Yar’Adua, rule of law and Nigeria’s future

Umaru Yar’adua

Ag. Group Politics Editor, Idowu Samuel, writes on how the philosophy of adherence to the rule of law of President Umaru Yar’Adua has affected the Nigerian judiciary and how it may affect the future of politics in the country.

Politics in Nigeria has long been occurring as a game played with high measure of subterfuge and this has been making it to be unpredictable all day. Since 1999 when democracy returned to Nigeria with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as president, there have been unpalatable political incidents recorded through his reported directives, all of which had made politics generally distasteful.

It started when the former president applied wisdom in infusing the idea of leadership selection by consensus into national politics and, by that, paved ways for candidates favoured by him and his own supporters to emerge as heads of strategic political offices, National Assembly members and governors. In his days, elections hardly took place in the real sense where political parties set aside constitutional requirements while installing leaders.

It was not long before the adverse political trend in Nigeria began to change. That process came with the emergence of President Umaru Yar’Adua as Obasanjo’s successor. From the start, Yar’Adua began to profess commitment to the principle of rule of law, transparency and due process as the guiding philosophy for his administration. He meant business only that Nigerians never understood his mindset on how he would go by his words.

Unlike his predecessor, Yar’Adua has obviously refused to lift a finger to turn the hands of the clock in his own favour in relation to the cases at the election petition tribunals sitting across the country. He seems to be doing that in demonstration of his seriousness about making good his vows on giving Nigeria a re-branded democracy meant to operate by strict adherence to the principles of law. The government had, to this effect, set up a committee on political reform, headed by the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Ibrahim Uwais, to bring the dream to fruition.

Somehow, the general situation of things in the country could be a reflection of the character and attitude of the man at the helm of affairs. In that regard, Nigerians are beginning to perceive their president as radiating some positive virtues with his austere nature. One major area where the thought flow of President Yar’Adua is gaining more expression is the judiciary. Since, the new government took off in May 2007, the judiciary has been positioning itself as the likely saviour of the politics of Nigeria as could be understood in the manner it has been handling the cases before the tribunals across the country. The third arm of government in the presidential democracy in Nigeria has apparently devolved itself from political sentiments in addressing the petitions before it which attests to the gross irregularities that seasoned the last general elections in the country and which made almost all observers to adjudge the elections as flawed.

So far, the judiciary has nullified the elections of six governors one after the other, all putting the ruling party in a tight corner being the one affected mainly. The judiciary drew greater attention to itself last week when the Appeal Court Tribunal upheld a state tribunal judgement which nullified the election of a one-time governor of Kogi State, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris. It was a landmark judgment which has in a way offered an insight into what to expect from the other tribunals yet to give their final rulings.

In June 2007, Prince Audu Abubakar had taken the former governor of Kogi State to the tribunal on the basis that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) excluded him from the governorship election in the state, despite being qualified to participate in it. The INEC had hinged its resolve to exclude Idris from the election on the allegations of corruption leveled against the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) candidate by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Even at that, INEC said it drew the authority to do so from Section 145 of the Electoral Act 2006 as well as Section 181 (F) of the 1999 Constitution. Both sections of the laws on election harp on the need for exclusion of candidates who had been declared bankrupt from participating in an election. However, the issue of the power of the INEC to exclude candidates from elections had been subjected ro contest between some candidates and INEC just before the April 2007 general elections.

The presidential candidate of the Action Congress (AC), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who had also been excluded from the election took INEC to court to challenge its authority to exclude him. INEC won the case up to the level of Appeal Court only for Atiku to proceed to the Supreme Court which ruled that INEC had no power to exclude candidates.

The litigations on the issue of candidate exclusion in elections could only put INEC in a tight corner. The reason being that it had started the conduct of the elections before the Supreme Court delivered its judgment on April 16, 2007. The implication is that the election so far conducted by INEC on the basis of the Appeal Court ruling appeared to have been on the track, given the superior judgment by the Supreme Court.

Commenting on the turn of events, INEC’s Commissioner in Charge of Information, Mr. Philip Umeadi, said the Appeal Court’s ruling on the Kogi State case was unique in that it did not accuse INEC of perpetrating fraud in the governorship election in the state, but complained only about the exclusion of Audu.

Umeadi stressed that INEC did not err in excluding the former governor of the state from participating in the election, having obeyed the constitution and electoral law in doing that. Yet, he said the electoral body had no quarrel with the judgment by the Appeal Court Tribunal.

Interestingly, the latest development in Kogi State is causing ripples in the camp of state governors who have similar petitions pending against them. The source of worry for the governors affected is that if the tribunal and the Appeal Court could take exception to the INEC exclusion of candidates, what to expect is similar judgments against them. It, thus, presupposes that the weeks ahead would bring forth casualties in more state governors who won elections on the basis of exclusion of their arch opponents from the elections, the appeals against tribunal rulings in some of the states notwithstanding.

Therefore, if the hope of a reprieve from the Appeal Court is increasingly getting nebulous for the embattled governors, the best option is to pin expectations on possibility of re-running the governorship elections. That seems to be the only way out for the former governor of Kogi State whose case has now become a living example in the dispensation of justice on elections gone awry across the states.

The turn of events could only sign-post the political scenarios to expect in Nigeria with a man like President Yar’Adua in the saddle. Twice had he demonstrated that he would entertain no arm-twisting on judicial matters. The first was when he ordered the swearing in of Rotimi Amaechi as the governor of Rivers State after the Supreme Court had declared his predecessor unfit to be in power based on the fraud that rocked the primaries of the PDP which threw Celestine Omehia up as the governor. The second demonstration of fith in the judiciary by Yar’Adua came clearer when he asked the speaker of Kogi State House of Assembly to take over the reign of government in the state in the light of the Appeal Court ruling of last week.

If Nigeria’s politics will later assume a new face in the light of attempts by the judiciary to redefine the processes and, thus, be put on strong footing, the view of the president on democracy and rule of law could not have been less appreciated. Perhaps, the only way to make the future of politics in Nigeria brighter is massive cooperation by the populace with the reigning government on its determination to make it so.