‘Assumption of duty should be put on hold till after litigation processes’

A legal practitioner and Convener of Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, Clement Nwankwo, has called for an electoral reform that would ensure that assumption of duty would be put on hold until all litigation processes on the election have been concluded.

Nwankwo, in an interview with Daily Trust, said it was “the crookedness of the electoral process that has meant that there are so much grievances that the political parties and electoral process do not resolve which make people think the courts are the way to go.”

He said this while reacting to the revelation by the President of the Court of Appea, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, that the appellate court disposed of 805 cases on the 2019 general elections.

He said, “The court has become more or less the final arbiter. So, when people vote, they have to hold their breath and wait to see what the court votes before everybody settles and I think that is a wrong a situation.

“As we go forward, we must fine-tune the electoral process such that nobody assumes office until litigation process completes. That’s one. Secondly, that even you don’t have a situation that there are so much litigations.”

Nwankwo added that there would not be a vacuum in governance if this was done because “If a governor or deputy or president or vice are not there, then the next person is the speaker (or Senate President in the case of the presidency).”

“If the speaker is not there, the next person is the deputy speaker. You will even get to a point where you have the chief justice or chief judge. All of these things are there to fill the gaps. So, if some crooked politicians wangle their way to getting elected like putting a gun on the returning officers’ head and announces their results, then it means he gets into office, uses the resources of the state, which a private candidate cannot match and prosecute the challenge to his crooked election,” he added.

He, therefore, suggested that the reform should make sure that everybody contesting for office is “out and away from that seat until every aspect regarding the elections is concluded. But I must say that the ideal thing is that you fix the problem with the political parties so that the issues of internal democracy are resolved, that allow candidates to be chosen based on merits and on a transparent basis.”