Countdown to Presidential Slugfest 2011

—Cutting-Edge Analytics—Where the News Meets the Intellect—

Let’s go down memory lane to recap the events that defined 2010 and to a large extent 2011 in the countdown to Presidential Slugfest 2011:

Continued reverberations of Abdul-Muttalab’s terrorist adventure with American Airline into the New Year from December, 2009, and so also were late President Musa Yar’Adua’s refusal to hand-over power to his deputy from his sick bed in far away Saudi Arabia; National Assembly’s bold and timely investiture of vice President Goodluck Jonathan as acting president on the Doctrine of Necessity; Comatose Yar’Adua’s Gestapo-style smuggling into the country in the dead of night in an Air Ambulance and its attendant security breach; Carefully packaged nocturnal visits of sympathetic clergymen to the ailing president in Aso Rock as part of a grandiose web of deceit spun around the dying president by his so-called Kitchen Cabinet; Yar’Adua’s death and acting President Jonathan’s inauguration as substantive President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; INEC Chairman, Maurice Iwu’s early retirement by the Federal Government and his replacement by Attahiru Jega; A slew of declarations of intent to contest the next 2011 presidential elections by a battery of aspirants mainly from the PDP stable; Jega’s abrupt call for the postponement of the 2011 general elections to accommodate new electronic Voter Register; National obsession with PDP’s zoning debacle; Nigeria’s 50^th Birthday Anniversary multiple car bombings in Abuja, the arrests and trials, and their political fallouts; Seizure of imported containerized cache of sophisticated arms at the Lagos ports; Consensus candidate of four in the name of the North; A slew of endorsements of President Goodluck Jonathan across the land; Desperation running wild turning to threats of violent change from certain quarters; Charges of treason flying in the air and their rebuttals; Alignments and realignments of political forces; Betrayals and backstabbing; Judicial overthrow and coronation of state governors; Missing and found INEC DDC machines; Militant “Gen” Togo security challenge in Niger Delta and leveling of his camps and village by advancing soldiers of the Joint Task Force on his trail; Kidnap kingpin, Osisikwanu violent end in the hands of the military Task Force; Public outcry and revolt against lawmakers’ jumbo salaries and the humbling of the National Assembly; A slew of tit-for-tat court actions to disqualify PDP presidential aspirants; Sudden passage of the last (?) of Nigeria’s political titans (Chief Otobo former deputy premier of old Midwestern region is still alive and kicking); Sudden resignations of ministers from the Federal cabinet: Hospitalization of comatose ex-Biafran warlord, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, at UNTH and his air ambulation to the United Kingdom for further medical treatment.  

Let’s pause here for a moment for the Nkemba of Nnewi. This is serious stuff that calls for serious intercessory prayers by both traditional and orthodox religious prayer warriors. I’m not exactly one, but my prayers are with him and hopefully yours, the reader too. We need him around here more than ever before to balance the emerging political equation in the country at this critical juncture of the nation’s political history. Make no mistake about it: Nigeria without the Nkemba is like a tripod without its third leg. But that will not happen. Not so fast, Nkemba! Wake up and lead, for your work is not yet done on earth. Convalescing beloved Enahoro pulled a fast one on us and left us all stunned and devastated. Don’t go that route, Nkemba. It would be a double whammy the nation cannot afford to bear at this time. May the good Lord take charge of your healing and have His angel nurse you back to good health in 2011 and beyond to witness the opening of yet another glorious chapter in the history of this beleaguered nation.  

Oops! Now I’m done with the recap. Or am I not? That’s a pretty lengthy laundry list of intrigues I pulled out up there. What did I leave out? Somebody help me here please. Just can’t catch them all!  

While by no means exhaustive as the list keeps growing by the hour even as I write this, these are some of the main ingredients pouring into the Nigerian political soup still cooking on fire-stead waiting to be served hot in real time in the forthcoming make or mar general elections. And depending on your taste buds, some of these ingredients may be bitter or sweet or something in-between both extremes. And others may be spicy or rather too hot for your tongue to handle, or again, something in-between. But make no mistakes about it: Nigerians are lapping it all up and savoring the aroma of politics. There are no dull moments in Nigeria. Nigeria is one huge rolling theatrical stage of which her very own Nollywood is but a microcosm of poor imitation. And as the economic conditions bite even harder, the catharsis of political theatrics is providing the much needed therapy for the mental health of the Nigerian public even if only temporarily; which is not altogether a bad thing for a nation that is perpetually on edge due to a surfeit of ethno/religious, criminal and political overreach by mischief makers.   

At the center of it all is the ruling party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).  Not surprisingly, the ruling party has hijacked the political show and dominated the stage to the consternation of the smaller opposition parties. Whether for good or ill, the more PDP dominates the airwaves through its internal activities the more it is etched in the consciousness of Nigerians as the main game in town. The party is getting massive and seemingly endless free publicity in both print and electronic media that would have otherwise cost it millions of naira. Publicity is the life-blood of politics and politicians and their parties invest millions of naira in marketing themselves and their programs. Whether the free publicity the PDP is getting is positive or negative matters little at this time provided it has some entertainment value to political watchers. What matters most is that it is currently dominating the political stage with its contrived crisis. And, although political crisis is the common staple of all political parties in Nigeria that of the PDP attracts far greater attention for obvious reasons, continually dominating the airwaves all year round.

And that shouldn’t be good news for opposition parties that are shamelessly and timidly waiting on the PDP to end its show of shame before they begin their own, and that is if they have one at all in the first place. They might find though that by the time the PDP ends its show the entire show could be over and the audience will be heading home. Anyone who wants to be the leader of a group must be prepared to lead when opportunity presents itself and not to follow the lead of others. Nigerian opposition parties have demonstrated that they have not apprised themselves of this simple truth and are therefore not prepared to lead.

When, for example, a major opposition party like the ANPP publicly declared that it had amended its constitution and reserved its prime slot for the presidency for IBB, a rejected material from the PDP to come and fill, it shows conclusively that the ANPP is not prepared to lead and in fact has no presidential materials of its own to present to the nation. What a shame! If opposition parties are now looking to fill their ranks with rejected materials from the PDP, who have been considered unworthy to fly its flag, then the opposition has a serious problem indeed in its hands. If ANPP has no presidential materials of its own and must wait on the PDP to loan it its rejected presidential material like IBB that has been considered unfit to lead a democratic nation even by the North, it has lost all moral authority to criticize the PDP as a party. Not only is the ANPP not prepared to lead but it is prepared to be led. It would appear that the party has not learnt its lessons from what happened to AC in 2007 when the PDP loaned its rejected Atiku to it to contest the election with PDP’s Yar’Adua and lost his electoral deposits.

There’s a reason Atiku backpedaled and went back to the PDP, where he’s slugging it out, first with IBB, Gusau and Saraki, and now with President Goodluck Jonathan. If the ANPP is so challenged and denuded of presidential materials as to wait for IBB it might as well wait for Atiku whose crushing defeat in the hands of Jonathan is only one primary away since IBB’s moral obligation to Atiku by virtue of the consensus arrangement seems to be pointing him in a different direction from the ANPP.  It is equally plausible though that IBB’s rather cold reception of ANPP’s gratuitous lifeline is borne out of a genuine relief for crashing out of the presidential contest with Jonathan where he was certain to suffer even greater humiliation in the hands of Jonathan than that meted out to him by friendly Ciroma and his group, who in fact voted for him in the consensus misadventure. It’s looking like Ciroma offered IBB an opportunity for a less painful exit from the contest as was indeed speculated in the past. If that is in fact the case, IBB would be right to consider ANPP’s gratuitous offer as no more than a Trojan horse meant for Jonathan to thoroughly humiliate him at the polls as the PDP did to its former presidential candidate, Buhari, only for the party to turn around and hobnob with the PDP at the expense of its defeated candidate still hurting and licking the wounds of defeat. 

In the alternative, the party should quit the presidential race altogether like Labor Party (LP) and the PPA. It is not obliged to contest the presidential election. Must every party go for the big league just to make noise and calling press conferences to attack election results when they couldn’t even win a single local council in their own backyards? Presidential election is not for every Tom, Dick and Harry and only serious and credible contenders need show up and that includes political parties too. It makes absolutely no sense to have a crowded field of Lilliputian noisemakers just for the heck of it. No wonder, the very serious Buhari called it quits with the ANPP. And if ANPP could not keep Buhari it its fold, what makes it think it could keep IBB or any other ambitious presidential aspirant for that matter?

