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Omoniyi Salaudeen
By now, Bayelsa State must have returned to its normal sedate and temperate nature, having overcome the initial shock that greeted the recent ruling of the Election Petition Tribunal, which nullified the election of Governor Douye Diri of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Coming as a killjoy, the news sent shiver through the spine of everyone amidst celebration of the party’s victory over the petition filed by the candidate of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), Mr Owei Wonimwei, against the Deputy Governor, Senator Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo.
In his petition, Wonimwei had alleged that the deputy governor altered the name on the National Youth Service Corps certificate he presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the purpose of the governorship election that held on November 19, 2019. However, the tribunal dismissed the petition for lack of credible evidence to prove that the certificate he tendered to the INEC was forged.
Little did they know that another legal hurdle was about unraveling until the bombshell fell. On Monday, the tribunal sitting in Abuja ruled that the INEC wrongly excluded the Advanced Nigeria Democratic Party governorship candidate in the 2019 election, King George. Ruling on the matter, Justice Mohammed Sirajo-led three-man panel ruled that the election was unlawful due to the exclusion of ANDP and its candidate from the November 16, 2019 governorship election. The tribunal also ordered the electoral umpire to conduct a fresh election within 90 days.
Even so, Diri took the judgment with bold fortitude and equanimity, appealing for calm. In a release signed by his acting Chief Press Secretary, Dan Alabra, the governor was quoted as saying: “We trust in the judiciary and we are appealing the judgment. With God on our side, we will get justice. This is a court of first instance and I have instructed our lawyers to file an appeal. We have a right of appeal even up to the Supreme Court.”
With this development, Bayelsa State may be in for yet another round of complex, dicey and prolonged legal firework. This time, it is not necessarily for any wrong doing by the governor and his deputy, but for the backlash of the action of the INEC. The Commission had rejected the deputy governorship candidate of the ANDP, David Esinkuma, for being under-aged, saying that he is 34 as against 35 years stipulated in the constitution as the minimum age that must be attained to contest the office. But two judges on the panel, Justices Yunusa Musa and Sikiru Owoduni, in upholding the petition filed by the ANDP, held that INEC lacked the power to exclude any party from an election.
While INEC has been roundly blamed for turning itself into a law court by unilaterally excluding the ANDP logo from the ballot paper, legal experts, however, agreed on the submission of the presiding Judge that the wrongful exclusion violates the right of the candidate to vote and be voted for as stipulated in the constitution.
According to them, by its action, INEC has disenfranchised those who would have voted for the party and its candidate. And as such, the consequence of such exclusion is automatic annulment of the election. “When you exclude a political party, you are indirectly excluding its supporters and you are denying such candidate the right to contest. In a democracy, the issue is not that people must vote, but they must be given opportunity to vote. They can then decide to vote or not to vote. That opportunity to vote is sacred and it must be granted,” Dr Tunji Abayomi, a constitutional lawyer, declared.
But it’s a sublime irony that the embattled Governor Diri is being made a scapegoat here. And he has to carry the cross for an offence he knew nothing about. It is one of the trajectories of legal twists. A metaphor for confusion!
It’s dicey. It’s another long wait for the people of Bayelsa State. In his current travail, Governor Diri is merely treading the road his ousted counterpart in the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr David Lyon, had passed through before.
The Supreme Court had sacked the unlucky Lyon as governor-elect of Bayelsa State barely 24 hours to his inauguration.
Lyon had won the November 2019 governorship election, but was stopped by a five-member panel of the apex court led by Justice Mary Odili who nullified his election on the grounds that his deputy, Biobarakuma Degi-Eremienyo, presented false information to the INEC on his qualification for the poll.
The apex court in the judgment delivered by Justice Ejembi Eko consequently ordered INEC to withdraw the Certificate of Return issued to Lyon and Degi-Eremienyo, as well as declare the party with the highest number of lawful votes and geographical spread the winner of the election. Thus the mantle fell on Diri.
With Diri facing a new challenge, it appears the Supreme Court will again play the final arbiter. Therefore, it is pertinent for the stakeholders to take the fate providence has thrown at them in their own stride.
Douye Diri began his early education at Okoro Primary School, Sampou and concluded it at Rev. Proctor Memorial Primary School, Kaiama in 1977, where he obtained his First School Leaving Certificate. He later attended Government Secondary School, Odi in Bayelsa. Thereafter, Diri proceeded to the College of Education, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, where he bagged his National Certificate in Education (NCE) in 1985. He subsequently secured admission into the University of Port-Harcourt and bagged a Bachelors of Education (B.Ed) Degree in Political Science in 1990.
