Nigeria may have become the laughing stock of the world after the 2007 polls, but its justice system threatens to sentence the nation to the rule of the jungle.

Twenty-one months after the disputed polls, states like Abia, Imo, Ondo and Ekiti cannot identify their legitimate governor. For Martin Agbaso, the APGA gubernatorial candidate for Imo State, who has been tossed from a regular court to an election tribunal and back to a court for judicial review, the tussle is just beginning.

INEC will forever stand condemned for its partisanship and illegal acts that have slowed the wheels of justice. In Imo, home state of its chairman Maurice Iwu, for instance, it cancelled the governorship poll after results for all but one of the 27 LGAs had been announced, apparently because a deal had been struck between an INEC chieftain and another party that was eventually awarded victory in a rescheduled election. Yet, it spared elections into the state legislature conducted with the same ballot boxes at the same time. APGA's Agbaso, who won the "cancelled" poll by a landslide, should continue to seek the source of INEC's power. Doggedness pays.