ANPP has demonstrated beyond every shadow of doubt that it is not a serious party for any serious presidential contender and only interested in sharing the spoils of office with the victorious party at the center—in other words, an opportunistic organization. This being the case, it is entirely predictable that the ANPP will kiss the dust in no distant future. And that would be a sad end indeed for a party which was at the beginning PDP’s equal in every sense of the word and the hope of the opposition. The same way it went into an opportunistic alliance with OBJ’s government with its very own Chairman, Alhaji Mahmud Waziri, landing a plum ministerial position, it went into a so-called Government of National Unity (GNU) with Yar’Adua’s government under the chairmanship of Umeh Ezeoke. Opportunism seems to be the party’s motto.  And you can count on the party again to do the same thing with Jonathan in 2011. 

And here I’m getting ahead of myself and deliberately presumptive of Jonathan’s victory at the polls. I make no apologies for that because even the blind see the bold handwriting on the walls as the inevitable and inexorable outcome of the next presidential election. The point here is that ANPP will be there at the table to share the spoils of office with the PDP when it’s all said and done. And you can also count on PPA and other mushroom parties too hustling to cut deals with the PDP while the sun shines even though they have little or no electoral values of their own.     

For the avoidance of doubt, however, I make bold to state that if the fractious opposition parties find themselves unable to coalesce into a grand opposition mega-party by whatever name called (Option A), or otherwise fail to work together to present a common candidate for the presidential election (Option B), they might as well forget about the presidency and remain municipal concerns at the states and local levels except of course they’re only out to play supporting roles, not the main acts in Nigeria’s political theater. The Nigerian opposition parties must be prepared to subsume their individual municipal identities under a supra-national flagship party to effectively take on the monstrous beast called the PDP for good or fade out; not as PDP copy cats as they are presently, but as innovative key drivers of the democratic process as they ought to be in order to provide credible alternative to the PDP.

 A recent poll in Nigeria showed that 61% of Nigerians favored a robust opposition to challenge the PDP’s dominance. But that is not happening at the moment with a preponderance of family parties that currently populate the Nigerian political landscape other than the PDP. You name them: ACN, APGA, PPA, LP, CPC, DPP and now ANPP in tow of the over 40 micro parties. As a PDP chieftain derogatorily referred to them, most of them are “husband and wife” parties that have no intentions of working to win elections on their own, but only interested in cutting deals with others and getting undeserved grants from INEC. Therefore, unless the Nigerian opposition is counting on miracles to attain the presidency; unless it is counting on the implosion of the PDP to attain power at the center, the auguries are pretty dire and certain too that it will continue to remain at the periphery of political power in Nigeria for a long while if it continues to present a fractious image and structure to challenge the PDP.

At this moment in time with just four months to the election, the battle for the presidency is located within the PDP itself rather than between the PDP and the opposition parties. That is what must have informed the dismissive statement credited to the PDP chairman Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, that whoever emerges the PDP candidate for the presidential election is already the President of Nigerian, in waiting, so to speak. Such dismissive attitude on the part of the PDP chief regarding the opposition could only have been informed by the present pathetic state of the opposition on the ground that simply cannot be counted on by the electorate to make any headway against the PDP in 2011 by going it alone on individual basis even if the PDP implodes. Such ill-informed death wish for the PDP is not going to happen any time soon for the simple fact that it is in control at the center and has all the political and economic leverages to make herself sufficiently attractive as the bride of political suitors. There is no question that notwithstanding its internal intrigues which have more to do with managing success than inherent weakness, the PDP is by far the most stable political party in the nation with no splinter groups forming a different party as has happened to virtually all the major opposition parties since the return of democracy in 1999.

Experience has shown that the more the PDP fights within itself the stronger it becomes at the end of the day. The reason for this is not entirely farfetched. Its total control of the federal power and huge party structure makes it infinitely attractive to ambitious politicians. Every presidential aspirant needs national structures to get a good shot at the presidency. A presidential aspirant hitched on to only one regional structure is doomed to failure ab-initio. PDP’s overwhelming national structure makes it infinitely attractive and places it a huge advantage over other parties. The opposition parties should duplicate the PDP structure or forget about the presidency altogether, rigging or no rigging.

It is absolutely certain as night follows the day that none of them can get near the presidency on its own by its own devices except in a grand coalition that duplicates the PDP political structure on the ground. This is the bitter truth that the opposition parties are either unwilling or simply too daft to grasp. It is delusional to pretend that they can contend with the PDP on individual basis in a one-on-one electoral battle and prevail at the level of the presidency. State and local elections are of course different kettles of fish altogether. Suffice it state however that the presidency is the ultimate price in political tournament and that’s where the opposition wants to be, not at the state and local levels. But in order to get there it must be willing and able to invest in national not regional or state structures alone.

And for those in the opposition parties waiting for PDP’s implosion to pick up the carcasses, they have some real waiting to do and they could be waiting for the Christian Armageddon that just won’t come to pass. In point of fact, rather than the PDP imploding, it is the opposition that has been imploding since 1999. First it was the NPP that got splintered with the AC emerging from it and going its separate way although both still managed to present Chief Olu Falae as their common presidential candidate to face PDP’s OBJ who thereafter proceeded to dismantle the AC and eventually dislodged it from the South/West. But that marriage of convenience did not survive the 1999 general elections as ANPP quickly went into an alliance with the PDP, leaving AC in the lurch of bitter politics of opposition that has continued to define it this day.

And NPP changed its name to become ANPP. However, it has since imploded with DPP emerging from it and further imploded with CPC emerging from it. On its part, APGA has been embroiled in suicidal wrangling to this day. PPA has all but fizzled out and has lost all of its governors to the PDP in the South/East that has weakened its claim to a regional party. Courtesy of the judiciary (Court of Appeal to be specific), ACN has managed to increase its state holdings to three. That, no doubt has bolstered its regional profile to think of itself as the natural successor to the PDP at the center, which was until now the prerogative of the ANPP. But don’t count on that to get it to the presidency or even to retain those states in future because the judiciary that has been generous to the ACN does not conduct elections in Nigeria.

That said, ACN is currently at par with the ANPP in state holdings. And to its credit, it has taken on the role of opposition more than the ANPP. That said, controlling three states cannot get it any closer to the presidency than the six states did for it in 2003 before it was routed. For the CAN to make any head way nationally it has to shed its regional image and go national for real not tokenistic gestures. Perhaps that’s reason why it is negotiating an alliance with Buhari’s CPC. But that is not nearly enough either. It should go beyond Buhar’s  one-man CPC and get some other regional party like the PPA or APGA on board to make it truly national because Buhari’s CPC has no state holding at this moment and for now has only Buhari’s name to offer for good or ill.

Not that it matters much to me personally, but it perhaps bears mention that a potential Buhari/Tinubu ticket is out and out a moslem/moslem ticket and that could be troubling for many down south in a sensitive multi-religious nation like Nigeria. And if for nothing else, it will surely evoke bitter memories of the Buhari/Idiagbon moslem/moslem military ticket that terrorized Nigerians in the mid eighties in the name of War Against Indiscipline (WAI). Questions will definitely be raised as to why Buhari’s ticket must always be moslem/moslem and whether or not he has a problem working with a Christian deputy? People would want to know whether or not Buhari has a secret agenda of turning Nigeria into a Sharia state by hook or crook. Unfortunately for him his antecedents would not afford him the luxury of the benefit of the doubt that he might ordinarily be entitled to. Buhari’s image problem is his undoing and he’s well advised not to ossify his weaknesses in the minds of Nigerians especially those down south.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Already Buhari’s alleged religious fundamentalism has been his Achilles Heel. A moslem/moslem ticket for the second time will seal his fate at the polls so far as it is within the powers of the Christian south to stop him. If he is serious and sensitive to the religious sensibilities of Nigerians, he shouldn’t touch Bola Tinubu with a long pole. He should scout for a credible Christian running mate from the south within the ACN pool if he must work with that party. Tinubu should be out of the question. I make no recommendations as to possible candidates in the ACN.     

For now though, the ACN is gratuitously playing the role of a referee in the PDP dog fights between Jonathan and Atiku rather than putting its own house in Lagos State in order and work with other like minded opposition parties to confront the PDP at the center. And I don’t see that party shedding its regional toga that fast. That appears to be its comfort zone.  However, if ACN leaves the only state it won without the help of the judiciary to a tin god like Tinubu to manipulate as he pleases, that is an open invitation for a PDP takeover; a desire publicly expressed by no less a person than the president himself. The example of NPN’s Otedola who snatched victory from the jaws of defeat from the UPN in 1983 is still fresh in our minds. And history is not too shy to repeat itself in 2011 if the Tinubu/Fashola dog fight is not tamed. 

Like the denuded PPA and LP, APGA is not even in contention for the presidential elections and that’s alright. I don’t need to waste time on the other mushroom outfits.

What the above process of elimination does is leave us with the PDP as the locus of the presidential slugfest 2011, no thanks to the nation’s anemic opposition. And here events are still unfolding in Africa’s largest political party at breathtaking pace.

