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Permit me to start this piece with a small distraction. Anytime Singapore is mentioned, I get a heavy dose of nostalgia because I had my honeymoon in that beautiful country years back. African leaders bent on sit-tight rulership tend to cite Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean statesman and barrister who served as the founding Prime Minister of that great country between 1959 and 1990, a whopping 31 years, as an example of what prolonged leadership could achieve.
Lee is easily recognized as the founding father of modern Singapore, who turned it from a tiny island with practically no hope, to a First World nation whose level of advancement easily turns even western leaders green with envy.
So, Singapore is cited as a model of how countries should be governed. Those African leaders citing the longest serving leader know they are lying. They know the difference between them and Lew is that between light and darkness. There are a few exceptions, though, with Paul Kagame of Rwanda, most often readily cited as an example.
But the discussion today is not about beautiful Singapore. It is about the judgement delivered two days ago by the Presidential Election Petition Court/Tribunal (PEPT), which lasted a whopping 12 hours, the longest so far in our history. Nigerians, depending on which side of the divide they belong to, have been either praising the judgement or condemning it in totality.
The inspiration to couch the headline of this column this way is drawn from a video sent to me by a friend, of the Catholic Bishop of Nsukka Diocese who, in a homily delivered obviously last Sunday, warned Nigerians not to expect too much from the tribunal because the judges are not from Singapore, but Nigerians prone to all the negatives associated with us.
There are Nigerians who described the PEPT judgement as a waste of time even before it was delivered. They feel very correctly that whatever way the pendulum swings, those on the receiving end are not going to accept the outcome; that they will raise issues about it and totally reject it.
My father of blessed memory used to remind me, whenever I failed in any project and could not find cogent reason for the failure or disappointment, to always do a soul searching, or what in his words he would call critical self-appraisal, to discern the reasons for my failings. It is the same as asking you to look at the mirror, and often times, the reason for your failure is you that appears in the mirror. It is a lesson that has served me very well in this journey of life, and which I hereby recommend to both Atiku and Peter Obi followers.
Like His Grace the Catholic Bishop of Nsukka, I am one Nigerian who is amazed that some citizens thought the court was going to deliver any judgement that could upset the apple cart. I know for a fact that even if the judges do not end up being financially induced, there will always be a national security consideration in the sense that wresting power from Asiwaju Tinubu, one hundred days after being sworn into office, will be taken as a sort of declaration of war by his supporters, more so his kinsmen, because the election was largely sectional, which also took a religious dimension since Tinubu’s pick of a fellow Muslim as his running mate, and the determination of many pastors and dispassionate Muslims, to strop the Muslim-Muslim ticket on its track, so as not to set a dangerous precedence in our national politics.
Whereas my views may not altogether be popular, I have long opined on these pages that it is possible Tinubu won his election fair and square because the opposition, as is typical in Africa, refused to learn any lesson by forging a united front, rather than a divided one, occasioned by Peter Obi’s ditching of the PDP, and teaming up with the LP, a move that gave him unprecedented popularity.
There is no doubting the fact that Peter Obi’s candidature resonated with many Nigerians across the divides, including many northern Muslims, but the Tinubu handlers successfully warned against Muslims turning their backs on the Muslim-Muslim ticket, cheaply couching it as a defeat of Islam. And religion being the opium of the masses, many northern Muslims took that hook, line and sinker, and gave Tinubu the votes that gave him an edge. It is the key reason the man defeated Atiku, though also a Muslim, in larger sections of the North.
Of course Peter Obi’s supporters did not help his case, and they only need to do the difficult task of engaging in critical self-appraisal to agree with this painful fact. His candidature was projected as an Igbo project on one hand, and Christian project on another. I know that many of them will disagree with this, but nobody’s disagreement will change the fact that this is the main reason many northern Muslims distanced themselves from Peter Obi, especially also when, in an interview with a television station, he categorically defended IPOB and insisted it was a peaceful organisation.
Obi’s defence of IPOB came shortly after members of the same organisation hacked and killed in cold blood, a 32 year-old northern Muslim woman with her four children, aged 9, 7, 5 and 2 years, respectively, in Isulo, Orumba North Local Government of Anambra State in May last year.
The Daily Nigerian, a respected newspaper popular especially in the North, did the story of that cold blood murder with the following screaming headline: “Pregnant woman , 4 children, 6 others killed in Anambra as IPOB terrorists target northerners.”
As a person, Peter Obi was not known to be a tribalist. Many northerners like me still believe he was the best candidate, but his open support for an organisation seen in the North as a terrorist organisation was a mistake only a rookie politician could make. This may sound harsh, but it remains the truth, and the truth is always bitter to swallow.
When Tinubu picked a fellow Muslim as his running mate, I was one of those who saw a lot of things wrong with it. But the man knew that religion, as Karl Max correctly put it, is the opium of the masses. This is even more so in Nigeria, a country that has more mosques than Saudi Arabia, and more churches than Italy/The Vatican. Here, religion drives lives, and it is the reason why religious leaders are held in the highest esteem.
Sadly, the vision must of these spiritual leaders claim to have seen from God, are more often than not, money induced, and are therefore visions from the Satan. But their followers will never accept that, even when some of them are professors and frontline professionals in various fields of human endeavors, who should be too big to allow themselves to be fooled.
