Adamu lashed his former colleagues at the Senate for the Electoral Act which, according to him, is responsible for the increase in election-related litigations.
By Jeffrey Agbo
Former national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Adamu, has noted his worry at the soaring number of litigations around the 2023 general elections.
Adamu told Newswatch’s Dan Agbese and Soji Akinrinade in an interview published on December 28 that he was “very disturbed” that 1,700 election-related cases were taken to courts following the 2023 general elections.
He said, “I am more than disturbed. And that should tell you to what extent we have accepted democracy as a system of government. I am very disturbed. And look at it, the failure of politicians is now being blamed on the judiciary. But again, if there is no buyer, there will be no seller. If the politicians did not go to the judiciary or a judicial officer, there is no way the judiciary would be corrupt.
“I am really disturbed by the way we are going. People are now saying that you can only win elections through the courts. It shouldn’t be the case. Yes, the courts are there to adjudicate if there is a miscarriage of justice, but where the entire system appears to have been abused, it is a cause for concern and almost every election is being challenged. Only about 10 percent of elections into the Senate or House of Representatives were not challenged, and even the Houses of Assembly. If the percentage being challenged is above 50, something is wrong with the elections. Either it is just that we don’t accept defeat as a culture (I don’t believe that is the case) or everybody has a bone he wants to hold on to just to say this is why I failed to win this election because there is a “miscarriage” of applying the rules of the game as stipulated by the law. It is either the nomination is wrong, a pre-election issue or the election itself was tainted. It is really terrible and I am not happy at all.”
The former governor of Nasarawa State said he does not believe Nigeria is heading to a one-party system, but there are fundamental problems within political parties that make people leave and join another.
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“I believe that there are challenges, but I don’t believe that we are going into a one-party system,” he asserted.
“I believe we can do better. But it all boils down to Nigerians. You leave one party for another and when you find that your fortunes in one party are not materialising, then you jump ship and go to another party. Part of the litigation we have been talking about is a product of this. People are not so confident. There is a genuine crisis in political parties as it happened to us while we were in the PDP when we had the nPDP that ended up in this APC. That’s a whole chunk of about five, or seven states. In the end, only 5 or 6 states ended up in APC. You can’t say because you fear a one-party state it shouldn’t happen. We have rights. Some are right to stay in a political party or leave it if the condition under which they are leaving is contemplated in the constitution.”
The ex-senator lashed his former colleagues at the Senate for the Electoral Act which, according to him, is responsible for the increase in election-related litigations.
“The Electoral Law everybody is complaining about now, with all due respect to my colleagues at the National Assembly, we made the law and when we were doing so we said: watch it, watch it, for you might be taking a knife and stabbing yourself. That’s why all these litigations are taking place,” Adamu said.
“At the time, and I am sorry to say this, some people thought that the obstacles to the success of their political careers rested with their governors and they must prune the wings of the governors or the influence of the governors in their parties regarding the electoral process. That’s what brought all this.
“In the process of doing so, we have created laws that we now have problems implementing, unfortunately. There is a need to go back to the Electoral Act and work on it again. You see, we did it out of fury. One of the fundamental rules of legislation is that you must never make a law just to protect yourself. If you do, it goes into the category of bad laws.”