What will be the outcomes of the court fights for disqualification of one or the other of PDP’s presidential aspirants? No one can divine the outcomes but my gut feeling and educated guess is that neither President Jonathan nor Atiku will be disqualified by the courts from contesting either the PDP primaries or the presidential election. While PDP zoning has been declared by a Federal High Court in Abuja as “not justiciable” to which I would readily concur, and that the PDP has unfettered discretion to field whichever candidate it wants for the presidential election, Atiku’s allies have gone to the same Federal High Court to canvass the same failed arguments.

Sensing devastating rout at the PDP primaries, Atiku seems to have resorted to desperate tactics to stop Jonathan in his track rather than facing him at the primaries to test his popularity. He was once confronted by the press whether he couldn’t face Jonathan and defeat him at the primaries without shouting zoning, and he boasted that he could. Well, he should do just that and stop relying on zoning as his crutch. Trying to use the courts to disqualify anyone is despicable. But his desperate tactics have backfired and led to a counter action by some PDP chieftains obviously sympathetic to Jonathan asking the court to disqualify him from contesting any elections whatsoever on grounds of corruption, citing alleged US congressional indictment of Atiku in addition to his alleged illegal readmission to the PDP through the back door in flagrant abuse of the PDP’s constitutional provisions.

As indicated earlier, both cases will not be successful thus compelling a nervous and unwilling Atiku to face Jonathan at the PDP primaries. And as they say, the rest will be history. But what history will it be? One only needs to juxtapose the cascading avalanche of Jonathan’s national endorsements that have broadsided Atiku’s candidacy with Atiku’s struggling profile to write the history of the PDP primaries ahead of time. If Atiku’s only remaining hope of getting the PDP nomination is the delusional court disqualification of Jonathan from contesting the PDP primaries then the outcomes of the PDP primaries are already known because his hope will never materialize even in another life. In which case Atiku may be forced to quit the PDP again and pitch his tent somewhere else as this author had in fact predicted in an earlier write up. I want to repeat it here and now: Atiku may wind up getting expelled once again from the PDP.

It is amazing how a man who has branded himself a “democrat” and has suffered an attempt to disqualify him in the past would be the one scheming for the disqualification of a fellow presidential aspirant not on the basis of legal and constitutional reasons under the nation’s electoral law and the constitution, but on the basis of his place of birth. Since when has place of birth become a reason or ground to disqualify aspirants and candidates from contesting elections in Nigeria? It shows just how low and undemocratic Abubakar Atiku and his Ciroma gang have sunk. But one thing is sure though: All of this will come back to bite Atiku because he has totally destroyed his democratic credentials. There is always the next time around.

With Atiku out of the way, Jonathan will have to contend with the opposition. And if the opposition still cannot get its acts together in the fullness of time to face Jonathan at the polls, Presidential Slugfest 2011 may turn out to be complete mismatch between a Goliathan Jonathan and some Lilliputian opponents from a multitude of wretched “husband and wife” outfits that will afterward hit town with shrill cries of “massive rigging” and a sanctimonious chorus of “deeply flawed election”. I would like to remind the Nigerian opposition that it takes more than cries of rigging to get to the Nigerian presidency. For once, just this once, it should get its entire house in order and stop blaming the ruling party for its woes. Politics is not a charitable business and the presidency is not given out to parties gratis. It should be worked for.

Four months to the general elections, the opposition is still in disarray and waiting on the PDP to move first before it finds its own path rather than charting its own course on its own terms. Why is it so hard for all or some of them to come together under one roof in critical mass to confront the PDP? Why must it take so long (twelve years and still counting), for the Nigerian opposition to find its path to victory at the polls? Why must Nigerian presidential elections be always reduced to a mismatch between one party juggernaut and an anthill of mushroom parties?

I would want to see a real presidential slugfest 2011 in all its beauty and grandeur; and in all its grits, rough or smooth tackles and sweat as I have had the privilege of witnessing in the country of my domicile. A three-way Jonathan-Atiku-Buhari presidential slugfest could bring some drama, thrills and frills and perhaps some testy and tense moments too into the presidential theater. And I’m still counting on that possibility, if not probability, while at the same time .summarily discounting all pretenders to the throne milling around like a colony of ants as “presidential aspirants” in this match-up.

But even so, I’m sticking out my neck to tell the end from the beginning. And that is the result and real meaning of Cutting-Edge Analytics—Where the News Meets the Intellect—My Staple!

What a year!

And this is wishing all my readers Merry Xmas and Grand Entry in a Happy New Year!

And to the Nkemba of Nnewi: Get Well!

And the nation in general: A successful electoral outing in the Presidential Slugfest 2011!

Bon Voyage!  

Franklin Otorofani is an Attorney and Public Affairs Analyst. Contacts:

 mudiagaone@yahoo.com, https://mudiagamann.wordpress.com/

Failed Proposition and Atiku’s Hollow Crown of Ambivalence

He emerged from an ethnic game as the “consensus candidate of the North” and proudly parades himself as such in the nation’s political circles without qualms. But how in the world did a man, who emerged winner of a closet election conducted by nine handpicked sectional elders by razor-thin margin become the consensus candidate of the North or of any section of the country for that matter? I thought consensus was made of sterner stuff.

Did they really say or mean “Consensus candidate of the North” or it was a case of misrepresentation by some exuberant journalists? What exactly is that? The words alone make me want to throw up. I don’t know about you, but they’re as hard for me to swallow as stones, and my stomach has a problem receiving them talk less of digesting them.

Don’t blame my stomach, folks. Blame those hard, rocky words that have forced their way down my stomach that is neither designed nor configured to handle stones and rocks and causing me serious constipation. And I’m not alone. Many, who took those words in have similarly come down with severe constipation and others are hemorrhaging on the inside. Perhaps those who invented them could swallow stones and rocks, but I don’t. I’m still human and therefore flesh and blood with no gastric acids to handle stones and rocks. I’m not a vegan, but give me some veggies please and perhaps some amala or tuwo with beef stew to go with and I’ll be just fine; not stones and rocks for dinner as Mallam Adamu Ciroma had offered us.  

And that’s reason enough why somebody should come to my assistance, because I’m yet to fathom how anybody, who desires to be president of Nigeria could be comfortable wearing a banner on his forehead with the inscription “I’m the Consensus Candidate of the North!” in a multi-ethnic conglomerate like Nigeria. Has Nigerian politics sunk to such low depths that even presidential candidates now feel comfortable wearing geo-ethnic labels and still hope to coast to victory at national polls? I’m not exactly sure we’ve gone down so low, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, I’ll leave that for history to determine whether I’m right or wrong and history is beckoning on us to do its part and put that issue to rest. All I could do for now is just sit and wait it out.  

Perhaps I’m missing something here or rather something seems to be missing from the consensus equation that I’m trying hard to figure it out. For all we know consensus does not arise out of an election and a keenly contested one at that in which the winner managed to snatch victory by the skin of his teeth with just one vote. The word “winner” arises out of a duel, war, competition or contest involving more than one party. And it goes together with the word “loser” as its opposite in meaning. In politics, it takes the form of elections to determine winners and losers. Therefore, if Atiku emerged “winner”, it follows that many of his fellow contestants emerged “losers” in the contest and must bear the tag of “defeated” candidates forever. 

On the contrary, consensus arises out of a voluntary and general endorsement of an idea, a position or a person. It involves mutual understanding of common interests and agreements are hammered out after diligent and involved consultations, persuasions and trade-offs amongst the various stakeholders to come to a common position with no acrimonious contests or elections involved and therefore no winners and losers in the outcomes.

How was it then we’re told that a keenly contested election wound up producing a Northern consensus candidate named, Abubakar Atiku? By what alchemy was that feat achieved in the North? Wait a minute: The Nigerian abracadabra seems to be at work here and we need to demystify it right here, right now.

There are no two ways about it. It’s either that the meaning of the word “consensus” has changed in the English language or Ciroma and his group have reinvented the word and imbued it with perhaps a different, technical, or should I say, “Northern” meaning for the purpose of their ethnic game.

As far as the English language goes, consensus arrangements and elections are two completely different things and processes with completely different outcomes both in contents and nomenclatures, which are neither interchangeable nor transposable. And except someone out there is prepared to educate me and others like me that consensus arrangements and elections refer to one and the same thing in the Hausa or Fulani’s Fulfube language (and I have lived in the North), we cannot call the outcome of an election a consensus agreement and the outcome of a consensus arrangement an election without doing serious violence to both concepts.

The natural implication of the above submissions is that Atiku’s present status is a bundle of contradictions. Atiku is at once a “consensus” and an “elected” candidate of the North. He is touted as a consensus candidate, but he is not really one and anything but. How and what do I mean by that?

Hear Governor Patrick Yakowa of Kaduna State talking about Atiku as reported by the Vanguard newspaper 12/14/2010 edition: “I don’t know anything about consensus candidate. We already know our candidate, and President GoodLuck Jonathan is our only candidate for the presidency.”

