Two down, one to go

President Bola Tinubu clocked one hundred days in office on September 5. The next day, September 6, the presidential election tribunal affirmed his much-disputed victory in the February 25 presidential election. The verdict, as it was bound to, kicked up a haze of dust over the nation. I think it compelled low-key owambe parties by the APC.

Here are samplers of some of the reactions to the verdict:

Dele Momodu, publisher of Ovation magazine: “I watched in utter amazement and wonderment how our constitution was brazenly and deliberately turned upside down by those who lack a sense of history and care less about the verdict of history.”

Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, PDP presidential candidate: “I refuse to accept the judgement because I believe that it is bereft of substantial justice.”

Mr Peter Obi, presidential candidate of Labour Party: “As petitioners in this case, we respect the views and the rulings of the court, but we disagree with the court’s reasoning and conclusions in the judgement it delivered.”

Ikechukwu Amaechi, online publisher and columnist: “When the judiciary wittingly or unwittingly becomes democracy undertakers, it is a recipe for anarchy.”

Disputes are inherent in human nature. The judiciary was created as a neutral body to arbitrate in such disputes and ensure that justice is given to whom it has been denied but to whom it is rightly due. Atiku and Obi went to the tribunal, each convinced that INEC had not respected the wish of the people as expressed in their respective favour through the ballot papers. The tribunal rejected their claims. It would be naïve to expect both men to say amen to the verdict of the tribunal and go home like defeated soldiers returning from battle. They still have options in their respective quest to replace Tinubu in Aso Rock.

The battle now moves to the Supreme Court. It has the final say on the matter. Almost all our presidential elections have walked this path. The only exception was the 2015 presidential election that turned President Goodluck Jonathan into a statesman and the finest political sportsman so far in the land. It is elementary that it is impossible to have a court verdict that pleases all the parties to electoral disputes. All the judges are human beings and, to put a finer point to it, they are all Nigerians who are not unaffected by what is known as the Nigerian factor.

I have repeatedly pointed out here and elsewhere that politics being the most lucrative business in the country, all those who throw their hats into the ring in our quadrennial election circles in jest or all seriousness, are not poster children for patriotism. Their objectives are not usually in tune with the demands of a nation quite often let down by those who offered to lift it up. Wherever men and women put a chain around the neck of their conscience, there you will find the influence of money. Money buys votes, it buys judgements and drags tainted justice along.

Money poisons our electoral system and our elections. And it poisons the temple of justice. In essence, the men are fighting on because they have deep pockets to sustain them. It is not such a great thing for Nigeria that its elections are the most disputed on the continent. We ought to be worried as a nation that the rest of the world thumbs its nose at us each time we go to the polls. They no longer believe we can get it right.

Part of the problem is the national trust deficit. All Nigerians are suspicious of all Nigerians. They impose their lack of trust on our institutions. No electoral system is perfect, but the lack of mutual trust exaggerates the flaws in our system and gives politicians the right to impugn the integrity of the men and women doing virtually the impossible to conduct fair, free and credible elections in accordance with the extant laws. While other nations take steps to remove the flaws in their system, we are indifferent to them because they serve the short term interests of the politicians.

Our political leaders refuse to give serious thoughts to the integrity of our electoral system. If the electoral system is wanting in integrity, it follows quite naturally that the conduct of the elections will suffer collateral damages. For years, our political leaders chose to let a system that failed the nation remain as it was and made a jest of a nation that claims to lead the African continent. Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, the INEC chairman and his team have given us an electoral system largely shorn of the old burdens that crippled the earlier system. But the politicians refuse to support the new system to make it work. They trust in their ability to rig. Yakubu has made this rather difficult. And they howl because it is no longer easy to rig.

I never tire of citing the report of the electoral reform committee set up by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua and chaired by the former chief justice of Nigeria, Mr Justice Muhammadu Uwais. It remains the only formal official attempt at that level to reform our electoral system and, all things being equal, restore to the people their inalienable right under our laws and the constitution to domicile political power with them as its custodians. The report is buried now in layers of dust where it was dumped on the shelf while the problems it was intended to address continue to run the ring around our electoral system and the integrity of the conduct of our elections at all levels.

The challenge before this nation and its political leaders is an electoral system that can stand on its own as an institution that serves the right of the people to use their ballot papers to institute governments of their choice at national and sub-national levels. That is the principle of democracy as a government of the people by the people.  Yakubu has shown it can be done. But politicians insist it must not be done.

Such a system built on institutional integrity, should minimise the current resort to the judiciary to settle all minor and major electoral disputes. The judiciary cannot resolve an election dispute in a manner that accords with the wish of the people expressed through the ballot box. Cases before it are decided largely on legal technicalities. Such technicalities serve the ends of the law but not necessarily the ends of justice.

It is not, I believe, too much to ask our politicians to rise to the challenges of playing the game according to the rules. They can start by committing themselves to taking what INEC has done so far much higher. That there are no political sportsmen in our national politics is not worth celebrating. Sure, the law permits those who feel cheated by the system to take their cases to the judiciary but disputing elections for the sake of disputing them takes something away from our democracy and the ideals of democracy to which we, like all other developing nations aspire. As long as the cases wind their weary way through the labyrinth of the judiciary so long will the nation itself remain caught up in uncertainty and anxiety. This cannot be good for the nation.