On November 6, 2013, Justice Michael Edem of the Calabar High Court voided the election of three local government chairmen in the September 21 council polls in Cross River State. The ruling was on a suit filed against the State Independent Electoral Commission over adjustment in the time table for the election. In this interview with NICHOLAS KALU, chairman of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) Mr. Cletus Obun insists that the ruling must be implemented.
That are your views about the September 21 local government elections in Cross River State?
It is important for people to know what is happening and the efforts being made to frustrate the opposition parties from participating in local government elections. Members of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP); including the National Conscience Party and Progressive Peoples Alliance which, having fulfilled all conditions precedent to conducting the elections in 2011, had gone to court for two separate things.
First, the National Conscience Party (NCP) and the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) insist that, by the time table of CROSIEC, they are the only parties qualified to contest elections in three local government areas where they fielded their candidates and met all conditions.
In the judgment of November 6, the judge granted all reliefs. This indicates that only the NCP and PPA qualified to run for elections in those three local government areas which included Obanliku, Yakurr and Obudu. It is on this basis that we demand that the judgment by Justice Michael Edem on November 6 be implemented.
Any contrived delay in its implementation is anti-democratic. We demand that this anomaly should be corrected and urgently too because, justice delayed is justice denied.
We expect that on December 14 2013, the tenures of the current administrations in the local government system will expire. So, the non-conduct of elections in these three local government areas in accordance with the existing court order which has not been challenged is going to deprive the NCP and the PPA from producing their candidates for the election and taking off along with others on December 14. Let us not create an unnecessary crisis because if the status quo ante remains, it would translate to either setting up a caretaker committee or handing the councils over to civil servants in those local government areas.
If any of the two happens, it will be unconstitutional because Section 7 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended), is very clear on that matter. It stipulates that a democratic local government system should be established in Nigeria and that there is no room for caretaker committees.
Trying to create a situation that would bring that logjam would be resisted. So, CROSIEC should act like an independent body that the Constitution envisages it to be under section 7 and conduct elections in those three local government areas.
The judgment of Justice Michael Edem is being delayed. Incidentally, on November 20, the matter instituted by the NCP and the PPA seeking clarification on the interpretation of the judgment in order to give an outright order for conduct of the election has already been cleared that we enjoy the benefit of that judgment.
The matter was heard on November 20 and adjourned to December 2.
We do not think that this kind of long adjournment on a serious matter like this ought to be. The Chief Judge of this state is creating judicial history.
For the first time, the Cross River State judiciary is coming up to bring some revolutionary judgments and it should not be tainted by the continuous delay. The Chief Judge must live up to expectations and must live up to the tenets of the oaths of office that he took, which is to give justice to all manner of people irrespective of their status, political leanings and colourations, race or gender.
It is their duty to do so. They remain the bastion and hope for the common man. It is expected that the weak be made strong, by the law, even as the strong must be made to obey the law irrespective of who is involved.
This matter must be expeditiously pursued until justice is seen to have been done. This will be when we have elections in these three local government areas in which judgment was given. Justice should be done by having elections conducted in these three local government areas before the swearing-in of the chairmen who would be occupying their offices illegally.
Our jurisprudence should go beyond the mundane tricks and tactics of delaying justice to make people wrongfully benefit from office they ought not to occupy. A situation where a chairman sits in office and begins to use state resources to deny justice to others should not be allowed by the judiciary.
The judiciary must set the pace and the Cross River State judiciary has shown a glimmer of hope. The NCP and the PPA are passing the rough road of non-implementation of court judgment.
What would be your next step if this judgment is not implemented and chairmen of these local government areas are sworn in?
That would be a step towards anarchy and violence. Now violence is not just the act of picking up guns and matcheting people. Violence is the act of denying rights to individuals in such a way that their lives are affected.
Swearing in a chairman who was not elected and who ought not to be in office is the worst form of violence you can inflict on the people. Therefore, people reacting by carrying stones and machetes and going to engage in guerrilla warfare is only a mild reaction to the bigger injustice of imposition.
It is in the state’s interest not to create a situation where it becomes ungovernable. This is because nobody has the monopoly of violence as the saying goes. The insurgency in the north and in the creeks of the Niger Delta, the kidnappings and all that are fallouts of denying people their rights; especially the right to choose their leaders. Once you have a false leadership, you are going to have a sham followership and false society. This ultimately leads to faulty base for development.
So, let government bear in mind that it will be impossible to guarantee peace when people are denied their rights or imposing leaders they did not elect on them. In the circumstances, their destiny is trusted in the hands of lawbreakers who we know are just puppets of some cabal that is bent on bringing under-development to our people.
There is an argument that the court did not make any pronouncement about not swearing in the chairman…
The order is very explicit. It stated that all actions CROSIEC has taken by giving forms to and recognising the lists of these people are illegal, null and void. I don’t know the kind of grammar they want to hear again. This is quite explicit even for a secondary school boy to understand. So, which order are they looking for?
What do you think this judgment implies for the 15 remaining local government areas since the basis for the court’s nullification applies to all of them?
The CNPP, in conjunction with the affected parties, are already on the drawing board about the implications which we are not ready to disclose for now. It is only left for the courts to interpret. This is so because we are going to approach the courts to seek what implications there are if you have three local governments that didn’t qualify. We would want to know if it does not follow that others that filed out for the election ought not to have done so in the first place, based on the judgment by a competent court.