His Benue State counterpart, Gabriel Suswam, couldn’t be more blunt and direct in his denunciation: “I, as the governor of Benue state, you take a decision and you do not consult me and you say that that decision is a decision that is binding, I don’t think that makes sense to anybody and it does not make sense to me anyway.” And these and others like them are important stakeholders in the North whose positions determine the ultimate status of Atiku one way or another, not the one imposed on the North by Ciroma and his group. 

The sentiments credited to both governors are reflective of the reactions of a cross section of Northerners to the outcome of the Ciroma gambit. It’s been condemnation and denunciation galore in the North.

Hardly a day passes without getting denunciations and condemnations of Ciroma and his group by northern groups and individuals. Atiku has become a poster child for political battles in the North that supposedly produced him as its consensus candidate. There are more voices denouncing the outcome of the consensus exercise in the northern parts of the country than in the southern parts and that bodes ill-wind for Atiku because he’s nobody’s consensus candidate but the four who elected him. 

And he was announced as an elected candidate but he is not really one either. Reason is that the committee did not want the world to know how he emerged through an election but that fact later came to light. The committee wanted to sell him as the “consensus” candidate without letting the world know that he was elected in closet election by just four votes rather than a real election involving all stakeholders in the North.

The leaking of that information has done great damage to its credibility and the final outcome itself. And that’s reason why Atiku is neither this nor that. He’s like the bat, which is neither a bird nor a four legged mammal. But Atiku can only be one or the other not both at the same time. The reality however is that he is neither of them. He’s, therefore, weighed down by crisis of identity arising from a failed proposition and wearing a hollow title of ambivalence.       

HOWEVER, WE must not rush to hasty conclusions without examining the matter a little more closely to see where the trails might lead us to. In this inquiry, therefore, the issue we must address with the information available to us in the public domain is whether Atiku was actually a product of a consensus arrangement in the North or a product of a secret election held by a handful of men in someone’s living room in the name of the North.

This issue would not have arisen if the proceedings of the committee were made public and not shrouded in secrecy like those of a secret cult or secret society. No one except the committee members knew what went on behind closed doors even the venues of the committee’s deliberations. No one knew its terms of reference except the candidates themselves.

All that was made public were the constant drumbeats of producing a consensus candidate for the north to rubbish President Jonathan in the forthcoming PDP primaries. Nothing else was revealed. Whatever Nigerians knew of the committee’s work were the snippets of unconfirmed and unverifiable information that the press managed to scoop out and fed to the public. It was all a guessing game.

And what’s more; widespread consultation, which is at the heart of consensus building was treated more like an afterthought, and limited in scope to isolated quarters rather than as an all-inclusive strategic imperative involving different Northern social segments and stakeholders in order to carry all critical segments and stakeholders along.

How could the proceedings and activities of a consensus committee be shrouded in complete secrecy when the act of consensus building itself necessarily involves wide-ranging consultations of different stakeholders and interest groups and nationalities in the North, extending even to the South, if it truly meant business, knew what it was doing and how to go about it?

Good enough the committee itself publicly announced Atiku as the “winner” of the consensus arrangement. “Winner”? That sounded more like an election rather than a consensus agreement. And sure enough, the dominos began to fall. The veil of secrecy was shredded and we now know what transpired behind closed doors. Information leaked out and the results of a closet election made public. Atiku was a product of a closet election after all.

In determining the status of Atiku, therefore, it is important that we get our terminology right. Election is direct negation of consensus arrangement.

The Webster New Collegiate Dictionary defines consensus as a “general agreement” or “judgment arrived at by most of those concerned.” It further defines the word “consensual” as “existing or made by mutual consent without an act of writing.” The above definition is clear enough and therefore requires no further elucidation.

However, it is also clear that the process of Atiku’s emergence satisfies none of the above and on the contrary, violates all of the above criteria. Nowhere is the word “voting” or “election” mentioned in the above definition as a process for arriving at a consensus position. Did the majority of the presidential aspirants, or for this purpose, candidates themselves, or of the members of the committee, or of northerners, agree amongst themselves on Atiku as their consensus candidate in the PDP primaries? Did they participate in electing Atiku to represent the North in the PDP primaries? Not a chance in hell! And that is why the outcomes of the Consensus exercise is not binding on anybody in the North, not even strictly speaking on the candidates themselves although morally bound to respect their voluntary written undertakings.

First of all, the Ciroma committee got all the contenders to undertake in writing that they would accept the outcome of the committee’s work however flawed it might be. That is not a consensus but merely an agreement to abide by the result of the committee’s work to be attained through consensus arrangement.

Secondly, the committee proceeded to conduct a closet election instead of working for a consensus, which was its original mandate. Thus, instead of getting a result derived from “general agreement” “arrived at by most of those concerned,” Atiku emerged “winner” not by unanimous votes or acclamation by the committee members but by just four votes to emerge winner.

The very word itself “winner” totally negates the idea of consensus. The idea of consensus is to avoid the idea or a winners or losers and that explains the phrase “mutual consent” applied in the above definition.

How did the committee come this? Here is what is in the public domain as reported by several newspapers regarding the procedure adopted by the committee. I took this one from “THE NATION” newspaper, 11/24/20/10 edition because it is more detailed and graphical about what happened behind closed doors. But see also ThisDay Online report of 11/23/2010 with the screaming headline: Revealed: Atiku Defeated IBB by Just One Vote!

Here we go: First, the nine committee members were divided on the mode of voting and haggled endlessly over whether it should be by secret or open balloting. It is instructive to observe that only Audu Ogbe and David Jemibewon who are Saraki’s kismen argued for secret balloting while the grand daddy of them all, Mallam Ciroma and others fought hard for open balloting obviously to intimidate the members and support his candidate. 

Quoting its source, THE NATION reports:

“But Audu Ogbe and Gen. Jemibewon (rtd) said they should do secret balloting.

“Ogbeh took about 10 minutes to address the committee on the imperative of secret ballot and why it would assist them to make their free choice.

“At the end of the day, they were all persuaded by Ogbe’s argument and they opted for secret balloting.

“Then, ballot papers were circulated to members to write their choice of consensus candidate before it was later compiled.

“After the compilation, the results indicated that Atiku had four votes; Babangida scored three; Saraki had two and Gusau had none.

“It was really a slim victory for Atiku.

“And his saving grace was that they ignored the initial rule to go for second round of balloting where it was a close contest.

The paper further reported that it learnt that members of the committee insisted on burning the ballot papers to “avoid any of the aspirants tracing their writings through forensic analysis.

Again quoting its source the paper states:

“So, before the decision was made known to the aspirants, the committee burnt the ballot papers.” 

It states that “But the voting pattern later got leaked from those assigned the responsibility of burning the ballot papers.”

“According to the source, those who voted for Babangida are: Mallam Ciroma; Senator Jubrin Salihu and Magi Dambatta.

“For Atiku are; Bello Kurfi; M. D. Yusufu; Buba Yaro Mafindi and Amb. M.Z. Anka.

“Saraki got his votes from Audu Ogbeh and Gen. David Jemibewon.”

“As at last night, all the aspirants were aware of the pattern of voting and those who voted for them.”

There you had it: all revealed in black and white! What was conceived and executed in secret to the extent of burning ballot papers has become public property. Everybody knew who voted for whom including Ciroma himself and Atiku’s razor thin margin of victory; thanks to those who recorded the voting pattern before the ballots were burnt and leaked the information to the press. This should indeed count as Atiku-Gate or, if you will, Ciroma-Gate! It rubbished the work of the committee, making both the winner and the losers aware of who voted for and against them. It’s the source of the bad blood that is now hunting and hurting the North. The above account has not been disputed by the committee and it is anything but consensual.

On what factual basis then is Atiku being paraded as consensus candidate of the North? True, the Ciroma committee was specifically asked to produce a consensus candidate but failing which it went beyond its specific mandate to produce an elected candidate for the north not the consensus candidate it had set out to produce. So much for consensus baloney!

It is abundantly clear, therefore, as night and day that Ciroma and his group of ethnic gladiators seemingly succeeded in pulling a fast one on the nation particularly the north and they know it. It is out and out fraud. If Mallam Ciroma and his so-called Northern Leaders Political Forum did not know what they were about when they started out, it is hardly surprising that they produced a flawed product that is now suffering from serious identity crisis.

Atiku emerged from a fundamentally flawed process He must therefore contend with its consequential crisis of identity. There is just no way an elected candidate could be marketed to the nation and accepted as a consensus candidate otherwise all elected officials would similarly be deemed to have attained their positions through consensus arrangements including councilors, lawmakers, governors and the president himself.

Yet one must empathize with the self-inflicted position the committee found itself in the course of its self-imposed assignment. The committee simply did what it did because there was no viable alternative to it. It would appear the committee had failed to develop clear cut criteria for assessing the candidates without resort to balloting, which is the antithesis of consensus.

