If you believed the hashtag – #alleyesonthejudiciary, you might be shocked to realise that a social media label could have a real-time soporific effect. This was exactly what happened when judges at the Presidential Elections Petitions Tribunal, PEPT, took their judgement seats at the tribunal last Wednesday. It was as if only the judges were immune from the political nitrous oxide of the judgement released in the courtroom as everyone, including lawyers, journalists, and observers dozed off. Only the camera operators and the judges stayed awake. The Americans and their allies heckled the tribunal into agreeing to televise the ruling, but the judges had the last laugh – saving their faces from the klieg lights.
While the justices played purdah with their faces, their decisions have changed the canons of the law of evidence and judicial interpretation. It recalls the colonial days in western Nigeria when illiterate subjects interpreted the actions of their colonial overlords in interpreting their actions.
Students of that era swear that the proverb – o se gúdú gúdú méje, yà yà mẹfà metamorphosed from such an incidence. The story goes that in evaluating an incident, a colonial overlord uttered the word ‘good’ seven times and ‘yeah’ half a dozen times. His subjects interpreted that to mean seven gudu gudu (i.e. good) and six yeah’s – yaya mefa. Till this day, an excellent job is described as gudu gudu meje, yaya mefa!
Contrary to social media wailers, nobody lost at the tribunal. One petitioner and one defendant – Peter Obi and Kashim Shettima had the process that led to their candidature affirmed as legit. Never again will anybody insinuate that Obi or Shettima was not properly nominated without running afoul of the dreaded cyberstalking law that criminalises such conduct.
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How would we have known that the saying ignorance of the law is not an excuse, is a lie. In Milord Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani’s ruling, he said that it was not Shettima’s fault that he contested for two political posts in one electoral cycle. The learned justice ruled that he did so out of ignorance and could therefore not be blamed for the mistake. This must be a mitigating defence the next time you argue against a VIO for not having the emergency triangles or driving without a licence – just tell them that you were ignorant of that position of the law. Caveat emptor, be sure to have the services of a good senior advocate to back you up on that. In Nigeria, ignorance of the law is now an excuse.
Another kernel of justice rewritten by the tribunal is that you need a formal trial and a conviction to be considered an ex-convict. Milords ruled that even though President Tinubu paid a fine running close to $500,000 for drug peddling in America, he was not convicted by an American court and should never be considered or called an ex-con. The fine was as legit as paying tithes to your pastor.
The second leg of that ruling is that after ten years, a conviction footprint is wiped off the slate. This ruling is perhaps the most important. Our country is filled with very important ex-prisoners who would love to return to their pre-conviction status as VIPs but who are limited by the impression that their conviction disqualifies them. They must be over the moon to know that the requirement is ten years in purgatory to return to the paradise of reckoning. With this ruling, famous armed robbers, bank executives, and political brigands are free to return to the field of public office to the shame of those walking the straight and narrow. The next election is bound to throw up interesting candidates.
Up till the judgement of the PEPT, African assessors of democracy thought that an election was nothing until it had the endorsement of foreign observers. Ex-Gabonese President Omar Bongo-Ondimba and Zimbabwe’s Emerson Mnangagwa saw the fallacy of that when they took the bold decision of running their most recent incumbency-ratification polls without inviting or accrediting foreign observers. Believe it or not; they won without a contest.
In the case of Zimbabwe, recalcitrant local observers were arrested and locked up for the crime of meddlesomeness. Now Milords have ruled that the boring reports of observers, such as the European Union, and EU have no inadmissibility in law. You are not our electoral supervisors or observers, so henceforth, share your observations with your wife and children and save us the task of reading them or evaluating them.
This unprecedented ruling should save Africa a lot of printing ink, paper, and lamination pouches, the essential ingredients used in the accreditation of these intrusive interlopers. It should reduce Africa’s carbon footprint as it limits the number of flights and the pollution that comes from them driving around in their exclusive 4 x 4’s blowing dust in the faces of voters in the name of observing polls.
We warned the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, that Nigeria is not ripe for electronic or digital voting when it went ahead to propose spending N105 billion in the procurement of Accreditation Devices. According to the website statista.com, only about 40 million Nigerians have access to mobile devices. The rest wouldn’t know what to do if they found an iPad on the street. However, INEC went ahead and purchased gadgets knowing that we have had an energy crisis. The tribunal ruling that INEC is not obliged to upload its results to its web portals even when it promised to is a novel canon of judicial excuses. It justifies Rauf Aregbesola, who introduced the ọpọn-ìmọ in the defunct State of Osun without digitising MOCK, JAMB, or NECO examinations. Instead of pretending to be moving with the world of technology, Nigeria and Africa should consider internationalising the analog use of fingerprints or the adoption of the use of marbles as they do in the Gambia. It is an opportunity to look inward.
Time would not permit us to list other innovations in judicial interpretation issued by the electoral tribunals. Suffice it to say that Abuja residents have finally lost their uppity status of thinking they are the 37th State of the federation. Milords have ruled that Abuja is nothing but a geographical construct with a presumed political status even if Nyesom Wike thinks he is its emperor. Lokoja, the poorest state capital in Nigeria, has more electoral value than the glorified FCT. This must be a consolation to my outgoing Governor Yahya Bello and us, his subjects;we are more important than you – Abujans!
As the indefatigable Atiku Abubakar and the indomitable Peter Obi take their appeal to the Supreme Court while Tinubu perfects his victory dance steps, their supporters should resist the urge to create another hashtag that might have a soporific effect on the nation into a state of televised mass-somnambulism. Contrary to the impression that the Supreme Court has the final say in these matters, there is an ECOWAS Court of Justice in Abuja and a World Court at the Hague before an appeal to the United Nations, UN. God bless the senior advocates!
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