No one who read the final written addresses of the three main political parties contesting the Nigerian presidency in the courts expected President Bola Tinubu to lose. Ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar‘s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and ex-governor Peter Obi’s Labour Party (LP) had dragged the president before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) even before the last ballot was cast, insisting the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should not have declared him president. The reason, they argued was not so much because of insufficient ballots cast in favour of the declared winner but essentially because of ancillary matters like the APC nomination process or a forfeiture case long ago in the United States. And just in case they could get any takers, or the country could be bewitched, the litigants also threw in the farfetched issue of 25 percent Federal Capital Territory (FCT) votes as a prerequisite for victory in the presidential election.
Five justices of the Court of Appeal sat over the consolidated cases and last week gutsily – some said angrily – and unanimously threw away the last legal and political pretensions of the opposition. They let it be known once and for all time that the judiciary would not be intimidated. The petitioners didn’t stand a chance, going by the provisions of the law, but they clutched at all kinds of straws, most of them wafer thin, leaving their fumbling counsels and fanatical supporters puzzled. Few legal experts who listened to or read the presentations of the opposition thought they had any chance of winning. Some supporters, many of them artisans and laymen on the streets, thought otherwise; but their thoughts stood precariously on pins and needles, on nothing but wishes. Sensing that their supporters were undifferentiating, both PDP and LP candidates in the February 25 presidential election appealed to their emotions, declaiming upon the special status of FCT residents, and exaggerating and obfuscating irrelevant court processes in the United States. In the end, all their arguments counted for nothing. Worse, the three parties left standing in the suit against the APC were made to share a fine approximating N84m.
President Tinubu is a very fortunate man. The more the cases against him dragged on, the more strengthened his legal position became, and the more he smelled of roses. In an essentially three-horse race, he won about 37 percent of the votes, a fact some analysts have turned into an argument about legitimacy. But at the PEPC, he won unanimously. Even before the opposition got copies of the judgement, they had, however, signified their readiness to appeal. They will also lose at the Supreme Court, of course. It was not just that the PEPC did a thorough job, it was mainly because both the PDP and the LP, which had previously united under one umbrella but split into three for the fateful election, had nothing significant to rest their cases on or redeem their postulations. No legal expert who knew his onions thought the PDP or LP could win, or that, bowing to the blackmail and intimidation of the opposition, the PEPC could be browbeaten into ordering a rerun. If the president’s luck is sustained, not only will the opposition lose at the Supreme Court, the fines could be bigger than N84m.
In reality, however, Nigeria’s opposition leaders in the PDP and LP are not idiots. They knew they didn’t stand a chance in the election, having been unable to unite going into the poll, and especially when the conspiracy at the highest echelons of government which the PDP had hoped to take advantage of fizzled out badly. They are not stupid to think that by some liberal constitutional interpretations FCT residents could be turned into supermen and bionic women in whose tremulous hands veto power over the rest of the country would be invested. No, they are much smarter than their howling supporters, and in fact secretly held out no hope of a miracle. They embarked on legal adventurism for two principal reasons: to create a groundswell of anger and bitterness against the winner in order to incite the public into either a preemptive revolution or a coup d’etat; or to slow down and weaken the new administration into backing away from implementing courageous and redemptive policies or inquiring into the monumental misdeeds of past administrations. Neither of the two objectives will, however, be realised, regardless of how hard they try.
Apart from being unanimous, the PEPC was emphatic in their judgement. They have left the opposition with no legs to stand on going to the Supreme Court. The PDP and LP know as a matter of fact that they have nothing left to stand on or any straw to clutch at, and even fear that they will be skewered or completely disemboweled for their irrational attempt at intimidating the justices, nay the judiciary as a whole, for ridiculing the justices and their families, and for rousing public anger against them. They feel the amperage of the portents that lie ahead. But they are also seized by a forlorn gloominess that the fire of revolution they had labored so tediously to procure might finally be lit by a fortuitous and careless matchstick. In addition, they have a number of angry past leaders, disaffected politicians, baleful clerics, and opinion moulders to count on. But here again, their exertions are unlikely to be rewarded, for they misread history very badly and are woeful incompetents at reading the signs of the times.
For about two years before the then aspirant Tinubu won the APC presidential primary, the ruling party, beginning from June 2020, had erected a barricade of such enormity and fierceness against him that few gave him any chance of surmounting. Five years before, the party had also ostracised him, attempted to build a new power elite in the Southwest to supplant his influence, and rallied many of his mentees and friends and associates against him. And when EndSARS came in late 2020, despite beginning as a protest against federal police atrocities, it was also weaponised against him. The house of politics he built seemed to be caving in on him. How he roused himself from his prostrate position to take the battle to his enemies remains a puzzle. What is, however, known is that one after the other he dismantled his enemies, put together a coalition of old friends and new associates, and finally devised political strategies that left his opponents and estranged mentees gasping for breath. After these, heaven simply and brusquely took over. There is no other explanation for the implacable divisions within the PDP, the half-heartedness of the presidency in following through their plots against him, and the failure of all the economic and financial chicaneries which punished the entire nation than it undid him.
Since 2015 when he joined forces with others to secure victory for the APC, President Tinubu had not been defeated in any political combat. Last week’s judicial victory is, therefore, an icing on the cake. In the same manner many clerical and political leaders saw the hand of God in the successful evacuation of about 338,000 beaten and bruised allied soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk during World War II, many clerics and perceptive analysts now see the hand of God in the 2023 Nigerian elections. They do not conclude that President Tinubu’s victory in all his political battles in the past years is a testimony of his strategic brilliance or ideational infallibility; no, instead, like many great statesmen have appreciated throughout all history, they now sense the hand of forces in their affairs which they cannot rationally explain. Indeed, if the PEPC had last week ordered a rerun, and the PDP and LP had joined forces, they would again be surprised to go down in defeat against all rational permutations and projections. The unseen hand was so pervasive in the 2023 Nigerian elections that any opposition was certain to end up disoriented and spent.
A few more predictions need to be ventured. The PDP and LP conspiracy to delegitimise the Tinubu presidency will continue until and a little after the Supreme Court deals them a mortal blow. But the conspiracy will eventually amount to nothing. The revolution and coups they have tried so disingenuously to incite will also amount to nothing. The Tinubu presidency has admittedly started on a disconcertingly awkward note despite propounding fine policies and assembling a fairly decent team; but in the months ahead, he will settle down to better administrative and even ideological and policy rhythms. The international environment will probably work in his favour and give great impetus to his programmes and policies, and the economy will function at far better capacity and fluidity than previously hoped. His opponents will not only be consistently wrong-footed, they will gradually fade in prominence and acclaim, including Alhaji Atiku, Mr Obi, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, Bode George and other assemblage of expired and ambitious politicians and opinion leaders. These things will inevitably open the door to the recreation of better organised and more ideological political parties and a more scientific administration which the largest black nation on earth will be confident to talk about. All in all, despite President Tinubu’s knack for winning political battles, it appears that the extreme detestation of his many enemies may be designed to keep him from exalting himself above measure, almost like a thorn in the flesh to keep him fettered or hamstrung.