The crisis of identity now being suffered by Atiku has arisen due to the committee being forced by circumstances beyond its control to abandon midstream its original mandate of working for a consensus candidate for the North and substituting that with an election due to its inability to get the candidates to agree on one of them to carry the mantle on behalf of the north.

With none of the contenders yielding to one another, the committee ought to have developed objective criteria mutually agreed upon by the members and the candidates to evaluate the contenders, that is totally devoid of partisanship and stick with that to the end. Rather than doing so, it allowed the obstacles placed by the contenders on its path to summarily abandon its original mandate.

With that, the character of the mission abruptly changed from consensus to election and that explains why the candidates themselves were out and about selling themselves to their northern publics who nevertheless had no say in the final outcome and are therefore stuck with a candidate they knew not.

At this point some people might want to know what difference it makes whether Atiku is a consensus or elected candidate of or for the North?

Well there is a huge difference that is not merely semantic or academic, but substantial and historical in significance. It is substantial because a consensus candidate would command greater respect and acceptability across the board than an elected candidate in that he would be a product of general agreement amongst the stakeholders, including the contestants themselves. By their very nature elections are contentious and inherently controversial no matter their level and this is more so in climes like Nigeria where losers have been known never to accept defeat and concede victory to the winners, and would always fish for reasons not to accept the outcomes of electoral contests.

The purported election of Atiku is already suffering from this Nigerian disease as allegations of favoritism and underhanded deals are already flying in the air belying the outward show of solidarity with Atiku by the defeated candidates.  We are beginning to see the game IBB is up to as earlier predicted by this writer that he would find a reason to dump Atiku before long. His so-called threat to quit the PDP is a direct and frontal attack on the outcome of the exercise. He’s fishing for a reason to quit the PDP so as to free himself from the consensus tango with Atiku and contest the presidential election under a different party platform. That is what election means in those parts of the world—bad blood and ill-feeling.

It is becoming clear that everyone, including Atiku has fallen victim of the consensus business invented and imposed on them by that geriatric iconoclast called Ciroma. The reverse would have been the case with consensus arrangement. Consensus engenders minimal ill-feelings in that it is a voluntary undertaking that does not engender the sense of “victory” or “defeat” in the camps of those who won or didn’t get the ultimate price because they help decide who gets the ultimate price. In fact, as earlier indicated the words “winner” and “loser” do not apply in consensus arrangements and everybody is a winner.

Secondly, it is historical because the nation’s political history ought to properly reflect the dynamics, modus operandi and dramatis personae involved in the political evolution of the nation in different epochs, including the process employed in the nomination and election of its leaders at all levels of governance at both regional and national levels.  

Thirdly, the fact that the process of Atiku’s emergence has wider implications for the national unity by setting a dangerous precedent obviously commends it to appropriate analysis and documentation for future generations. We cannot, therefore, call a closet election a consensus. That would amount to falsification of a still evolving history. And;

Fourthly, it matters because properly defined, the so-called consensus arrangement was a total failure and ought to be recorded as such for the history books and properly situated in the present scheme of things by calling a spade by its real name and not a “shovel”, “hoe” or “machete”.     

Properly called, therefore, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku is not in the plain and ordinary meaning of the word the consensus candidate of the North but the elected candidate of the Ciroma committee purportedly for the North under the PDP platform.

How did the nation come to fall for this egregious fraud by Ciroma’s NPLF? Simple: No one seems to be asking pertinent questions about anything in Nigeria. Some loonies simply emerge from the woodworks to seize the nation’s imaginations by the throat without questions to get their 10-minute fame and fade out. Boko Haram, Abdul-Mutallab; you name them. Nigeria is a haven for roving lunatics, who should be confined to mental institutions.

Ordinary Nigerians have too much on their plates to think about the meaning of consensus and election. And the Nigerian media is preoccupied with merely reporting the news that takes care of their critical bills without bothering about its analysis, which is much more involved intellectual enterprise requiring depth and breadth and a measure of historicity to it. And that’s why there is little or no investment in investigative journalism. Sensationalism brings the bacon home not hard core investigative slugs.

Don’t get me wrong on this: The Nigerian media are a vibrant one and pretty enterprising too. But more often than not they have fallen short of in- depth investigative journalism to get to the root of things and have fallen victims to the shenanigans of ethnic and religious warriors to the detriment of the national agenda. Our national media shouldn’t reduce themselves to echo chambers of ethnic bigots to the detriment of our national aspirations.

Was it in the national interest for the Ciroma Committee to reduce the Nigerian presidency to an ethnic property? Obviously not. Why then was the media complicit in giving some measure of credibility and legitimacy to the antics of Ciroma and his group through its reporting without serious questioning? It’s one thing to report news and another to give comfort and undue publicity to purveyors of ethno-religious divisions in the nation.

While it is not in my position to report the news, however, it is in my position to analyze it. This consensus baloney would have long being exposed and rubbished for what it is had the media dutifully asked the relevant questions at the right time without necessarily taking positions one way or another.

Now, Ciroma has executed his coup plot and it is for the victims to face the fallouts in its wake. And make no mistake about it: There are no bigger victims than Atiku and IBB. They both rode the tiger and ended up its belly.

But you know who the winner is? You guessed right: President Goodluck Jonathan!  Ciroma has paved the path for Jonathan in real time, not for Atiku, who is being abandoned to his fate, and certainly not for IBB, whose ego has been deflated, or Gusau, who was humiliated, or Saraki, who was cut down to size. At the end of it all, the only man left standing is Goodluck Jonathan.

And who says Mr. Otorofani has a problem with that? Not with a failed proposition with multiple casualties in its trail! Boy, I’m having a good laugh! 

Hey, can’t blame me for that!

Franklin Otorofani, Esq. is an Attorney and Public Affairs Analyst

Contact: Mudiagaone@yahoo.com;  https://mudiagamann.wordpress.com/

Nigerian Judiciary Reinvented as the Ultimate Rigging Machine

Here then is the critical issue in this matter: Was the documented personal relationship existing between the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Salami, and the ACN chieftain, Chief Bola Tinubu, not enough to disqualify him outright from touching that case in the first place? Would it surprise anyone, therefore, that the judgment had been leaked to ACN weeks before it was delivered by Salami hence the public outcry by ACN about alleged attempts by the PDP to “arrest” it and the elaborate preparations made by the party to celebrate its contrived victory? These are questions still hanging in the air that the NJC has been called upon to unravel as in the previous two cases cited above as well as the case of Sokoto state that would have gone the way of Ekiti in the hands of the same Justice Salami, but for the timely intervention of the Supreme Cour—Franklin Otorofani

Scenario One:

The tiny West African nation of Ivory Coast held her presidential elections back in October this year that ended in a stalemate with no clear cut winner. A rerun was held between the two front runners, Alassane Quattara and current President Laurant Gbago. When results were announced on Thursday, December 1, 2010, by the country’s Independent Electoral Commission, the opposition candidate, Alassane Ouattara, had scored 54.1% of the votes to President Laurent Gbago, who scored 51.45% of the votes. Consequently, Quattara the challenger, was announced by the electoral commission as the winner of the presidential elections by a wide margin. However, on Friday, December 3, 2010, the Constitutional Council overturned the results already announced and declared Gbago the winner after annulling the results of seven regions in the northern parts of the country, which incidentally are the strongholds of Quattara. The annulment was designed to and did effectively reduce his votes to 48.55%, thereby making Gbago, the erstwhile loser, become the clear winner with 51.45% of the votes. That is what pen robbery does to elections in Africa. Smooth rigging!

Scenario Two:

The tiny South/West state of Ekiti, Nigeria, held its gubernatorial election on 04/14/2007 in the country’s general elections of that year. When the results were announced by the country’s Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), Segun Oni of the PDP was declared winner and sworn in as Governor of Ekiti State. But the opposition candidate, Dr. Kayode Fayemi of the AC (now ACN) faulted the results and headed to the Tribunal, which ordered a rerun in several local government areas of the state to determine the real winner. In the rerun election held on 04/25/2009, Governor Oni scored 109,000 of the votes to his opponent’s106, 000 votes. Oni was again declared the winner, whereupon the opposition candidate filed a petition at the tribunal challenging the results in six wards in Idi-Osi Local Government Area, which incidentally are the strongholds of Governor Oni. Again the Tribunal found for Oni. Dissatisfied, however, the opposition candidate headed to the Appeal Tribunal, which yet again found for Oni. Still dissatisfied, the opposition candidate filed further appeal at the Court of Appeal, which is the final Appeal Tribunal for gubernatorial elections in Nigeria. On 10/15/2010, the Court of Appeal overturned the results of the two previous elections and the two previous rulings at the Tribunals and declared Fayemi the winner after annulling the results in Idi-Osi Local Government Area and deducting same from the total vote count to return Fayemi as the winner. Here again is what pen robbery does to elections in Africa. Smooth rigging!

