Let the Supreme Court avert the descent of our democracy into perdition
By Emma Nwosu
To those of us who have witnessed Nigerian elections since the First Republic, the presidential election of February 25, 2023 was, indeed, the worst – more painfully, against all the promise of the Electoral Act, 2022, primed to curb brigandage and other election evils. Critical to this promise is the bi-modal accreditation of voters and real-time transmission of voting data directly from the polling unit to the public viewing portal (IREV) of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) to which reference must be made in the authentication and compilation of results, going by Section 64(4) of the Act.
The noble intention was to eliminate over-voting, snatching and stuffing of the ballot box, interception and falsification of documents and other forms of thuggery and human intervention – to make election results less pliable and more reliable. Alas, that was not to be!
To the vast majority of Nigerians, the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) judgement of September 6, 2023, violated the spirit of the Electoral Act, 2022, for transparency in voting and compilation of results. If not reversed, that judgement would return Nigerian to the nasty and brutish Hobbesian election era. Nigerians are yet to come to terms with the declaration of the winner by the INEC, which is not supported by their well-known facts and experience. There may never be a credible election again and our democracy would descend into perdition.
Aggrieved parties must be commended for persevering in the legal system – instead of unleashing followers on the streets. The PEPT is not the last bus stop and, in life, “It is not over until it is over”.
Election manipulation has always generated long-term crisis and paved the way for soldiers to truncate democracy. Yet our politicians would not repent of their evil ways.
Not long after the inimitable Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe issued the lamentation titled “History will Vindicate the Just and God shall Punish the Wicked” (after the National Party of Nigeria mindlessly manipulated the 1983 general elections to retain the presidency) the army struck again, on December 31, 1983, with General Muhammadu Buhari becoming Head of State. Before then, the January 1966 coup d’etat, which ended the First Republic, was the main aftermath of the chaotic federal elections of 1964, exacerbated by that of the legislative election of November 1965, in the Western Region.
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The annulment of the presidential election of June 1993, when Chief Moshood Abiola, a popular businessman and philanthropist, was cruising to victory (as was the case in the 2023 election) threw the country into turmoil for a long time, ending in another six years of military dictatorship.
This time, the disconsolate populace, with back to the wall, are also bound to react – if the Supreme Court does not disabuse their suspicion. The groundswell has been started by the youths, since the 2023 general election season. It is unfortunate that our politicians, the INEC and the election petition tribunals, seemingly, fail to smell the coffee.
In particular, despite Section 64 (4) of the Electoral Act, 2022 and the pledges profusely made to the electorate by the INEC, the PEPT decided that real-time transmission of polling data, from the polling station to the IREV, along with other transparency controls provided by that Electoral Act, is not mandatory, which leaves the INEC with unlimited discretion in the compilation of results.
Despite precedents, the PEPT decided that there is nothing peculiar about the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and that 25 percent of the votes of the FCT is not mandatory to win a presidential election. It also dismissed the evidence of brigandage, perjury and other blatant frauds presented by the petitioners and their witnesses as insufficient to cancel any of the results, relying on technicalities and an overbearing burden of proof against the petitioners. The judgement read like one written by a bellicose third party in Mars. Their lordships could not even render it smoothly.
All hope is now on the Supreme Court to reflect on precedents and on facts well-known to the people, to remedy the apparent bellicosity of the PEPT, to restore confidence in the electoral process and avert mayhem (particularly, by disconsolate youths) regardless of who is finally certified winner.
Every judgement must aim, primarily, at the advancement (or good) of the society, beyond technicalities; thus, the maxim that “The law is made for man and not man for the law”.
This philosophy of law is the basis of the Social Contract between the state and the citizens, in which the law is supposed to protect the weak against the arbitrariness of the powerful. Otherwise, the society would be in a perpetual state of nature which is nasty, brutish and short, as properly described by Thomas Hobbes in his book “Leviathan”. Law must be anchored on social justice. Without justice, there can be no peace and without peace there can be no development, the main purpose of the social contract.
For example, is it defensible that all voting and result handling technology and protocols worked perfectly in the accreditation of voters and in real-time transmission of National Assembly results from the polling units to the IREV but only failed in concurrently transmitting the presidential election results from the same polling units, on the same day, at the same time, “due to glitches” and no reason for the glitches has been made public and nobody is known to have been brought to book, till today? Only a fool would not figure that the non-transmission of polling unit results, in real time, in the presidential leg of the election, was selective and intentional – against the run of votes – which is gross injustice.
Moreover, this “at all cost fight for it, grab it, snatch it and run with it” election strategy, by which our politicians bulldoze to power and, therefore, owe no allegiance to voters they deem bought and subjugated, must be done away with, so that those motivated by service to the state can begin to emerge. After all, people campaign vigorously to serve their communities, professional associations, clubs and societies, gloriously, without pay. It is a mistake to base state elections and political office on money, which is what has rendered politicians and public servants predatory, at the expense of accountability and inclusive prosperity. This is an important lesson that can be delivered by the Supreme Court.
