Lagos — Have you heard the news? More appropriately, have you read TheNEWS? The magazine alleged last week that counsel to the Governor of Osun State, Mr Kunle Kalejaiye, had been making regular phone contacts with the chairman of the Osun Election Petitions Tribunal, Justice Thomas Norom. The magazine published call logs alleging that there have been hundreds of phone contacts - either by voice or SMS - between Kalejaiye and Norom in the last seven months.

What's special about that? Can't a lawyer call a judge in this age of technological advancement? Well, if only it were that simple. Osun State Governor, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, has a case before the same tribunal. Alhaji Rauf Aregbesola, the candidate of Action Congress (AC) in the 2007 governorship election, is challenging the validity of Oyinlola's election before that tribunal. So if indeed there is a regular phone contact between Norom and a party to the case, that cannot be dismissed as "normal".

Secondly, commonsense dictates that for the sake of avoiding insinuations of manipulations and undue influence, the lawyer and the judge should keep their distance until the case is over when they may now choose to sit down and share a cup of juice or cold water. For them to be saying regular "Y'ellow" while the case is on - some calls were as early as 5 am, according to TheNEWS - is something that should worry us.

To be fair, Kalejaiye has denied the allegation. He says the log was forged. He also published a letter he received from MTN to argue that the telecommunications giant did not give out the logs that the magazine published. However, Kalejaiye is a SAN and a clever man. MTN did not say the logs published by the magazine were forged or fake. It only said MTN is not the source. So maybe his defence is not watertight yet.

My own worry is that as soon as TheNEWS went to town with the story, the tribunal quickly fixed a date for judgment. This looks very suspicious. The AC people are now insinuating that the tribunal, in order to demonstrate that it was not influenced by Oyinlola's counsel, will go ahead and nullify the election and order a fresh one - thereby paving the way for Oyinlola to get a new four-year term. Whereas Aregbesola is trying to prove that he actually won the election, the tribunal has bluntly refused to allow forensic experts to analyse the ballot papers to prove Aregbesola's case.

By rushing to judgment this week and ordering a fresh election, the tribunal would have handed Oyinlola two victories. One, the tribunal can conveniently say, "If indeed we were influenced, why did we annul Oyinlola's victory?" This is perfect. Perfect argument. You can't fault that. The second victory: Oyinlola will go on appeal to buy time, probably get the election annulled and then go for a fresh four-year term. If he is that lucky, he could spend six years in office during his second term. Who can beat that?

That is probably why Aregbesola has petitioned the National Judicial Council (NJC) and Justice Umaru Abdullahi, the President of the Court of Appeal, to disband the Osun tribunal and constitute another one so that it can be dry-cleaned of the perceived biases. Should the tribunal go ahead and give a verdict after such controversy-ridden sittings?

God, something really worries me about this country. We're too negatively creative. You think a development is positive for our democracy - but before you know what is happening, the same instrument will be deployed to violate democracy. The back-door tenure extension that is now in vogue is unfortunately predicated on a just case. When the Supreme Court ruled last year that the tenure of Mr. Peter Obi as governor of Anambra State started counting from the day he was sworn in after a prolonged litigation, many of us celebrated the development.

Our celebration made sense, really. Why, after spending more than two years fighting his cause in the court of law, should Obi spend just one and a half years in office out of a four-year term? Allowing him to spend his full term, as contained in the constitution, made a lot of sense to justice. But what has happened since then? Elections are now being annulled by the tribunals left, right and centre - and the ultimate beneficiaries are the governors who were alleged to have rigged themselves to power in the first place.

So we end up with a situation in which a governor who has already spent one year in office now gets a new four-year mandate after a fresh election. As yet, no governor has lost any fresh election - effectively meaning an "incumbent" will spend five years in office and this will count as one term. Yet, this is significantly different from the Obi case - he had never been sworn in, so he had not spent a day in office. Compare this with a governor who has already been sworn in and whose litigation expenses, by law, are paid with tax payers' money. Then after a year in which he has fully entrenched himself logistically, financially and politically, he takes his might to the field for a fresh election. How on earth can he lose?

I find it very amusing that PDP has not lost any fresh election under President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua. There seems to be a perfect template being used by the ruling party now to capture states in such a way that the opponents would be left dumbfounded. Unlike ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo who often boasted openly that PDP would capture a state, or that an election was a "do or die" affair thereby drawing violent public criticism, Yar'Adua is a silent, smooth and clinical operator. He would not utter a word, yet he will get what he wants. By the time Yar'Adua is through with us in 2011 or 2015, I'm sure PDP would be controlling the 36 states of the federation without breaking sweat. The signs are already there - that is if the morning makes a success of foretelling the day.

It is even being said that governors whose elections are still being challenged are now lobbying the tribunals to order fresh elections - knowing full well that they would not lose. In Edo State, where the Election Petitions Tribunal ruled that Comrade Adams Oshiomhole won the 2007 governorship election and the judgment is currently on appeal, the incumbent governor is said to be moving seriously for the Appeal Tribunal to nullify the election outright and order a fresh poll. Going by the new, improved PDP election-winning formula, Prof. Osarhiemen Osunbor, the current governor, will decimate Oshiomhole in a fresh election. Oshiomhole will not pick a single local government. And that would mean four more years for Osunbor. No wonder governors are now said to favour fresh elections!

No fewer than five governors will spend five years in office in this dispensation in what may turn out to be a mischievous, maybe unintended exploitation of the weakness of the law. Some suggestions for constitutional amendment are being made in this regard as we prepare to review our laws. Some are saying that if after litigation the incumbent loses his position without any fresh election being ordered, then the new occupant of the office should just serve out the unexpired years of the ongoing term of office. That would mean Obi would have left office on May 29, 2007 after spending just over a year in office out of a four-year term. I think this would not be fair to people who genuinely won elections.

A second suggestion is that if a fresh election is ordered (unlike in the Obi case where he was declared winner outright), then whoever wins the fresh election should just serve out the remaining years left in the term. That would mean, for instance, that Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State, who just won his own fresh election, would still leave office on May 29, 2011 having been sworn in on May 29, 2007. This would guarantee that he spends only four years in office. But if his opponent, Ibrahim Bapatel, had won the fresh election, this would present a dilemma: why should Bapatel leave office on May 29, 2011 when he would have spent only three years in office? Shouldn't he enjoy his four years in full?

Maybe the solution lies somewhere in there. Let's try this option. If the "incumbent" wins a fresh election, the years he had spent in office prior to the nullification of his election should count. So he won't spend more than four years. If the fresh election is won by another candidate, then the winner should enjoy his full years. That would serve the cause of justice better. So in the Obi case, he would enjoy his full years. In Nyako case, he won't enjoy more than his four years. And in the Bapatel scenario, he too will run the four years in full. Those reviewing the constitution should consider this for the sake of future cases.

But I hope I am not being naïve. If I know Nigerian politicians and their lawyers very well, they must have spotted at least one or two loopholes in my "foolproof" suggestion which they will exploit in the future. After all, whoever thought the Peter Obi case would open the door to the current abuse? That is what it means to be negatively creative. Nigeria!