Clearly, former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, and former Anambra State Governor, Peter Obi, respectively the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party and Labour Party in the 2023 general elections, won’t congratulate President Bola Tinubu that the Supreme Court has affirmed won the February 23, 2023 presidential election.
Doubts about the Supreme Court ruling are strengthened by the recently retired Supreme Court Justice, Musa Muhammad, whose valedictory speech admits that “court officials and judges are easily bribed by litigants to obviate, delay and or obtain favourable judgment.”
Muhammad’s observation brings to mind two absurd Supreme Court rulings: That former Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, won a party senatorial primary that he did not contest, and that Hope Uzodinma, who came fourth in an election, be declared the Imo State Governor.
The meat of the submissions of the justices of the Supreme Court is: Evidence or witnesses not taken to the Presidential Election Petition Court cannot be accepted by the Supreme Court, and the use of IReV by the Independent National Electoral Commission was optional and not compulsory.
Other submissions were that the Tinubu certificate that Atiku purportedly obtained from the Chicago State University should have been confirmed by at least a notary public or the Nigerian Embassy in the United States, and a candidate who won the requisite number of votes and states doesn’t have to score at least 25 percent of votes in the Federal Capital Territory.
When the Supreme Court reiterated the observation by an Atiku lawyer that the legal system of America, where the CSU certificate came from, is different from that of Commonwealth countries to which Nigeria belongs, Tinubu’s lawyers nodded.
Nigeria has been marking time from its flag independence that was prised from the clutch of British colonialists who sutured a motley collection of incongruent entities into an artificial state. It is now time to commence the reconstruction of its economy that sundry governments have woefully failed to achieve.
Nigeria’s fate cannot be held down by individuals whose best efforts weren’t good enough for the majority who voted for Tinubu. The existential concerns of the majority of Nigerians are more important than the personal ambitions of candidates who could not overwhelm the numerical and legal odds stacked against them.
Not surprisingly, the Chairman of All Progressives Congress, Abdullahi Ganduje, enthused, “This is democracy. Tinubu’s victory is another victory for democratic rule in the country,” and mocked, “There is still room for both Obi and Atiku to actualise their presidential aspiration after the second term tenure of President Tinubu in 1931.”
PDP’s Douye Diri and Ademola Adeleke, respectively governors of Bayelsa and Osun states, have congratulated President Tinubu, and Atiku’s lawyer, Mike Ozekhome, probably short for words, resignedly observes that the judgment merely shows that “Nigeria is a work in progress.”
Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, media mogul, music impresario and member of the PDP, counselled Atiku to accept the verdict and move on. He admonished: “It is only right, fitting and sportsmanly for both Waziri Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi to congratulate President Bola Tinubu for his victory in the #NigerianElections2023.”
Another realist, Dele Momodu, PDP presidential aspirant, who became spokesperson for the Atiku Presidential Campaign Council, has a more mature and better disposition to the judgment than his principal. Gadfly Segun Showunmi, also of the PDP, admonishes, “We must put the country first.” Former President Goodluck Jonathan said, “Elections are over, so we must move forward.”
Even the Labour Party Chairman, Julius Abure, submitted that, “Having conclusively exercised our fundamental rights as gifted to us by the laws of the land, we have no choice but to move on,” though he also cynically observed that, “our (political) institutions are not working.”
Maybe, to avoid the burden of convincing Obi to congratulate Tinubu, Abure lamented, “We are indeed very shocked that even the apex court will toe the line of an earlier judgment in spite of all the flaws associated with the judgment delivered by the Presidential Election Appeal (sic) Tribunal.”
Spokesperson for probably Yoruba-centric Lamidi Apapa faction of Labour Party, Abayomi Aramambi, even demanded, “It’s our hope that the President will be magnanimous in victory by inviting the Labour Party leadership as partner-in-progress to an all-inclusive government… to move Nigeria forward.”
But Oby Ezekwesili, convener of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign that seized the political space after Boko Haram insurgents abducted Chibok schoolgirls, had a rather harsh verdict on the ruling of the seven Supreme Court judges who sat on the appeals.
She wrote, on her X handle, in what some think is a coy call for a needless campaign after an election, “The fight for a good society has only now started and we know that nothing can defeat a people who have had enough of the invasive cancer of corruption and criminality.”
Though she didn’t point to the direction of the Supreme Court judges, or anyone else for that matter, she alluded some corruption and criminality, and urged whoever is in her audience (of a silent army) to, “Read the story of the 70s Hong-Kong to learn that in the quest for a good society, ‘it is never over until the people say it is over.’”
The PDP, whose (serial) presidential candidate, Atiku, has probably expended the most resource to upturn Tinubu’s mandate, described the judgment day as a “sad day for democracy!”
PDP’s spokesperson, Debo Ologunagba, raised the alarm that the judgment was against the “express provisions” of Nigeria’s Constitution, the 2022 Electoral Act and the various guidelines and regulations issued by INEC for the conduct of the presidential election.
Ologunagba, a lawyer and priest in the temple of justice, insists that the “Supreme Court condoned the serious issues of forgery, falsehood and perjury on the altar of technicalities.” He adds: “The PDP asserts that it is indeed a sad day for our democracy that the Supreme Court failed to uphold the provisions of the law.”
In a video footage, very likely to have been recorded a long time ago, Atiku had said, “If I don’t get a favourable judgment from the apex court, I’ll appeal to God.” But the closest he got to accepting the election result and the Supreme Court ruling is the encouraging vow, “For as long as I breathe, I will continue to struggle, with other Nigerians, to deepen our democracy and rule of law…”
There is no doubt that by taking their doubts about the presidential election to the Presidential Election Petition Court and the Supreme Court, like Obafemi Awolowo, first Premier of Western Nigeria, did, Atiku and Obi have helped deepen Nigeria’s democracy.
Tinubu somewhat extended an olive branch to his opponents by declaring, “In the days and months ahead, I trust that the spirit of patriotism will be elevated into supporting our administration to improve the living conditions of Nigerians. I am prepared to welcome the contributions of all Nigerians to foster and strengthen our collective progress.”
He must now do the needful, as the media, the fourth estate, will be watching his Pilgrim’s Progress with an eagle eye. In the words of Dr Reuben Abati, co-Anchor of Arise TV The Morning Show, “This is no time for triumphalism.”
But the silence of Obi, whom novelist Chimamanda Adichie described as “the man who won the (presidential) election in Nigeria,” is ominous and foreboding.