Similarities:

(1) In each case a rerun was held and a winner was duly declared by the electoral agency duly authorized by law to conduct the elections and return winners.

(2) In each case the results were overturned by an external body other than the electoral agency.

(3) In each case the results of the elections were annulled in the strongholds of the winner and then subtracted from the total count in order to declare the loser as the winner, and;

(4) In each case the will of the people as expressed in the elections was rudely and blatantly substituted with the will of an external authority to make the loser become the winner. It is election rigging at its best.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new face of rigging in Nigeria, nay Africa— developed, perfected, packaged and exported from Nigeria! This is a Made-in-Nigeria electoral product that she has managed to export to Ivory Coast.

I don’t care who the beneficiary are; whether it’s Governor Oni or Oyinlola at the Tribunals or Fayemi or Aregbesola at the Court of Appeal. It makes no difference to me. Both the lower tribunals that gave judgments to the incumbents and the higher tribunal that gave judgments to their challengers are in the same boat of corruption using their positions to rubbish democracy by supplanting the will of the people and imposing their own in its place. Democracy has entered yet another rough terrain in Nigeria.

This is the new generation rigging formula invented by the Nigerian judiciary to replace the old generation formula introduced by INEC that seemed to have outlived its usefulness in this digital era. The Nigerian judiciary has invented a modernized version to keep up with the times.

It is neat and precise. Like the surgeon’s knife, it cuts through the body of the election results right where it wants it neatly with no blood stains. It has nothing to do with stuffing of ballot boxes, arson, over-voting, violence and intimidation of voters or any of the other electoral malpractices associated with elections at the polling stations. That is old school. Judges simply nix the results in the strongholds of the winners and pronto, the winner is suddenly transformed into the loser and the loser becomes the winner!

This is the Nigerian judicial abracadabra that has found its way to Ivory Coast threatening to tear that war-torn nation further apart. Ivory Coast might be its first port of call but by no means the last. Where else will it strike next in Africa? African nations preparing for elections must beware of this deadly cargo headed their way from Nigeria. And if in doubt, they should check with Ivory Coast to know just how deadly it is. No kidding!

The bottom line is that judgments delivered in election petitions in Nigeria are nothing but products of corruption, pure and simple—no but, what, if, when, or why. And like I said above, I don’t care who the winners or losers are because there are no real winners or losers at the end of the day except for the poor masses that have been reduced to canon fodders while the elites carry out their nefarious activities in their name behind their backs.

The courts have become cesspools of corruption and their judgments not worth the papers on which they’re scribbled with the ink of corruption. And I’m not even the one saying it. Higher judicial and legal authorities in Nigeria who should and indeed know better than I do have come to the same unfortunate but inescapable conclusions. It is time to shoot straight.

The Chief Justice of Nigeria, Hon. Justice Aloysius Katsina Alu recently alerted the nation to corruption in the judiciary at the occasion of the swearing in ceremony of new judicial officers in Abuja. He sure knows what he was talking about because he is the Chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC) that has been inundated with corruption petitions against serving judicial officers many of which are currently being investigated.

And former Justice of the Supreme Court, Hon. Justice Kayode Eso, has equally decried corruption in the nation’s judiciary and in fact zeroed in on judges sitting in election petition tribunals, including the Court of Appeal, which is the ultimate Election Petition Tribunal in gubernatorial cases.

The erudite Justice described the corrupt profiles of some judges sitting in election tribunals as indeed “mind shattering” adding that they “are not just millionaires as we are told but billionaires”. Imagine Justices becoming billionaires overnight just by upholding rigged election results or upturning valid election results with a stroke of the pen. The electorate could go to blazes. What do the people know, anyway? That must count as one of, if not the most lucrative job(s) on earth. The beast of corruption has been unleashed on hapless Nigerians and their votes no longer have meaning.

One could imagine JAMB candidates cramming the exam halls to get into the legal profession in Nigeria and later fight to become election petition judges. In turn that would turn university admission officers into millionaires overnight just by admitting failed candidates through the back door and tossing out the door smart candidates who passed their matriculation exams. Why must it end with INEC and the judiciary? The invincible and unstoppable Nigeria Corruption Steamroller grinds on. Chikena! Nigeria is finished! 

And what is more: the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr. J.B Daudu, SAN, has spoken in similar vein as indeed other Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) in a special report compiled by Ikekuckwu Nnochiri of the Vanugard Newspaper 11/18/2010, appropriately titled: “Corruption in Nigerian judiciary: How safe is 2011 general elections?”  Said he:

“One indisputable fact about politicians is that they are prone to publicizing facts that others think were concluded in secret. Consequently, everybody hears about the bloated sums that have been given to judicial officers so that the desires of elective office seekers can be satisfied.”

Yes, they thought their corrupt acts carried in secret would never be known publicly, but they forget that nothing is hidden under the sun. Somebody is watching somewhere and the evil deeds of men in the dark are revealed in the day. And their very own conducts thereafter, as for example, the public outcry by AC chieftain that PDP was plotting to arrest the Court of Appeal Judgment gives them away. They give themselves away by their very own acts as when they began to make elaborate and involved preparations for celebrating their impending victory.

 

Only one who already knew what was coming would go so far as to design and print huge posters and plan party victory celebrations ahead of time which was not the case in previous tribunal cases where AC lost. Why would he fight to protect a judgment the contents of which had not been delivered and made public if it was not known to be favorable to his side? Were the judgment known afore-hand to be unfavorable to AC, the Court would have been viciously attacked by the AC chieftain who cried wolf, Lai Mohammed. As the Holy Book puts it, by their fruits we shall know them.

 

And to cap it all, Justices have actually been removed from office as a result of corruption in election tribunals. At this juncture, one could not help but reproduce late Chief Gani Fawehimni’s presentation cited in my earlier publication:

“Unfortunately, the downright dishonesty of some of the Judges who were involved in 2003 Election Tribunals gave the Nigerian people much worry. I will refer to two instances: The first was the Anambra South Senatorial Election Tribunal, which looked into the grievances of a contestant Prince Nicholas Ukachukwu against the election of Dr. Ugochukwu Uba. The Tribunal found for Prince Nicholas Ukachukwu against Dr. Ugochukwu Uba. Dr. Uba appealed to the Court of Appeal. Meanwhile, he had been sworn in as a Senator. The matter came before the Court of Appeal and the Court of Appeal of three Justices, Hon. Justice Okwuchukwu Opene, Hon. Justice David Adedoyin Adeniji and Hon. Justice Kumai Bayang Akaahs disagreed among themselves.

Two of the Justices Hon. Justice Okwuchukwu Opene and Hon. Justice David Adedoyin Adeniji gave judgment to Dr. Ugochukwu Uba and the third Justice, Hon. Justice Kumai Bayang Akaahs, the youngest of them disagreed and dissented and gave judgment to Prince Nicholas Ukachukwu. After the appeal, the National Judicial Council (NJC) received petitions that two of the three Justices took bribe. The National Judicial Council established under Section 153 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 set up a committee headed by late Justice Kolawole a retired Justice of the Court of Appeal. After a thorough investigation by the Committee it was found that Justice Okwuchukwu Opene who presided at the Court of Appeal took a bribe of N15,000,000.00 (Fifteen million Naira) and Justice David Adedoyin Adeniji took a bribe of N12,000,000.00 (Twelve million Naira) and three unascertained Ghana-must-Go bags and that Justice Kumai Bayang Akaahs the youngest of them refused to take bribe. He rejected corruption and did the Judiciary proud.

Consequently, the National Judicial Council (NJC) recommended to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria that these two justices, Hon. Justice Okwuchukwu Opene and Hon. Justice David Adedoyin Adeniji were guilty of corruption and abuse of office and that they should be sacked as Justices of the Court of Appeal. On the 3rd of May, 2005, the President acting under Section 292 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, dismissed those two Justices from the Judicial Bench of Nigeria.

The Second instance was the Akwa Ibom State Governorship Election Tribunal set up after the 2003 Governorship Election. There were five members of the Tribunal. Whilst the proceedings were still pending in the Tribunal, on the 10th July, 2003 the petitioner petitioned the Chief Justice of Nigeria who is the Chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC) complaining that four of the five members of the Tribunal i.e. the Chairman, Hon. Justice M. M. Adamu (a Lady), Hon. Justice D. T. Ahura, Hon. Justice A. M. Elelegwa and Chief Magistrate O. J. Isede had been compromised with large sums of money as bribe by the Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Obong Victor Attah.

