The Dying Republic And ‘Go To Court’!

 By Ugoji Egbujo

Soon after independence, election rigging set the western region on fire and brought down the first republic. ‘Operation Wetie’ wasn’t just frustration and impatience; it was a rejection of the courts. In the second republic, malpractices returned to ruin elections’ credibility, and Baba Ajasin saw it better than others. Omoboriowo, who snatched victory from Baba, had to flee.

When that republic fell, the soldiers blamed their coming on economic hardship and rigged elections. The third republic didn’t last. Principal politicians, excluded, others were railroaded into an artificial dichotomy of two sterilised parties. Shorn of natural birth and passion and with a more transparent electoral procedure, the June 12 presidential election lacked edginess, fire and controversy. It didn’t precipitate confusion.

It had to be brazenly annulled. In the fourth republic, politics degenerated precipitously into a lucrative business, and people started stealing  elections. Apathy ensued. Social media has brought back passion, but now those who steal mock their bruised victims, telling them to go to court. Things haven’t fallen apart yet, but with astounding judicial impunity, it appears the falcon has stopped hearing the falconer.

Go to court. You can’t rig where you are not popular. Go to court. The law is an ass. Perhaps electoral laws that require poor victims to prove beyond all reasonable doubt electoral frauds perpetrated by powerful people in government must be a piece of shit. Go to court. The Justices of the Supreme Court are our comrades. 

Otherwise, we know their price. Go to court. We made them and have them in our pockets. Go to court. We will fill their mouths with sweet dollars, and they will teach you the difficulty of proving a lack of substantial compliance with the laws. Or they might find one or two useful technicalities to throw your petition into your face. You can’t forget Akpabio and Lawan, can you? Go to court. You dreamer, you think power is served on a plate 

 The constitution’s drafters could never have contemplated that the electoral process could be subjected to such gross and comprehensive abuses. Or that rogues would leave the underworld to vie to be leaders at all levels. The law is not for the jungle. It can’t check the conspiracy of the INEC, police, and judges to sabotage elections blatantly. The law lacks that capacity. Indeed, laws are tools, like knives and guns, for good but capable of evil. If society has been captured and seized by roguery, the law will inevitably be used to establish lawlessness to undermine truth, good faith and democracy. 

The law says INEC should be independent. But it can’t go looking for independent-minded, courageous and incorruptible people from Timbuktu  to lead INEC. Here, Governors nominate young and ageing Esaus to play the roles of presiding, collating and returning officers. Presidents handpick the INEC chairman and commissioners. And the presidents often don’t behave like statesmen. 

The law requires the police to provide security to ensure freedom and fairness during elections. If the drafters of the law knew that an entire police establishment could be reduced to thugs to snatch ballot boxes and result sheets, they would have left the duty to the people to help themselves or perish in servitude. 

Election tribunals are designed to be sparingly used. In Ghana, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, India,  etc, they are rarely used. Our political culture is smash and grab, win-at-all-costs, and live hypocritically ever after. Institutions that regulate and conduct elections should manifest the dignity and integrity of principled umpires. The participants, like sportsmen, would ruin the game and themselves if they had no regard for agreed rules.

However, electoral tribunals will be inundated where the political culture is governed by naked opportunism. Sacred processes will be casually defiled if political office serves cynical personal rather than moral and public interests and the elections are decided by ill-gotten wealth and brigandage. If those who steal elections are allowed to assume office while the process is being adjudicated, then there is an incentive to steal it.

If those who steal it and are sworn in obtain instant access to the treasury and impunity, then the routine buying of judges to cement the electoral perfidies can’t but be rife. And since judges are not saints, and since they live in a society where money is worshipped and people in authority stack tons of it in holes so that they never return to poverty, judgments will be sold without compunction to the bidders who bid from the public treasury.

If the judges know election time is boom time, they might gamble their last naira to be on the tribunals. When that happens, this nefarious judicial decision-making becomes utterly transactional and loses the feel of criminality. It is this predictability that endows people who have grabbed power at elections by hook or crook with the arrogance to look into the faces of the victims and snort, Go to court. Go to your final Waterloo, you JJC!

Sometimes, the compromised judges must pull a rabbit out of their hats. These rabbits eat up the rational framework of the nation’s jurisprudence, leaving legal scholars of all ages in dispiriting quandaries. But our revered judges often need not break a sweat of knavishness. The thief in the government house will hire the best lawyers to hang onto his electoral heist. Besides knowing the handicaps of the law, some of these benighted legal luminaries actually acquired their deity reputations by developing promiscuous relationships with the bench.

So, a combination of their dubious mastery of the law and incestuous dalliance with the judicial cartel makes finding suitable technicalities easier. These judges and lawyers of easy virtue are blessed. Those who draft the legislation in Nigeria are never fastidious once they put their heads down to fashion legal reforms. Sometimes, it’s the benign ignorance of lawmakers, who, in being overly sentimental or sensational in protecting their presumed backward electorate from rapid modernisation, shoot them in the foot by inserting ambiguities in new electoral laws.

If the justices at the apex court had the country’s interest at heart, they would read electoral rules and regulations purposefully to cure the intended mischief. But if the judiciary is filled with Judicial Brother Jeros, piggybacked to the highest echelon by the election thieves and their political godfathers, the outcome will be a cynical, rigid interpretation of the law and arbitrary and underhanded technicalities undermine and frustrate  reforms to the benefit of election thieves. It does appear that the Supreme Court doesn’t want to become irrelevant in the electoral process. The more cases they get, the richer crooked justices become. 

The fourth republic is on the precipice. Some effort was made in preparation for the 2015  elections. The card reader. It should have been improved in 2019, but Buhari failed to drive electoral reforms for cynical self-preservative reasons. The BVAS came in time for 2023 with mandatory electronic accreditation and electronic transfer of result sheets. Hope replaced chronic apathy. But these lofty reforms have been effectively sabotaged by the INEC, Police and Judges. 

A mind-bending deterioration has set in. Without the introduction of electronic voting, we can as well suspend all future elections. Even though that won’t cure vote buying, anything that significantly discourages the hijack of ballot boxes and falsification of result sheets and returns authority to the voter will help now. 

Reforming a thoroughly contaminated system with a backward momentum will be difficult. Without fixing the political culture, the rot will only fester. Our leaders have lost the appetite for electoral reforms. 2023 mischiefs have been freely allowed to damage 2024 elections. Electronic voting must be instituted immediately and tested rigorously before 2027.  We must amend the laws to enable the speedy conclusion of all legal challenges before winners are sworn in. The albatross of an exorbitant, absurd and hopeless four-yearly dysfunctional ritual that perpetuates misery has to be dismantled with good faith and innovation. 

When Justice Dattijo Muhammad of the Supreme Court was retiring, he told the nation that the Supreme Court was manifestly corrupt. That court could become a cult. It will only get more power drunk and corrupt if we don’t clean up the electoral process and save it from the enticement of desperate politicians. The EFCC has been castrated. An Electoral Offences Commission is desirable but might suffer the same fate except if the political culture changes. Prayers alone aren’t good enough; we must do something to fix the mess. But at this point, we need prayers. 

The fourth republic is on the precipice. 

*Dr. Egbujo is a commentator on public issues