Perhaps unlike at any other time in our history of election petitions, the 2019 general elections presented politicians, political parties and especially the Supreme Court with the greatest challenges and lessons to learn from.
In Nigeria an electoral cycle is not complete until all petitions arising from it are exhausted at all levels of the Election Petition Tribunals.
The perception that the 2019 general elections were the most controversial since 1999 was further bolstered by the fact that politicians, political parties, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and even the otherwise hallowed institution of the Supreme Court were left bleeding in the end. On the other hand, our best election so far in the past 22 years – the 2015 general polls – produced the fewest legal challenges.
For this and other reasons, we urge President Muhammadu Buhari to search for a new INEC Chairman later in the year when the five-year tenure of Prof. Mahmood Yakubu ends. As former President Olusegun Obasanjo would say: “We must never reinforce failure”.
This should be part of efforts to ensure improved elections going forward. For political aspirants and political parties, what happened to the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Rivers, Zamfara and Bayelsa where they lost golden opportunities to win or retain power is a useful lesson. Issues of wrongful candidate nominations occasioned by carelessness, impunity and excessive infighting deprived the party at the courts.
Also, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP’s, carelessness in handling ex-Governor Emeka Ihedioha’s election petition took away the crown which Ihedioha had already worn for seven months. Parties must be more meticulous in handling their pre-election and post-election affairs in order to find favours due them at the Election Petition Tribunals.
The greatest lesson that the Supreme Court has to learn is to run away from politicians in the discharge of their near-divine responsibilities. The Court was nearly disgraced during the just-concluded electoral petitions because the perceived conducts of some of the judges left the hallowed institution very vulnerable.
If not for the “finality” principle of Supreme Court verdicts which the Court invoked to shield itself, particularly from the Imo governorship challenge, the sacredness of that institution would have collapsed from an endless avalanche of applications for the reviews of their past settled cases, including land, criminal, commercial and political cases.
The threat of such avalanches was indeed one that alarmed all well-meaning Nigerians which necessitated the calls for the Court to sacrifice whatever is deemed necessary to reassert its finality. It is up to it to deal with the legal loose ends its blunders produced. We must strive to produce elections that are free, fair and acceptable.
That way we can protect our Judiciary from undue exposure.
VANGAURD