The National Judicial Council (NJC) investigated the complaints through a committee set up for that purpose and found that the allegations were true and that the Chairman of the Election Tribunal and three other members received bribes during the sitting. They were accordingly dismissed from the judicial Bench. One Judge who was not a member of the Tribunal, Hon. Justice C.P.N. Senlong of the Federal High Court was also dismissed for corruption and abuse of office because he was found to have associated with one of the contestants in a corrupt manner. These two examples of judicial corruption must not be allowed to happen or re-occur in the new Tribunals for the 2007 Elections”.

In the face of this endemic state of affairs in Nigeria that has assumed frightening dimensions, it becomes laughable, pathetic, disingenuous, hypocritical and indeed delusional for anyone to go to town applauding the judgment of the Court of the Appeal in both Ekiti and Osun states or any other case for that matter, because all of its judgments in election petitions are tainted with corruption. I’m, therefore, inclined to treat virtually all of the judgments delivered by the Court of Appeal in election petitions with a wave of the hand as products of corruption, my research in the Sokoto State case having thoroughly exposed me to the goings on in the Court of Appeal. It’s out and out sick judicial institution that is in need of redemption.  

 

Therefore, while it is perfectly understandable that ACN partisans would be rejoicing at their good luck and see these recent judgments as “godsent,” God might not have a hand in their “victories” because He is not a God of corruption and the Devil himself could be taking all the credit for the judgments they have procured from the Court of Salami rather than from the Court of Justice ruled by the blind goddess Artemis. The goddess ruling over Salami’s Court is not blind but wide eyed, demanding Ghana-Must Go.  

What then is there to rejoice over, anyway? It is corruption of the judiciary and access to public funds for more corruption while the people are left to rue their ill-fate? Is ACN not the second reincarnation of the AD that was in power throughout the South/West before OBJ overran the region in 2003? What were the legacies of the AD in the South/West when it held sway for four years in this dispensation in the LOOBO states minus Edo and Delta, from Ondo all the way to Lagos States? Where are their legacies?

 

How much did AD transform the South/West when it held the reins of power in the region unchallenged? And what are Bola Tinubu’s legacies in Lagos? How transformed was Lagos under Tinubu for eight solid years? If it was, we wouldn’t be hearing about the wonders Governor Fashola is doing in the state today. If it was, Lagos wouldn’t be one of the filthiest and infrastructure-challenged cities in the world today. And if it was, there would be no BBC documentary revealing the rot in Lagos to the world. Who is fooling who?

There is nothing to rejoice over in the South/West becoming an ethnic enclave of the ACN as it was of the AG, AD, AC, and now ACN. This linear succession trajectory was only broken by the PDP interjecting itself in 2003 courtesy of OBJ, which, however, did not go down well with ethnic jingoists in the zone now being led by Bola Tinubu from Lagos. It is Tinubu’s game plan that is currently playing out in the South/West. ACN chieftains in Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, Oyo and indeed Lagos states, are now under the suzerainty of Lagos political overlord, who is now acting as if he were the political heir apparent to beloved the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

 

But it is a sad day for the nation that the South/West has simply withdrawn into an ethnic cocoon with these questionable electoral victories. Nigeria has moved beyond the ethnic parties of the First Republic and that’s why we’re being hard on Malam Adamu Ciroma and his revisionist anachronism in the north for taking the nation back to its regional, ethnic past.

 

There is no region in the nation that is still maintaining purely ethnic party. The North has no successive parties for the NPC and NEPU. Ditto for the East. The NCNC has no successor in the East today. APGA and PPA are no successors of the NCNC. Only ACN is for the AD and UPN and AG in that order. Yes, only the West has refused to shed its ethnic coat since independence to date. And I perfectly understand the ethnic sentiments of many of the ACN chieftains to retake their region from the “Federal forces” represented by the PDP as it was back in the day with the AG and UPN.

It explains why the ACN is on rampage in the West and the West alone never bothering itself with what goes on in other parts of the country, for instance, its loss in Anambra gubernatorial election where its candidate, Dr. Chris Ngige lost. ACN kept mum and allowed Ngige to carry his load all by himself and lost. But when it comes to the South/West, it is fight to finish!   

 

If this was a plot then with Justice Salami to return the zone to ethnic ACN, it represents a huge setback for national integration and the mainstreaming of the South/West, which had been achieved heretofore. However, if the South/West truly wants to go back to its ethnic cocoon, let the people themselves say so with their votes. Let the people do it with their votes. Justice Ayo Salami and Bola Tinubu shouldn’t speak for them through the back door. It is both unethical and undemocratic and they have no right to, seriously.  

Folks, I’m ditching it out hot and sizzling as it is, no holds-barred, because I’m sick and tired of what Nigerians have made of democracy, including the judiciary. A judicially hijacked democracy is no democracy at all.

 

And here comes the Big One! The NBA, citing statistics from the National Judicial Commission (NJC) came out with a smoking gun—the earth-shattering revelation indicating that a whopping 80% of members of the Nigerian Judiciary are incompetent and below average. That’s right. 80% are downright incompetents!  And you’re wondering, what the heck is happening in Nigeria! Can’t get that damned place clean up for real?

Who knew that the NJC had been discretely rating our judges and keeping its findings to itself away from the public? Who knew that the NJC knew all along that only 20% of judicial officers in Nigeria are dispensing justice and the rest have been dispensing injustice to Nigerians and kept all of that information to itself?

 I give kudos to the present leadership of the NBA. They have done the nation a great service indeed by revealing the rot in the judiciary. What needs to be done is to, as a matter of public duty, engage the process of rooting out the incompetents and the corrupt from the judiciary to save our nation and our democracy. It shouldn’t stop at mere revelation. NBA senior members are the conduit pipes for judicial corruption, and if the leadership is serious, it should start its own house cleaning exercise now!

What else has the NJC found out that it’s keeping from Nigerians? This shroud of secrecy must be rented to further expose the innards of the judiciary much as it is happening in other departments of government through the untiring efforts of the EFCC, which the corrupt judiciary has been frustrating all along.   

In effect, the NJC has declared the entire judiciary as incompetent because the remaining 20% is so infinitesimal as to amount to nothing. Now we have an incompetent judiciary on top of a chronically corrupt judiciary. What a double whammy! Is it any wonder then that the judiciary has been taking the nation on roller coaster in its handling of the election petitions?

Four good years after the 2007 elections the judiciary is yet to conclude election petitions! What manner of judiciary is that? But there is a method to the madness though. All that delay is not for nothing. It’s to enable the judiciary perfect its own rigging formula, which is now being swiftly applied with reckless abandon, one case after another in the dying minutes.

The truth of the matter is that we simply do not know who the rightful winners of the 2007 elections in these states are anymore! It is not who INEC told us. It is not who the tribunals and the Court of Appeal told us either. It is who the people themselves told us and the only way to find out is to go back to the people who, by the way, are still alive, not judges. And that invariably means conducting rerun elections between the right candidates and nothing else.

For instance, conducting a rerun in the contentious six wards in Idi-Osi Local Government Area of Ekiti state shouldn’t be such a big deal that we would be wasting our time and money running from one judicial pillar to another judicial post with nocturnal visits armed with Ghana-Must-Go in between.  

 

What we are doing presently is simply replacing rigging by INEC with rigging by the judiciary by robbing Peter to pay Paul. However, the case of Ekiti stands out as a sore thumb because it involves the President of the Court of Appeal himself, Justice Isa Ayo Salami, who presided over this judgment. He made sure he handled it himself. Here is some interesting background to this case as recalled by Dr. Okonwo Nnaji in his article:  EKITI JUDGMENT: ACN AND ITS “ARREST DIATRIBE”

It is on record that the capon of the ACN Mafia, Mr. Bola Tinubu has variously been linked with the President of the court of Appeal, Justice Isa Ayo Salami, which Tinubu himself confirmed in an advertorial authored by him and published in various national newspapers. It is even yet to be denied by either Justice Salami or his friend, Bola Tinubu that the latter hosted Salami to a lavish reception shortly after his (Salami’s) confirmation as President of the Appellate Court by the Senate.

It is equally on record that whereas the identities of the Justices who would be members of the panel that will determine the Ekiti re-run appeal were not unveiled until the day of adoption of briefs by counsel, members of the ACN in Ekiti had been boasting that they would get a favourable composition as Justice Salami is an avowed friend of their financier and Major Shareholders, Tinubu. It was no surprise therefore that they trooped out to the streets and various drinking and “Paraga” joints to celebrate the confirmation of their expectation upon the unveiling of the membership of the Appeal Panel, headed by no less a person than their man, Justice Salami.

The question to ask then is what could have informed Mohammed of a favourable judgment which he is accusing the PDP of wanting to arrest? Could it be that the judgment has been leaked to them or could they have been assured of a favourable judgment by anybody? What formed the basis for the attempt by ACN’s Lai Mohamed to blackmail the PDP with the outcome of a judgment that is still being expected?

