Dele Sobowale
23 November 2008
column
Last week, the first installment of this essay ended without doing substantial justice to the title. I apologise for this.
I was distracted on account of the call from the workshop where my car was undergoing repairs after an accident. Being told that you need N300,000 to put a car back on the road is enough to disturb anyone.
But, let me finish what I started by pointing out how I strongly believe the judiciary has either willingly or inadvertently been a collaborator in perpetuating electoral fraud a lot of times; notwithstanding the recent victory of Adams Oshiomhole at the Court of Appeal. In fact, that judgment will serve as our point of departure demonstrating some of what I mean.
The election whose result has finally been announced actually took place in April last year; that is, over eighteen months ago. It has taken all of eighteen months for the judiciary to inform the people of Edo State and indeed, the whole world that a wrong person has been ruling them.
During that period, a great deal of the state's resources have been ordered allocated to programmes and individuals decided by the man; state lands have been allocated, certificates of occupancy have been issued; civil servants have been promoted, demoted and even retrenched by someone who it now turns out had no right to do that.
In short, lives of people in Edo State have been affected, directly or indirectly, for good or for ill, by a person who should not have been doing so.
The first question is: how many of these can now be reversed by the current government without doing even more violence to the lives of the people?
Can, for instance, a parcel of land given out by Osunbor and on which a petrol station has been built have its C of O revoked and get demolished when the authority to construct came from a "government" in power at the time - even if the government had now proved to be illegitimate?
That question, regarding the legitimacy of actions taken by Osunbor, can be repeated in so many instances where the judiciary has been contented to allow cases to drag on for up to twenty months as if the state remains at a standstill while the justices deliberate.
We have seen such things happen, first in Anambra, during the second term of elected governments and one would have expected the judiciary which is also a part of society to be pro-active in finding solutions to this problem. Instead, the situation goes from bad to worse. As this column is being written, the people of Ekiti, Oyo, Ondo as well as three or four other states still don't know if the person addressed as His Excellency deserves the appellation or is just an excellent vote rigger.
But, that is small potatoes. At the Federal level, the people of Nigeria don't even know whether we should obey Yar'Adua or ignore him because, in the eighteen months since the last election, we have not been told by the Supreme Court if the man in Aso Rock is our president or just another bench-warmer.
Whether or not the justices of the highest court in the land will follow the dictates of Emperor Ferdinand I who proclaimed, Fiat iusticia, et pereat mundus, (Latin) meaning, Let justice be done, though the world perish" or shy away from upsetting the nation by upholding the judgment of the Appeal Court, we will eventually see.
The least disturbing outcome of the case of Atiku versus Yar'Adua is for the Supreme Court to deny the appeal on technical grounds leaving aside the issue of substantial justice. The most upsetting will be for the Supreme Court to order fresh election.
Even in the first instance, it would still amount to "justice delayed is justice denied" in the words of Associate Justice of the U.S Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis, 1856-1941. In the latter case, that is, a judgment voiding the election, justice would not only have been delayed and denied to the plaintiff, but to the people of Nigeria.
That would have been bad enough. But there is more injustice involved. Almost invariably, the office holder and defendant invariably has access to public funds with which to pay for his legal expenses, the plaintiff, who might turn out to be the legitimately elected official in the mean time has to depend on his own resources and the assistance he can obtain from friends to fight the battle.
While the legal battle rages on, the incumbent is busy accumulating wealth such that even if he loses the case as we witnessed in Anambra, Rivers, and now Edo, he would never have to work a day in his life again. Eighteen months is a long time for anyone to raid the treasury of any state in Nigeria, especially with the usually complaisant legislative houses.
Consequently, the people who were robbed of their mandate watch helplessly as the impostors rob the public purse again while the justices take their time again as if everything stands still while they deliberate.
Quite clearly, the time has come for two things to happen. We need a more activist judiciary which will stand up to the Executive branch whose party in power seeks to frustrate the electorate by indulging in electoral malpractice resulting in so many contested elections.
The ruling party and the electoral commissions it establishes, whether at the state or federal level should be penalised for shortcomings in elections instead of allowing them to rely on technicalities. Two, we need to adopt the American system of speeding up trials such that nobody can take up office until cases are disposed off and that very rapidly.
As it is, the people of Ondo and Ekiti as well as of Nigeria, will wait even longer. Out of forty-eight months, we would have spent about twenty not knowing who won an election. Which other judiciary in the world operates that way? Once more, my apologies, this should have been added last week before closing the column.
Stop Press: Just before this piece was sent to the editor, the presidency announced the names of some of the people nominated for ministerial appointment. Among them is Dr. Rilwanu Lukman whose role in the scandals involving the NNPC is still under investigation and who had served every failed government in the last twenty years. What more evidence do we need of a leader completely wedded to the inglorious past?
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
