19 June 2008
opinion
It is important for the Nigerian people to be informed of the dangerous trend emerging from the mouths of high political office-holders of PDP affiliation whose elections have been nullified and whose appeals are pending before the different courts of appeal in Nigeria.
Governor Osareme Osunbor of Edo State, Governor Sullivan Chime of Enugu State and Senator David Mark have made statements calling for re-run elections. Their matters have been decided at the lower tribunals and their elections nullified; while all three of them have appealed their cases.
The statements by these three men are prejudicial and constitute an affront to the judiciary. It is wrong for these people who have been exercising questionable mandates for over a year now to be calling for re-run elections. There is no doubt that their confidence springs from the rigging spree that have been on in several states where INEC have rigged elections back to the PDP and President Umaru Musa Yar'adua has been watching while all these were go on. It is dangerous and capable of destroying what remains of Nigeria's democracy.
Nigeria's general elections conducted in 2007 were a big sham, according to local and international groups of observers and stakeholders who witnessed the conduct of the electoral event. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the statutory body with the responsibility of organising credible elections, has since given itself a pass mark irrespective of all the wide condemnations.
The numerous petitions at the tribunals and the outcome of re-run elections ordered by the courts in Kogi and Adamawa states particularly have not helped the electoral process in Nigeria to attain acceptable standard. It is still the old story of riggings, electoral fraud and suppression of opposition parties, casting doubts on the survival of Nigeria's democracy and the role of public institutions to create a workable social and political order for the Nigerian society.
The place of public institutions like INEC and the courts in the building of an enduring society of law and order to guarantee social, political and economic growth and development is a strategic one. Human progress is seen as dependent on these, that no forward-looking society tampers with those institutions and values that at the end of the day are relied upon to secure the common good and ensure social order.
Man has been acknowledged by the great philosopher, Aristotle, to be a political animal. For centuries, men and women of all ages have lived to lend credence to this position than to contradict it. That is to say that the life of man attains its fulfilment when lived in a governed society. The need to create this environment of laws and good governance to enable man to attain his best possible height and self-actualisation was a central reason why ancient philosophers were concerned with how best a society should be governed.
The role of the judiciary in the rebuilding of Nigeria's democracy is one that must be commended, but the recent statements of Governors Osunbor of Edo State, Chime of Enugu and Senate President David Mark will not help democracy and therefore should be condemned.
Billy Onoja, Department of Political Science, University of Jos.
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