Now pray, how could a judicial officer who was treated to a grand reception by the chairman of a political party which is a party to an election petition allow himself or be allowed to preside over such petition even without more? What manner of justice would such a judge be expected to dispense in the circumstances?

Here then is the critical issue in this matter: Was the documented personal relationship existing between the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Salami, and the ACN chieftain, Chief Bola Tinubu, not enough to disqualify him outright from touching that case in the first place? Would it surprise anyone, therefore, that the judgment had been leaked to ACN weeks before it was delivered by Salami hence the public outcry by ACN about alleged attempts by the PDP to “arrest” it and the elaborate preparations made by the party to celebrate its contrived victory? These are questions still hanging in the air that the NJC has been called upon to unravel as in the previous two cases cited above as well as the case of Sokoto state that would have gone the way of Ekiti in the hands of the same Justice Salami, but for the timely intervention of the Supreme Court.

It is interesting to note that the ACN loudmouth, Lai Mohammed, had attacked the Supreme Court for foiling the Justice Salami plot to upturn the results in Sokoto state won not by PDP but by DPP governor, because corruption knows neither geographical nor party boundaries in Nigeria. It is simply a matter of who approached it for a deal and the bigger the deal the better for it.

Mission Statement

AT THIS JUNCTURE, I would like to remind the reader that this series started with digs on the nation’s judiciary with regards to its emerging dual profile as the ultimate gubernatorial terminator and kingmaker via election petitions. And it’s ending on the same note. It has to be because with the newfound power assumed by the nation’s judiciary, the survival of Nigeria’s democracy may well depend on the competence, integrity, incorruptibility and professionalism of the nation’s judicial officers.

When voters step out of their homes to cast their votes for the candidates of their choice, they expect their votes to count and be counted. No one goes to the polls expecting or thinking that ultimately it is one judge or a band of judges sitting in elevated platform that would determine who would be his governor or parliamentary representative as the case may be. If that were the case he might as well decide not to come out to vote at all and let the judges do the voting themselves.

It is either the people are allowed to do the voting and elect their leaders or the judges do the voting themselves in their chambers and elect leaders for the people. The nation cannot have it both ways— for people to vote at elections and then have judges stepping in later to overturn results and impose leaders on the people behind their backs. It is a flagrant abuse of the democratic process.  

There are no two ways about it. The idea of “Judge-Made” governors, as one writer puts it, is totally alien to, and, therefore, unacceptable in our democracy or any democracy for that matter. The seemingly wholesale takeover of the electoral process by the judiciary without deference to either INEC or the people themselves is antithetical to democracy.

A judge-made governor is an impostor and can, therefore, not legitimately parade himself as the people’s governor, because he’s not a true representative of the people but a representative of the judiciary that made him. It’s a shame that some governors in Nigeria are happy to wear the label of “Judge-Made Governor” on their gubernatorial sleeves.

While many Nigerians seemed carried away by the judgments of the Appeal Court without adverting their minds to the corrupt manner in which they were procured, it is gratifying to note that many a having to rethink their earlier positions. In this connection I would respectfully seek leave of the reader to cite a few write ups that seem to undergird this new thinking. 

The first piece was by Ayo Odesodun—-titled, Ekiti: Electoral Justice vs. Judicial Robbery and the second piece by Tunde Akinrinsola with the unflattering title, “Enter! Fayemi, the Judge-made Governor of Ekiti” published respectively in the November 26^th and 29^th editions of the African Herald Express newspaper, which can be accessed respectively through the above links.   

As indicated in the title of his piece, Ayo Odesodun, who was at first jubilant about the judgment a while back later turned around to characterize the judgment as nothing short of “judicial robbery”.

He confessed that like many Nigerians, he had been misled into initially applauding the Court of Appeal judgment by newspaper reports without having first read the judgment itself to see if it has any merits to it. And as he did he eventually discovered for himself that there was nowhere vote rigging was mentioned in the judgment on the part of the sacked governor. On the contrary what he found was the total annulment of the votes of an entire local government area, which happens to be the stronghold of the Governor Oni on the flimsy ground that the voter’s register was missing and couldn’t, therefore, be tendered.  And worse still, he discovered in that judgment that the same voter register for the local government had, in fact, been burned by agents of the Action Congress (AC), the very party of the petitioner himself! And finally, he discovered that the Court of Appeal simply annulled the votes cast in that local government area which is the stronghold of Governor Segun Oni and subtracted them from the total vote count to declare Dr. Kayode Fayemi the winner—in other words, robbing Peter to pay Paul!  

And that is not all. The writer found that Fayemi and his AC had made elaborate preparations for the celebration of his impending victory two weeks before the judgment was given. It is on record that the AC had cried out that some people were about to “arrest” the judgment of the court that was about to be delivered. As Governor Oni’s special assistant asked: How did Fayemi and the AC know afore-hand the outcome of the case and proceeded to make such elaborate preparations for the celebration of victory many weeks ahead of time and they were so worried that some people might temper with the favorable judgment coming their way?

These are the dark clouds hovering over the purported Fayemi victory at the Appeal Court. These are the miseries surrounding Court of Appeal judgment in the Ekiti Gubernational Election Petition that the National Judicial Council has been asked to unravel.

And that is why gubernatorial petitions indeed all petitions must not be terminated at the Court of Appeal but must be allowed to go all the way to the Supreme Court. The fate that befell the governors of Ondo, Edo, Ekiti, Osun and Delta in the hands of the Court of Appeal might have been different had there been appeals allowed all the way to the Supreme Court.

A case in point in this regard is that of the Governor of Sokoto State alluded to earlier whom the Court of Appeal was already itching to dethrone even though, like Governor Oni of Ekiti state, he had won a court ordered election rerun in his state. Yet his opponent was able to manipulate another division of the same Court of appeal Justices after the Governor had won his appeal in one division with a view to declaring his opponent the winner of the rerun. And the Appeal Court was on the verge of doing his bidding when the Governor cried to the Supreme Court on the grounds of abuse of court process and the Supreme Court saved his neck from the Almighty Court of Appeal. Otherwise the nation would have woken up one morning with the news of yet another governor dethroned and a serial loser crowned as Governor of Sokoto State!

And as usual, Nigerians and the press would have been jubilating and attacking Iwu and INEC. Our people have a long, long way to go indeed. Folks, it is time to remove the blinkers and get down to some serious thinking because all that glitters is not gold. Let face it: The judiciary is corrupt. Stop pretending that its judgment is the last hope of the common man. Which common man, by the way? The man who bribed his way to the Government House?

This is what the nation is up against—the use of the judiciary to overturn election results and the consequent imposition of electoral losers on the people in the states. Armed with this blanket power, the Court of Appeal Justices have been carrying on as if they were gods. With a stroke of the pen, they sack governors from office and replace them with their men. With a stroke of the pen, they throw out votes cast by Nigerians at the polls and replace them with their own votes. With a stroke of the pen, they nullify results of elections and replace them with their own results.

And so from Edo to Ondo, Ekiti to Osun, Rivers to Delta, these power drunk Justices have been on elections annulment spree; sacking governors and legislators and replacing them with their favorite candidates all on their own without as much as deferring to the people themselves. Only Delta state was an exception where a rerun was ordered. Thank God for His little mercies!

How could a band of judges declare that there were no elections in an entire state when elections were holding in other states the very same day? How much sense does that make even at face value without more? What exactly is the court saying here? Is it telling the world that the millions of Deltans, who trooped out to vote on election day were animals or aliens from outer space or somethings that are not recognized to vote? Or is it telling the world that there was a curfew imposed only in Delta state during the elections that prevented Deltans from coming out to vote?

The judiciary is messing up our democracy. But does it have to be this way? No. It doesn’t have to be this way. There has to be change. As the NBA President opined:

“It is not for nothing that the finality of certain courts in election matters has been displaced, leaving finality to the Supreme Court. That measure shows the level of confidence the legislature still reposes in the apex court. One point is however clear, if the warning signals raised on the issue of corruption is not heeded, jurisdiction may one day be taken away from regular courts on election matters”.

My candid advice to the nation is not to allow our democracy be in the hands of one court—the Court of Appeal with Justice Ayo Salami as its president. When we recall that it was the judiciary that was used to kill democracy in 1993, no one needs to be reminded that our democracy is doomed in the hands of the dishonorable Justices of the Appeal Court.

Solution: My earlier suggestion—Make the Supreme Court the final Court of Appeal in all matters as it should be and let’s see how unscrupulous politicians will handle it. Do that and the ACN will be singing the blues all the way with its Justice Salami deprived of giving the final word on election petitions. It’s about time the ACN demonstrated to us that it is capable of winning elections without going through the back door of judicial coronation after the polls. That‘s dishonorable. That’s unethical. That’s shameful.  

Franklin Otorofani, Esq. is an Attorney and Public Affairs Analyst and can be reached at mudiagaone@yahoo.com