This 13-hour verdict, which is the longest court judgement in Nigeria’s history, is a confounding finish to the greatest election challenge ever. It was like a half day labour of a pregnant elephant that ended up birthing a rat which will be dissected for years to come.
By Emmanuel Ogebe
Nigeria’s epic presidential election challenge, which I had flown from Washington to cover over the summer, just ended with a 13-hour live broadcast. It was tiring even watching from my home in Washington and not from my tight courtroom seat.
The case had many references to current and past global affairs. One barrister argued that trying to get poll results from the election agency was like Ukraine seeking arms from Russia to fight it. When he suggested that future elections should be all electronic, one of the Justices said, “in the US they have that but Trump has things to say about it.”
But beyond the boisterous banter of my brother barristers, the court dealt with a serious matter related to the 1993 narcotic trafficking drug money forfeiture of Nigeria’s challenged president Bola Tinubu in Chicago.
It ruled that the $460,000 money laundering forfeiture in US District Court was not conviction-based and was statute-barred clearing Tinubu’s main constitutional disqualifier.
Another was whether there’s a constitutional threshold of 25% votes in 24 states and the capital city Abuja to be president.
Abuja like Washington DC doesn’t have statehood, a governor or members of the House.
Like many lawyers, I believe that candidates should have 25% of votes in Abuja because of the disadvantage. The rationale is equity and fairness, and I compare it with the U.S., that this is the Nigerian equivalent of the Electoral College (but fairer).
The US Electoral College was supposed to provide Southern slave-holding states with a little more leverage in determining the president of the US and it became anachronistic because you now have a split between who wins the popular votes and who wins the Electoral College and sometimes it is not the same thing.
Nigeria is a better model where you’re required to have 25% in 24 states and Abuja. Unfortunately the court ruled that although Tinubu scored only 18% of the votes in Abuja compared to his challenger Peter Obi who scored over 50%, that he made up for it in other states. It didn’t have to be Abuja.
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All election cases in Nigeria tend to be litigated (except in 2015) and the deeply disappointing court verdict is reminiscent of what American pastor politician Pat Roberson quoting Thomas Jefferson called “the tyranny of an oligarchy” – when you have a court of five decide an election for millions of people, it appears unjust.
Unlike Nigeria, recent elections in the US are generally not contested much (except in 2000 Gore v Bush) until we had Trump who filed over 60 lawsuits claiming election fraud and lost all of them.
Tinubu won mostly on technicalities as the court threw out evidence of forgeries of his Chicago State University certificates and testimony it claimed was not filed on time. It bizarrely claimed the multimillion dollar electronic voting systems, which detected fraudulent wins for Tinubu in two states won by Peter and showed 39,000 missing results, were irrelevant.
As the court droned to a 10pm closing after it began sitting at 9am with no lunch breaks, Trump featured again. Railing against a European Union Election Observer report, one of the five justices said, “Trump has been complaining about the 2020 elections but the Europeans have said nothing about that. I will stop there.”
To everyone’s relief he did but lawyers for the challengers will not. They have announced an appeal to Nigeria’s Supreme Court, as well they should, against a monumental failure of substantial justice for the electorate, in the longest judgment ever delivered in Nigerian history. It was like a half day labor of a pregnant elephant that ended up birthing a rat which will be dissected for years to come.
- Emmanuel Ogebe’s 2023 Presidential Election Court Diary PT 14
