By Chukwudi Nweje
Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Robert Clarke in this interview monitored on Arise Television, speaks on the Supreme Court ruling on the 2023 presidential election and why Nigeria needs to amend her Constitution and the Electoral Act, among other issues
How sound in law do you consider the ruling of the Supreme Court on the 2023 presidential election and what is your assessment of the conduct of counsels to the appellants in this matter?
The problem with Nigeria is that once we take side in a matter, we allow emotion to take over our reasoning. The problem in Nigeria, which we face every four years, is that election matters will continue to breed all these suspicions and all these issues because Nigeria is being ruled by a set of laws that govern election petitions that do not allow you and I to freely exercise our votes. If the constitution of Nigeria is endowed and gives every Nigerian the right to vote and be voted for, why should the same constitution now say that for I, Robert Clarke, to be the President of Nigeria, I must belong to a political party?
Why should it be that anybody who wants to aspire to be something in the political arena in Nigeria must belong to a political party? The question rests with the political parties because they are the problems which we have today. To be a member of a political party in Nigeria, you need to spend a lot of money, just to be a party-strong member. To be able to contest on behalf of the party, you must be ready to spend trillions of Naira.
To be a candidate for governorship, to be a candidate for presidential, if you don’t have trillions of naira, you are not near the place. And a simple Robert Clarke cannot stand before any forum of the political parties to seek their ticket. The political parties have taken over every area of our political life and without being a member; you are nothing in the political arena. This is an area we have to look into and we have to stop it. I am happy that the hype we have seen in Nigeria today in this political terrain will continue to throw itself up and everything is about the party. We have created the party as the dominant tribe in Nigeria’s politics. We need to look at that.
Also, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has its own problems but as I have always said, when you give INEC that power, whatever it does in the process of selecting the candidates is presumed to be correct. When INEC finishes its job, whether you like it or not, the law says INEC is correct in whatever it says. So, these are the things we have to look into but I’m happy that the attitude of Nigerians has not changed. When reality is faced by many members of the party, the hyping is so much that they throw the reality away.
I’m so happy with the Supreme Court that it analyzed the judgement and showed it very clearly that the problem about criticisms should be laid on the footsteps of the lawyers. I am not happy at all because I hate correcting or chastising senior members of the Bar but what do we have today, 90 per cent of Atiku Abubakar’s woes were caused by his lawyers. I’m sorry to say this. What they should have done 20 years ago, they did not do it.
What they should have done 20 days ago, they did not do it instead because they had enough money to travel to America to collect this and that, and they are now disturbing everybody in Nigeria to show that Atiku has a case. Atiku has never had a case in this matter because he has been fighting President Bola Tinubu for the past 20 years. Is it today he is looking for evidence to fight him?
So, I’m happy that we have to talk to the lawyers to make sure that our supporters are not carried away by propaganda. The question we have now is what do we do in Nigeria for now? We have to change the constitution. I’m sorry to say this, but without changing the constitution, amending the powers of INEC and making sure that elections adhere strictly to the law, we will always have this problem every four years and we will come back to fighting each other over nothing.
And in that process, we are making the politicians happy. Not only the politicians, you are making us the lawyers happy because as I always say, this is the harvest time for lawyers but that does not mean that because it is the harvest time for lawyers, then we take advantage of that to push politicians to take up unnecessary cases. As I’m talking to you today, only God knows how many pre-election matters cases are before the courts.
All these will not be resolved in the next six months or the next one year and another circle will start again and the politicians are gathering their money to throw around. I’m really happy that this election has shown that the law is the law and there is no way you can manipulate the law. I’m also happy that our judges have shown the dexterity in determining what the law says.
Why is it that there is an increasing distrust in the judicial and justice system in Nigeria?
Politics or election matters all over the world are full of controversies. If there are no controversies, then politics is not available to the people. Let us be honest with ourselves; you cannot remove controversy from politics. The problem is that the law must be clear and if the law is clear and there are no manipulators around that law, everybody will be clearly happy that whatever happens, nobody is going to manipulate the law.
Let us be honest with ourselves, we cannot say Nigerians are not peaceful people because what we have passed through in the last six months in Nigeria’s political arena showed that we are a peaceful country because any other country with the background we have would have failed in many ways. What I’m going to say is this, the problem is in all of us Nigerians and it is our attitude to many things in Nigeria that is the cause of the problem we are facing.
For instance, there was no need for hype in this last election that nearly turned many parts of Nigeria into a battleground. It is the cause of the lawyers because once politicians have amassed so much money within four years of their tenure, they are ready to listen to any opinion from any lawyer. It beats my mind how any lawyer in Nigeria today would ask Tinubu to come and show his certificate at the time they are asking him to come and show it.
A matter that has been discussed at many fora and you are now making a hype of it; spending money to send witnesses to America. It is because Nigeria’s system allows you to make all this money to throw away. I don’t see how a lawyer can tell Atiku that a matter he did not raise in the Court of Appeal, which is the court of first instance and he is now going to the Supreme Court, which is an appellate court to file an appeal.
These lawyers told Atiku that he had a case, that Tinubu did not attend university or he forged a certificate at the time that the case was running and he agreed to bring all the money to sponsor witnesses to America. That is the problem in Nigeria because we have access to quick money and we are ready to spend it and that is what is happening.
If we do not take time, we cannot stop it except we change the electoral law, we change the constitution and we change the way and manner INEC officials are being appointed and many other things. We will find out that there will be no trouble. So, I’m not saying that we should not quarrel during elections because there is no country that does not quarrel. Look at America today, the scenario in America shows you that former President Donald Trump is having problems but that is part of American life.
How can we start to change those laws that make it almost impossible to have free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria, and are you saying that Atiku should not have gone to America even if he couldn’t file his findings within the time limit, is it not good for public consumption?
Atiku has been involved in Nigeria’s politics for as long as 20 years now as I know. As an ally of Tinubu and as an enemy of Tinubu, whatever area you look at, they have been on different sides. Does he just know about Tinubu? Why is it that a man of his status who has been involved in political matters would allow a lawyer to come to him now that the question of forgery can still be brought at the Supreme Court? I blame him and why do I blame him, they have bastardized the election tribunal in Nigeria where they believe they can bribe everybody. So that has been engraved in our characters as Nigerians.
I, Robert Clarke, would not take a brief from Atiku if he had brought that brief to me. I would have told him that there is no merit in it because the Supreme Court will not hear it, that the matter you want me to go and show the Supreme Court on your behalf cannot be sustained. I will tell him and I will not because of the millions he is going to give me, start running around him to give me a brief that I know will never succeed.
The problem is in the system that allows so much money to flow into the hands of politicians. We, therefore, have to look into the system to make sure that we do not give room, where anybody can manipulate another person and start pretending. Please, let us look at our laws.
How do we correct our laws to make elections better in the country?
In Nigeria today, we cannot correct electoral law because when we say we are correcting it, we are joking. If we have a law that allows you and I participate effectively in politics, we won’t allow these rascals in the political parties to dominate everything. It is the parties that controls Nigerian politics and if you are not in a party, you won’t have the mouth to talk.
So, we can control the laws but in Nigeria today we cannot control them because the people who are going to amend the constitution and the electoral law are all the people enjoying the privileges. It has to be approved by the National Assembly and it has to go to the state assemblies, so where do we get the reforms from? It is not possible in Nigeria to amend the constitution and the electoral law.