. In the case of
Amaechi Vs Omehia, Amaechi challenged
the process that replaced him with his
fellow party man in the same platform.
There is a school of thought that believes
that the inconsistencies in Election
Petition Tribunals’ judgment across the
country reveal the invidious attempt by
APC to politicize the judiciary and
achieve some hegemony. This school of
thought sees the Taraba development as
an attempt to divert attention from the
controversial rulings in Akwa Ibom and
Rivers States. They also argue that the
case between Governor Ajumobi of APC
and Rashid Ladoja in Oyo reveals the
uneven handed approach to election
petitions involving APC incumbents.
It is left to conjecture why in Akwa
Ibom, where elections in 18 local
government councils out of 31 were
nullified, the tribunal flinched from
sacking the governor even when it was
clear that the number of outlawed votes
exceed the ones retained by Governor
Emmanuel Odom. PDP claims that the
Tribunal judgment stooped half way in
the belief that the areas were bye-
election is ordered happened to be the
strong hold of Umana Umana.
In Ebonyi State, the Tribunal overlooked
the complaints of Labour Party
Governorship candidate, Dr. Edward
Nkwegu against the election of Governor
David Umahi, which border on non-
compliance of the election with the INEC
regulations and the Electoral Act. The
tribunal declared: “We therefore agree
with the respondent’s counsel that we
cannot make ‘non-compliance with the
guidelines and election manuals for
electoral officers 2015’ an issue of
determination because doing so will
amount to expanding the ground stated
by the petitioner and the provisions of
section 138 (1) of the Electoral Act 2010,
as amended… It is clear to us that the
issue of non-compliance with the
guidelines and Election manual for
Electoral officers 2015 must be made a
ground by the petitioner before it can be
made an issue for determination.”
It is surprising how judges pick and
choose what sections of the law they
assign probative value on. Furthermore
the pre-election matter against the PDP
candidate by Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu,
the Federal High Court sitting in
Abakaliki held that the nomination of
Umahi did not conform to the
stipulations of the Electoral Act. Knowing
about the weight of these potential
defects to his case, the PDP candidate
was said to have reached out to the
ruling party expressing his desire to join
the party. Even during the recent PDP
Rebranding conference, which the
Ebonyi Governor shunned, he was
quoted as justifying his absence on the
premise that since he has a pending
electoral case, he does not want to
identify with PDP so as not to jeopardize
his chances.
The variety of judgments by the
governorship election tribunals feed the
suspicion of the desperation by the
ruling APC to take over Taraba, Akwa
Ibom and Rivers States. What could the
implication of snatching those states
through the courts by the ruling party
be? In the first place, it would confer the
status of dominance and one party on
APC. But the socio-political consequences
could be far reaching and might mirror
the strife similar takeover instigated in
the past.
Former Ebonyi State Commissioner for
Information and Orientation, Mr. Abia
Onyike, said the rulings especially that of
Rivers State, if not reversed at the
Appellate or Supreme Courts, might lead
to a possible political conflagration
capable of threatening Nigeria’s
democracy and creating unimaginable
crisis.
Onyike told The Guardian that the
relocation of the Tribunals for Rivers,
Akwa Ibom and Taraba outside their
state capitals was suspect, pointing out
that President Muhammadu Buhari
should be restrained from making the
mistakes of past northern leaders that
sought to expand their political
territories outside the people’s mandate.
He noted that coming at this time when
the country is facing a vicious military
campaign by a jihadist Islamic
insurgency in the Northeast region; the
president cannot afford to have another
distraction on his table.
The attempt to reverse the electoral
outcomes in Taraba, Akwa Ibom and
Rivers and possibly take over Bayelsa
state by force seems a rash and useless
display of political jingoism, which may
backfire and set the stage for
irreversible cataclysm. President Buhari
should be reminded that Nigerians
expect him to break the jinx that has
haunted Northern leaders under
democratic governments since
independence, he added. Onyike, who is
also a former trade union leader
recalled that “no northern civilian leader
has ever run the country peacefully and
successfully and handed over without a
catastrophic exit”, adding that such
tendency is caused by the inability of
such northern leaders to play the
democratic game by the rules.
His words: “The undue ambition to
infiltrate or possibly decimate and take
over the strongholds of rival political
parties by all means is at the heart of the
matter. That was what happened to
Tafawa Balewa’s government. The north
had used S.L.Akintola as a surrogate in
the proxy war with Obafemi Awolowo in
the West and the political fray led to the
inevitable collapse of the first republic
and the civil war.” Further, he recalled
how in the Second Republic, the attempt
by President Shehu Shagari’s NPN
(National Party of Nigeria) to get a
foothold in the South West, using Akin
Omoboriowo to destabilise the UPN
(Unity Party of Nigeria) in Ondo, caused
bloodletting.
He added: “In the East, the defunct NPN
using C.C. Onoh, tried to upstage Jim
Nwobodo of NPP (Nigeria Peoples Party).
The tension generated by these
developments robbed the Shagari
presidency of the legitimacy it required
to continue in office as it was evicted
barely three months after its second
term inauguration.”
Now history is about repeating itself in
the Niger Delta, where Chibuike Amaechi
is playing Akintola as a willing tool of
the ruling APC,” Onyike rationalized,
saying that President Buhari should save
Nigeria from unnecessary, impossible
and unthinkable political experiments.
He said the only northern president that
could have broken the jinx was Umaru
Yar’Adua but noted that despite his
unfortunate death in office the country
experienced some hiccups over whether
his deputy should take over.
As superior courts begin the review of
judgments of Election Petition Tribunals,
the National Assembly, INEC and
relevant bodies should strengthen and
unify the country’s electoral laws to
ensure that the final arbiters in election
are the voters. Some practitioners have
suggested that INEC should be sued in
disputed elections, while the
beneficiaries could only be joined.
Similar suggestions and ideas should be
evaluated to remove all possible areas
for corruption from the nation’s polity.
APC’s Aisha Jummai Alhassan after the
tribunal declared her winner of
theTaraba State governorship election in
Abuja
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