By Segun Ayobolu

IN the aftermath particularly of the Supreme Court’s upturning of the outcome of the governorship elections in Imo and Bayelsa states resulting in the enthroning of candidates and parties, which won a minority of the votes in elections, the judiciary has been blamed by several analysts for allegedly undermining democratic governance in the country.

The judicial decisions in these two cases mirrored the situation earlier in Zamfara and Rivers states where, following alleged violation of credible and transparent intra-party electoral processes, the apex court legally incapacitated candidates of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) enabling the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to either assume power or continue in office irrespective of the expressed will of the electorate.

While some have accused the judiciary of resorting to legal technicalities to arrive at pre-determined conclusions in these cases for crassly partisan reasons, others have leveled grave but unsubstantiated charges of grand corruption against members of the respective election petition panels. That the overturned elections in Imo and Bayelsa substantially reflected the will of the electorate in reasonably free and fair elections seems incontrovertible. In Imo, the desire of a power-intoxicated incumbent to foist a dynasty on the state by installing his son-in-law as successor was stoutly resisted within the APC causing the party to contest the 2019 elections with a badly fragmented house.

The beneficiary was the PDP and Emeka Ihedioha, a formidable politician in his own right, who coasted home to victory to the delight of a not insignificant number of Imolites who were greatly relieved that the state was at least not reduced to humiliating servitude to one family. In his approximately eight months in office, Ihedioha won popular admiration even from those who do not necessarily support him politically because of his scientific, systematic and serious minded approach to governance. This was reflected not only in the quality of those he appointed into public office, but also in the gradual restoration of respect for stipulated processes and institutions, which had been reportedly grossly undermined during Rochas Okorocha’s eight year tenure. The result was that in Ihedioha’s short tenure, for instance, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in conjunction with the UNDP, rated Imo State as the best improved in the country as regards the institution of transparency and accountability in governance.

Can Uzodinma’s government sustain this reformist tempo or will the Supreme Court decision have unwittingly helped build a bridge back to a discredited and better forgotten past in Imo? Only time will tell. In the case of Bayelsa, Lyon’s electoral victory was likewise aided by the antics of a strong-willed incumbent who sought to foist a successor on the state at all costs utilizing the power of incumbency. Governor Seriake Dickson in the process alienated key stakeholders in the state including ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, thus paving the way for APC’s emphatic victory in a state that had been the traditional stronghold of the PDP since 1999. In both cases, therefore, the court verdicts appear difficult to differentiate from judicial coups through which electoral minorities have been able to become governing majorities.

A number of analysts have pointed out what appear to be imponderable incongruities and inconsistencies in the Supreme Court decisions in Imo and Bayelsa. In the Imo case, questions have been raised as regards the origin, procedural regularity and normalcy as well as integrity of the large number of allegedly ‘excluded votes’ that were legitimated by the court and the addition of which swung victory in favour of Senator Hope Uzodinma who came fourth in the election! Could any other party apart from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) claim credibly to have been the custodian of the votes in question? Yet, did Ihedioha’s counsel do enough to discredit the integrity of these allegedly excluded votes particularly during cross examination? Only legal minds can authoritatively answer the question.

In the Bayelsa case, the Supreme Court has been criticized for voiding Mr. David Lyon’s election on the basis of the infractions of his deputy thus implying that members of a governorship ticket are inseparable Siamese twins that must rise or sink together. Yet, the same court had in 2015 allowed the Kogi State governor, Mr. Yahaya Bello, to contest the election without a running mate signifying that the deputy is not of critical import to the joint ticket after all. What then are we to believe now? We can only hope that the apex court will utilize the opportunity of the appeals for the review of its judgments sought by the affected parties in Imo and Bayelsa, to give a rational justification for its decisions.

Even then, no matter what may be their own foibles and failings, are the courts to blame for the frequent vulnerability of electoral outcomes to judicial erasure? I do not think so. The problem has to do rather with the overvaluation of state power primarily as a source of primitive accumulation of wealth and the attendant vicious and unstructured struggle of contestants for public office at all levels to win elections at all costs and by all means. Parties and candidates vote funds to compromise intra-party primaries; they spare no effort to bribe the electorate and perpetrate outright violence to win general elections; they make provision to pocket security agencies and buy the support of the electoral umpires and above all they vote munificent funds to procure favourable verdicts from the Election Petition Tribunals through the Appeal Court to the Supreme Court. Practically every electoral outcome becomes a matter of litigation putting the courts under unimaginable pressure.

How many of those who castigate the courts for some of their seemingly compromised decisions on election petitions would rise to a higher level of moral integrity were they to find themselves in such positions with the attendant political pressure from desperate political actors? Not many in my view. The problem is thus not with individual judges but with the political system as a whole. How then, the question should be, do we make political offices less attractive as a source of wealth acquisition and thus reduce the intensity of the competition for public office and the consequent pressure on judges to give politically tainted and pecuniary-induced decisions on election petitions?

On their part, the courts seem to be only too eager in many cases to substitute their choices for the expressed will of the electorate based on technicalities. This is unhealthy and has huge destabilizing potentials. In the aftermath of the 1979 elections, for instance, the Supreme Court could easily have upheld Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN)’s petition that Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) did not score the required spread of 25% of votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of the states to be declared President despite scoring the highest number of votes in the election.

The UPN was technically correct. But what would have been the consequence had the apex court upheld Awolowo’s petition? There would have been the strong possibility of Awolowo emerging President at a runoff against Shagari in the Electoral College especially if he won the support of the other political parties opposed to the NPN. But then, Awolowo’s UPN had won the election only in five states all in the South West region. The NPN won in seven states with better geographical spread. Furthermore, the UPN had 25% of the votes in not more than 7 states while the NPN met the requirement in 12 states and scored a substantial number of votes in a 13th state, Kano, which was won by the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP).

It would have been a travesty of justice for Awolowo to have emerged President in the circumstances largely through judicial pronouncement. The Supreme Court controversially but wisely upheld Shagari’s victory ruling that the NPN satisfied the constitutional requirement of winning the highest number of votes as well as 25% of votes cast in 12 and two-thirds of the then 19 states in the country. The jurists were no doubt sensitive to the fact that their opinion based on legal technicalities could not be made to supersede the will of the Nigerian electorate.

It is unfortunate that the courts in Nigeria today are losing this kind of sensitivity. It should matter to the jurists that in Bayelsa, Senator Douye Diri was sworn in not only amidst tight security and tension akin to a war situation but a dusk to dawn curfew is still in place in the state even after he has assumed office. It has become imperative for the National Assembly to urgently pass the necessary legislation to make it impossible for courts to declare anyone as the winner of an election even after such polls have been nullified. Rather, where elections are voided, the electorate must always be given the opportunity to have the final say through fresh elections.

The obverse side of the judicial decisions in Imo, Bayelsa, Rivers and Zamfara states, however, is that it will force political parties to adhere to stipulated rules in conducting intra party electoral processes and also ensure that they are more rigorous in screening the credentials and other records of candidates they sponsor for office. This is good for the polity. Finally, there has been so much ado about Justice Mary Odili being chairman of the judicial panel that sat on the Bayelsa case. But was she not just one among a panel of five members? Again, was the panel not constituted by the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Tanko Muhammad, alleged in some quarters to be a stooge of the Buhari administration? Enough of conspiracy theories please.