Re: Yar’Adua’s legal victory

The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal delivered its judgment on Tuesday 26th February, 2008, on the consolidated petitions filed before it by the presidential candidates of the Action Congress and the All Nigerian People’s Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and General Muhammadu Buhari respectively. To discerning minds, it came as no surprise that the platforms on which the petitions were anchored were torn to shreds by the presidential election petitions tribunal because the petitioners’ legal teams were not as diligent as a case of that nature deserved.

Expectedly, there had been varied views on the judgment from some legal minds and some that are not trained in the intricacies and nuances of legal fireworks in a courtroom.Some are as informed but not based on facts other than sentiments.

Some are not for nor against; and it is in this cubicle that we place Sina Oladeinde’s “Yar Adua’s legal victory” published on page 16 of Nigerian Tribune of Thursday, 28 February 2008. Being Nigerians and aware of the infinite rabble-rousing capacity of the opposition groups in Nigeria, the leadership of the presidential election petition tribunal (Court of Appeal) took the wise decision to televise the judgment live and ensured that not only Nigerians living in Nigeria were given the opportunity to watch the proceedings but others beyond the shores of Nigeria. This singular act helped to diffuse the expected backlash that would have occurred after the judgment, whichever way the judicial pendulum had swung.

As Sina rightly pointed out, the opposition parties in Nigeria are very disorganised, they lack focus but stupidly believe that vile propaganda on the pages of Newspapers are the antidote that a Leviathan like Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) needs for it to be dislodged from power and this sort of malady and malaise was displayed by the legal team deployed to prosecute the petitions at the tribunal. Contrary to the postulation of Sina that the nation may have continued its journey to a ruinous destination because of Yar’Adua’s victory, we think that, the judgment will afford the legal teams saddled with such assignments in future to do their home work very well before advising their clients to proceed on any cause or action, because the mandarins in the PDP will prosecute future elections with the same mindsets that all they need to spice a rotten meat to give it a sweet aroma is to await the opposition in court, who as usual through their legal teams will also bungle the case with careless abandon.

Laws are made for man and not the other way round. We are not lawyers but we know that judges are humans and try as much as possible to base their judgments on the facts, evidences procured through cross-examinations as placed before them. Put simply, the law courts, nay tribunals, are places where judgments arrived are not based on sentiments, or jaundiced opinions of hack-writers masquerading as commentators but on hard facts and figures. We recollect that the Tribunals/judiciary was removing governors based on verifiable evidences and technicalities, the judiciary was hailed and praised to high heavens. The judiciary was then seen as the last hope of the common man simply because these judgments fitted into their collective self-fulfilling prophesy.

We are contending that as good as the case of the petitioners were, it is axiomatic to state that it was not presented professionally and it was not the duty of the tribunal members to adjudicate on issues not placed before them as some voluble and noisy lawyers would want Nigerians to believe.

To blame the justices of the presidential election petition tribunal for making copious use of legal references (not only Obasanjo-Buhari 2003 judgment alone) is to miss the point because these references are like what fuel is to a mechanical contraption, without them, judges will not be different from a biased umpire. It is the duty of the opposition to galvanise the citizenry by ensuring that those things that tend to stultify our political development are highlighted and solutions found for them instead of crying when the head had been severed from the body.

We are watching with bemusement as some former Governors who had been accused of fiddling with their respective state treasuries are strutting the length and breadth of our country as freemen because of technicalities in our laws but our lawyers are always wont to remind us that we cannot reprobate and approbate at the same time. That is why our laws stipulate that a father whose daughter had been raped should let the law take its course. We are also always informed that a man is presumed innocent until proved otherwise by a court of competent jurisdiction even if one’s property are found in his possession or caught in the act! Of course, without such legal strictures, society will relapse into the Hobbesian state of nature (is Nigeria not approximating it already?) and that is why the woman holding the scale of justice is blindfolded. It does not help the cause of political, economic and social development in this country to keep on grandstanding and rabble-rousing on an issue that is clear to every body simply because some people did not get their acts right and thereby equating personal and selfish interests with societal interests.

No, “we are not going to continue with this ritual of seeking the court’s power to confer legitimacy on presidential election winners every four years “ if we are all agreed that the mode of election that produced a winner in the June 12, 1993 presidential election is the most suitable for our level of development as a nation. We humbly submit that this should pre-occupy the minds of the opposition instead of trying to find fault with a very sound and lucid judgment of the tribunal.

All said and done, the press and the bar are the sole beneficiaries of the contrived impasse because they are the ones smiling to the banks and not the bench.

Mallam Ahmed Jaji, Executive Secretary, Never Again Group, neveragaingroup@yahoo.com

REACTION

Nothing would have happened should the election of Yar’Adua be annuled. Nigerians have no problem with Yar’Adua. I am disaappointed we lost that chance which would have bad politicians on their knees. More power to Iwu’s disrespect for the Electoral Act and more power to Adedibu et al. Please, pray for the emergence of fearless judges.
Ajayi S.O.O, Ibadan.

What Yar’Adua has achieved is not victory but a conquest, for injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Kudos should be given to Yar’Adua’s lawyers. The lawyers did a good job on a very bad case. Though Yar’Adua’s PDP has become a gargantuan moster in the nation’s politics, what they called landslide victory in 2007 election was actually a daylight robbery.

How I wish the court would give back to Nigerians what Obasanjo and Iwu denied them through a do-or-die election. If this was done, we would have witnessed a free and fair presidential election and a “moonslide” victory infavoiur of Yar’Adua. The greatest lesson for Atiku’s AC and Buhari’s ANPP as 2011 draws near is that in politics, an organised minority is a political majority.
Ajuwon Oludeji Johnson, Ibadan.

I appreciate your article on Re: Yar’Adua’s legal victory. May God almighty lead Nigeria and Nigerians aright.
Biodun Hamzat.