The story of the fraud that was the 2023 general election continues. A few days ago, the Supreme Court of Nigeria, which sorely burnt its fingers while adjudicating on the election petitions brought before it, tried to reinvent itself. It tried to impress it upon Nigerians that it still has some modicum of integrity. That is what its recent verdicts on the governorship disputes in a number of states signifies. Whereas the lower courts had earlier nullified the election of some governors, a development that created unease in the affected states, the Supreme Court, uncharacteristically, reversed those earlier verdicts and returned the governors as duly and properly elected.
This latter-day disposition of the apex court is out of sync with the disrepute that has been trailing it following the contentious and indefensible judgments that it had earlier handed out, especially in the case of the presidential election petitions brought before it. With the judgments in some of the affected states delivered last week, the court wants to create the impression that it can still boast of some modicum of integrity. But that will remain an exercise in futility until the court, as presently constituted, weans itself of its original sin.
As salutary as the judgments appear on the surface, they are, in truth, no more than a piece of high drama laced with an overdose of choreography. Its overall objective was to have the Supreme Court win some converts to its side and, possibly, ride on that momentum in its bid to redeem its image. The court will not mind leading the people by the nose, if that will help it to achieve that objective. That is why it will have us believe that it enjoys some independence after all. We shall return to this in the course of this inquiry.
Before then, let us remind ourselves of where the Supreme Court has taken the country to. We are talking about the court that willfully and knowingly abrogated the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), without batting an eyelid. The court did so for one reason: to sustain and extend the frontiers of the fraud that brought Bola Tinubu into office as President.
We were all here when the presidential election petitions court ruled that a President can emerge in Nigeria without meeting the requirements of the provisions of Section 134 of the Constitution, which says that, for a candidate to be declared winner in a presidential election, he must win “not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the states and the Federal Capital Territory.” In order to ensure that the country and its peoples remain slaves to a certain aberration, justices of both the Presidential Election Petitions Court and the Supreme Court ruled that Abuja, the federal capital, has no special status and should, therefore, be treated like a state of the federation. With this perverse interpretation of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has made nonsense of the existence of that grundnorm. Such distortion of the letters of the Constitution simply means that the document is as good as the paper on which it is written. In other words, the Constitution exists for its own sake. It does not serve any purpose. If this is what the Supreme Court has reduced our constitution to, then it makes sense to call for its abrogation. Why do we have to have a legal document that has no force of law? Why do we have to decorate our homes and offices with a body of laws that can be violated at will, depending on whose purpose the powers that be want it to serve? Under our present circumstance, the Constitution is just a document of convenience. It can be discarded with, even if unofficially, provided the action will serve the interest of those concerned. This was where the Supreme Court left us before its present attempt to rediscover itself.
What the Supreme Court has done at moment is to indulge in what looks like catharsis. Having traumatized the people with questionable verdicts, the negative outpourings from the public must have led their Lordships into depression of sorts. They have, therefore, through the recent verdicts in some states, released the powerful emotions that have been weighing them down. The ultimate objective is aimed at purification. However, it is doubtful whether the Supreme Court will attain this state of purgation. This is because what transpired last week was hardly original to the court. As we earlier noted, the court is not acting on its own. It is being driven by external forces. Those who got it to decapitate the Constitution have since attained their ultimate objective. They have had their fill. What they originally planned to do in the states was supposed to be a mere icing on the cake. They, therefore, can let go. That explains the twist in the behaviour of an institution whose actions and inactions are very predictable.
But the real snag in the make-believe from the Supreme Court is that catharsis as a natural phenomenon must be real. It must flow from within. It cannot be concocted or cooked up. Rather than succeed in its mission to attain release, the apex court has given itself away as a tool in the hands of those who have put the country on the path of destruction.
Now that the Supreme Court has acted out a well written and properly rehearsed dramatic script, it is important to situate this state of affairs in the context of our tomorrow. The Nigeria we have today is in a state of perilous siege. Until the present disorder forced itself on the country, the people struggled to no end to free themselves from those things that have held them down. The effort failed not because the people did not try hard enough but because the systemic rot has become too entrenched. But because a burning candle must get to its dead end, the destructive scheme of the usurpers is fast collapsing. Just as the Supreme Court has begun to lick its wounds publicly, so will other institutions and groups that were deployed in the destruction of the country’s fabric. We may, probably, get to that stage when the destructive order will be uprooted and a new, progressive order put in its place. That stage will herald the real catharsis, which the Supreme Court just tried its hands on. A national and broad-based cathartic outpouring may well be the way forward for a country standing dangerously on the destructive route of the spiraling gale.