This article, published on January 2, 2005, was one of the earliest pieces by the author and founder after launching LEADERSHIP. His articles helped to define the brand over the years. This one, slightly modified, is Sam at his provocative best!
President Olusegun Obasanjo killed democracy in April last year. The Nigerian judiciary buried it last Monday, 20th December 2004, in a funeral that was far from being solemn. Somehow, I know the presidential election tribunal would go the way of the reputation the Nigerian judiciary had established for itself.
In 2003, I was the first to declare that going to court to seek redress on any election was not only a waste of time but the worst case of insult upon injury.
I know that, like the officials of INEC and the top rank of police, the members of the election tribunal were handpicked. I decided in 2003, especially after seeing how low Obasanjo was prepared to go to remain in power, not to deceive myself.
I knew neither the ballot nor the judiciary could remove a desperate 70-year-old president who would attempt to forge a law to remain in power. Despite all this, I still found myself angry – not sad – when I heard the judgments of the majority of the judges of the presidential election tribunal. I don’t mind being cheated because I know someone will have to pay for that someday. What I can’t take is someone playing on my intelligence.
It would appear that in the whole world, only those judges last Monday didn’t see anything wrong with the 2003 presidential election. Everyone, including the election monitors and even Obasanjo and the PDP hierarchs themselves, have agreed that the elections were rigged.
Obasanjo and Audu Ogbeh, the PDP chairman, told us in their disgraceful exchange of letters that they knew the election was rigged. Chris Ubah said he discussed all the rigging he did with the president and Audu Ogbeh. Will Chris Ubah rig the election for Governor Chris Ngige without rigging for his master? Was it not Obasanjo who countenanced Chris Ubah in the first place?
One of the judges last week even said that despite the exchange of letters between Obasanjo and Ogbeh, as far as they were concerned, the elections in Anambra state were free and fair. You know something has happened when you hear full-grown men who are otherwise respected talking like this.
The election in Rivers State, too, where Marshal Harry was found to have voted several weeks after he was murdered, was in the reckoning of all the tribunals free and fair. That is the state where elections ended at record time with record numbers. The Nigerian judiciary has created the image it deserves for itself.
It is a pity that every passing minute, the predominant face of the judiciary is the one represented by Justice Wilson Egbo-Egbo, who would, without misgivings, compunction or even the slightest uneasiness, pass a judgment declaring that Mr. Adolphus Wabara, who was not a candidate in any election, was the elected senator of the people.
This judgment was even passed in record time – within just a few days (compared with other election cases) and despite the protest from INEC itself. That is the face of the judiciary in Nigeria, and that should sober us all because, as Shehu Othman Danfodio rightly said, a country can survive unbelief, but no nation can survive injustice.
It should worry Nigeria because the worst of the judiciary they have is the one that will grant bail to a murder suspect in the assassination of no less a personage than a serving attorney-general and minister of justice of the federation just in time for him to be sworn in as a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
My hair stands on end to think that the predominant face of the Nigerian judiciary today is the one that will release all the suspects and acquit everyone in the murder of one of their own, Chief Bola Ige, whose wife was even a judge. I’m scared for the future of Nigeria that my progeny will live in.
What the Nigerian judiciary has done to itself and Nigeria is to make the country a very dangerous habitat for law-abiding humans. With the kind of judgments we saw in all election tribunals, only a fool will consider the judiciary now when thinking of future elections.
The whole of Nigeria will be a war theatre in 2007. The kind of things happening in Iraq now should be the closest thing pundits must consider when talking about 2007. No sensible person will come out to vote because there will be no need to. People who want to waste their time should find better ways of doing so. Your votes will not count, and the judiciary will only launder the fraud against you.
With the Monday judgment, there will never be elections in Nigeria again, as is known to civilisation. But there will be election results of unprecedented turnouts. Just imagine what happened last week in the council elections in Katsina State, where the state police hierarchy also assisted in thumb-printing ballot papers.
Of course, despite their unpopularity, the PDP “won” all the chairmanship seats. A regime of war-lordism has just been declared by the judiciary in Nigeria. People who will contest in 2007 have to procure their own instruments of violence. That will be the most effective resource they need. They will contract the police and the military authorities just as those in Aso Rock did today in 2003.
If this proves beyond their reach, they will get the O’odua People’s Congress, OPC, and other thugs. A friend told me he would invite OPC to Kaduna for his elections in 2007. Business will boom for thugs and gangsters as they will become the brides of politicians.
Weapons will be sold like toys freely on Nigerian streets because of high demand. Nobody will waste their time campaigning, and just like Obasanjo did in 2003, nobody will need to have a manifesto. Many Nigerians who can afford it will desert the country in the countdown to 2007.
That would be the wisest thing to do if you are too civilised to join them. Many more big politicians will go the way of Bola Ige, Marshal Harry, and Chuba Okadigbo. The ruling party now thinks it has exterminated the opposition. The only opposition they have now is within. So, they will face themselves as we approach 2007. That’s probably why “armed robbers” killed Chief AK Dikibo. If Ige and Dikibo can go, anybody will be expendable.
Those who are more dangerous will have no access to the police and military authorities. Many of these, especially those who must win – you do not join politics to lose, do you? – will build their private armies. They will recruit members from the unemployed, students, and the flotsam and jetsam of society, who will be all too glad to be provided with a means of livelihood.
Sophisticated weapons, including rocket launchers, will become part of the kit of any politician who intends to be taken seriously by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the police – the same way other gainfully engaged persons like Mujahid Dokubo-Asari are doing now.
Prospective 2007 aspirants who think the coming elections will be a matter of life and death must be joking. It will be a much more serious business. If this appears horrifying, you have no one to thank but Obasanjo, who has brought the country into this sorry state of affairs. This “ statesman “ will stake everything, including the nation’s life, to remain in power.
This president has never cared which direction a car travels, so he remains in the driver’s seat. As long as you will continue to call him Baba, anything goes. Obasanjo is one reason I know how incorrigible human beings can be regarding the lessons of history.
The more I observe some elders in Nigeria today, the more I distrust the near-accepted doctrine that age brings wisdom. If in doubt, look at those sucking up to Obasanjo today despite all the shambles.
But there’s good news. I feel gratified that someone like Justice Sylvester Nsofor still exists in this land despite all the mess. Someone who can look up and say, “My conscience shall not allow me.” He declared that Obasanjo’s re-election was a farce. That is what should matter to all of us now.
People like Nsofor are the edifices of our land that must be preserved. He had two choices. And he elected the path that will cast his name in gold. Nsofor needs a lot of money as he will soon be going on retirement, especially these days when pensioners are treated like slaves in Nigeria. But his conscience will not allow him… He shares good company with Justice Mashud Akinfemi Abass of the Oyo State Judiciary, who was harassed by those who wanted to acquit “Senator” Iyiola Omisore of all charges at all costs. Justice Abass even rejected the N20 million cash “gift” put in the V-boot Mercedes Benz car booth for him. He decided instead to recuse himself from the case.
I don’t know whether those who took over the case from him accepted the “gift”, but I know Omisore and all the others are now free. Justice Nsofor and Abass will continue to remain heroes to Nigerians. And don’t bet that this is the end of the story.
People like Peter Obi, Jonah Jang, Segun Osoba, General Muhammadu Buhari, etc, may appear to have been swindled. No, they are only the celebrity victims. The real casualties are Nigeria and Nigerians. Pity!
