Tag: Nigerian news

It was the National Chairman of the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN), Chief Meredith Adisa Akinloye, who famously declared in the run up to the 1983 general elections that there were only two political parties in Nigeria – the NPN and the military. The opposition political parties took umbrage at Akinloye’s explosive assertion. They interpreted it as implying that the ruling NPN would prefer the military coming back to power than losing at the polls. Yet, there was an element of truth in Akinloye’s thesis. The military, which had only recently quit the political stage in 1979 after 13 years of praetorian rule, was still a potent political force waiting in ill-disguised impatience, to hijack power, once again, not just from the NPN as assumed by Akinloye, but from the political class as a whole. And this is exactly what happened with the military coup of December, 1983, that sacked the Second Republic.

The politicians, seemingly oblivious of the existential danger they faced as a ruling power elite, continued to approach competition for power as a desperate do – or die affair, until the military crept into the political household like the proverbial thief in the night. The country was to remain under the jackboots of military authoritarianism until the onset of this political dispensation in 1999 after the forced exit from the political terrain of the men in uniform.

Despite the last two decades of unbroken civilian rule since 1999, it is evident that not much has changed as regards the tendency of the political class to pursue the acquisition of political power with such fierceness and utter absence of restraint that perennially threatens not just democracy but the stability and very existence of the polity as a whole. Yes, unceasing quarrels, disagreements and disputes among factions and fractions of the political class are inherent and indispensable features of the democratic process. But these must always be conducted within the boundaries of the ‘constitutive and regulative’ rules of the game if they are not to become dysfunctional to the system.

In the absence, for instance, of a largely coherent and credible entity like the military able to intervene as in the past when democratic rule experiences systemic breakdown, persistently disruptive behavior on the part of the political class is more likely to result in generalized descent to anarchy with devastating consequences within and beyond Nigeria if such an entity as we know it survives as a cohesive whole.

This is why it is so sad that the proclivity of Nigeria’s political class towards political self-immolation, which had brought the polity to grief so many times in the past, continued to be evident before, during and after the 2019 elections. The violence that marred the elections at several polling centres in many states was only an indication of the ferociousness of the power struggle. With the conclusion of the elections and the announcement of winners and losers at various levels, the battle only shifted in most cases from the electoral to the judicial front.

The depth of desperation of political actors in the quest to win or retain power at all costs was again poignantly exhibited in some of the extremist submissions both of the petitioners, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and the PDP on the one hand and the respondents, President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC on the other, in the presidential election dispute resolved in favour of Buhari on Wednesday. For instance, Atiku did not only want the court to pronounce on the integrity and plausibility of the 2019 election results as pronounced by INEC, he sought to convince the court that Buhari was unqualified to contest the election in the first place because he allegedly lacked the constitutionally stipulated educational requirements.

Of course, the court was, unsurprisingly, not persuaded. Here is a man who had not only risen to the apex of Nigeria’s military as a General; he is a former Head-of-State and Commander-In-Chief of the country’s Armed Forces. Furthermore, he had contested for the country’s presidency on four previous occasions amassing substantial votes on all occasions. Had Atiku’s submission been upheld by the court, Buhari’s election would have been annulled and the PDP candidate declared winner even though he lost the election by a margin of no less than four million votes! That would have been a veritable judicial coup.

But then, the Buhari camp was also uncharitable and provocative in contesting Atiku’s claims partly on the grounds that the PDP candidate is not a Nigerian by birth. It is laudable that the court did not find the reasons adduced for this submission plausible and thus dismissed it. Again, here is an Atiku who rose to the top hierarchy of the Nigeria Customs Service from where he retired to pursue his career in business and politics for over three decades now. He was a former Vice-President of Nigeria for eight years and after that had contested for the country’s presidency on two occasions.

These kinds of submissions by both Atiku and Buhari, had they been upheld by the courts would have eposed Nigeria to global ridicule and generated severe tensions and conflicts in the polity. It is important that members of the political elite cultivate the discipline to look beyond their immediate personal interests in the pursuit of their ambitions and also consider the stability, peace and cohesion of the polity. For, a country must first exist before political offices can be meaningfully competed for.

Does this mean that aggrieved contestants and parties in elections must sacrifice the pursuit of justice in the interest of peace? No. The latter will surely always ultimately be a function of the former. But has Atiku really been denied justice in this instance as claimed by the PDP in its rather provocative reaction to Wednesday’s verdict of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC)? It is difficult to agree with the PDP. Luckily, the PEPC’s judgement was not delivered in the cloistered closet of the court. The 8-hour marathon judgement was broadcast live on national television for the public to follow. In my view, the jurists were painstaking and rigorous in their submissions even though the Supreme Court will have the last say on the matter.

Atiku and the PDP claim on the one hand that the elections were marred by large scale violence and intimidation of voters by security agents, over voting, manipulations, alterations and subtraction of valid votes given to Atiku by Nigerians all of which resulted in Buhari’s victory as declared by INEC. But it claims, on the other hand, that this allegedly perverted and grossly manipulated process by electoral and security agencies, working in concert with the APC, also strangely resulted in Atiku’s victory according to results the party claims to have obtained from an INEC server that it failed to convince the courts exists.

This is an irreconcilable contradiction. How did these alleged gross irregularities not stop the PDP’s victory in the 17 states and the Federal Capital Victory which it won in the 23rd Februray, 2019, presidential election in contrast to the APC’s victory in 19 states. The truth is that it was a closely fought and largely credible election whatever its shortcomings.

But then, this is not just a problem peculiar to Atiku and the PDP. It is a question of an entrenched political culture in which contestants for political office do not accept the outcome of elections and always resort to litigation no matter how glaring their defeat at the polls. After all, Buhari also resorted to seeking judicial intervention up to the Supreme Court on the three occasions that he lost the presidential election until his victory on the fourth attempt. His 2015 election triumph, however, shows that Buhari’s previous losses could be attributed not just to electoral malpractices but also the limitations of his political platforms and his lack of a pan-Nigerian appeal on those occasions.

Yes, aggrieved contestants for political office have the right to seek redress exploiting all constitutionally stipulated avenues to do so in the accordance with democratic tenets. In fact, we have had several badly rigged executive and legislative elections upturned especially since 2007 thus strengthening both democracy and the judicial process in Nigeria. But when contesting the outcome of elections in court becomes the norm rather than the exception when elections have been demonstrably rigged, it becomes a distracting, enervating and dysfunctional practice.

To strengthen public confidence in the electoral process and thus reduce the justification for reflexive resort to the courts by losers in elections, the National Assembly should improve on the Electoral Act passed by the 8th Assembly but which was rejected by the President and ensure that this time around it is passed into law.