There are also others who feel that the opposition have not been paying due respect to President Tinubu. They feel, and I agree with them on this, that the man is the most prepared among the four main contenders to the presidency, which he easily proved by directly and indirectly dividing the ranks of the opposition. There are unproven allegations about Tinubu sponsoring the campaigns of Obi and Kwankwaso to keep them in the campaign, knowing it aggregated to huge disadvantage for Atiku.
Other factors that gave Tinubu an edge, making the mainstream media to overlook or fail to hype most of his inadequacies, include the control of the media. Of all the four main contenders in the 2023 presidential election, he was the only one with an overwhelming control of the media. He not only owned some of the biggest newspapers and television stations in the country, he is also friends with many leading editors and journalists.
Tinubu knew that there was no way he alone can win the presidency, with the massive failure of the Buhari presidency and the opposition forging a united front. Whether he did it through sponsorship of some members of the opposition or not, the fact remains he found a way to keep them divided up to the election. It is a big lesson Obi and Atiku and indeed any opposition in a presidential election have to learn, going forward.
Should Atiku and/or Obi go to the Supreme Court? Well, this is now an academic question because both have indicated readiness to do so. It is well within their right to pursue the case higher. But one smart thing the PEPT had done was televising the judgement live. And we have all seen and heard what transpired.
The bitter truth is that the lawyers of both opposition contenders did not seem to have prepared well. Peter Obi’s lead counsel suggested his team was denied by INEC, certain materials to help prove their case. Did he tell this to the tribunal? Even if he did, did he make a case for all Nigerians to see the electoral umpire as a criminal enterprise bent in ensuring its actions (and inactions) gets legitimacy of the courts? Instead, the Obi lawyers raised the hope of millions of Obidients, making them feel the presidency was going to be snatched from Tinubu and handed over to Obi. Why then, are they saying what they are now saying after the tribunal succeeded in tearing their presentation to shreds?
Hear a Senior Advocate of Nigeria:
“Listening painstakingly to the ongoing review of the petitions of the opposition parties, Labour & PDP at the PEPT by the presiding judges this morning (two days ago),I feel compelled to conclude that the petitions by the two parties are steadily gravitating towards being classified as the worst, most watery and perhaps the most unserious in Nigeria’s contemporary political history even before the prouncement of final verdict !!*
*The whole process by the parties and their lawyers is seriously lacking in professional presentation but heavily dependent on conjectures, ambiguities rather than facts.*
*The petitioners are receiving some very unprecedented flaks plus judicial lectures highlighting crass incompetence as we speak*
*This is looking like a careless abuse of Court process, incompetent, full of noise but empty.*
*I am already too shocked, speechless !”
Another person, supporting the assertion above, wrote as follows:
These aren’t my words. They belong to a SAN who thinks PO and Atiku were definitely scammed . No SAN worth his salt, should have gone to court, raised people’s hopes, purely on the basis of the facts that these guys presented. It’s morally reprehensible and I hope and pray that the court at least implies it, even if they are constrained by the laws of profession ethics, from saying so outrightly .
But another lawyer, in support of the opposition, submitted as follows:
“The Justices cast themselves as enemies at war with the Petitioners. Their judgement was unduly hostile, at some point quarrelsome, and lacked balance in assessment of the merit of the case of both parties. They merely appeared to have taken a position and went in search of reasons to Justify that position. There was clearly a failure to deploy the imaginary scale of Justice which weighs the case of both parties and determine in whose favour the scale tilts. There is nothing cerebral or edifying in a judgement that lacked the beauty of balance which has, since the halcyon years of great Justices of the appellate courts as replete in our law reports. Theirs was a calculated attempt to intimidate the budding obidient opposition army for allegedly putting the judiciary in the spotlight . The justices literally pulled the trigger and shot at will on the petitioners determined to cause maximum damage. There was malice in their words and rendition and they made no attempt to conceal it. Lawyers for the Petitioners have their job clearly cut out. I believe we have heard the last of this matter.
It’s indeed a pity that the Nigeria judiciary is now so compromised that it no longer hides its corrupt practices.
In delivering JUDGMENT, the court murdered JUSTICE yesterday.”
For this column, there is no doubting the fact that nothing escapes the judgement of posterity. Atiku Abubakar, when asked what he will do if the Supreme Court ended up favoring Tinubu, says he is going to take his case to a court that is higher than the Supreme Court, which is that of the Almighty.
But what he did not take into consideration is that in Africa, politicians will prefer winning at all cost, even if it will all end in disaster.
For me, going to the Supreme Court is a waste of time, in as much as the lawyers are going to leverage on the same arguments that the PEPT successfully turned to shreds. Nothing would change. Members of the opposition must therefore unite themselves and get ready for the next three and a half years, which will come sooner than we think.
The APC only won the presidency when they forgo their differences, dissolved their individual political parties, and contested the presidential election as one united, big entity. I am not saying the next presidential candidate must be Atiku Abubakar. It could be Peter Obi or someone else deemed as the best.
It is the only way to go. Otherwise, if they should continue to argue under individual banners of LP or PDP as they are doing, they should prepare to remain out of power for at least the next few decades.
