The dust raised by the latest judicial decision heralding the unseating of the incumbent governor of Taraba State, Darius lshaku, by the election tribunal set up to look into alleged cases of impropriety associated with the last election is yet to settle as there are still rumbles in the political firmament.
This is so as the decision was based entirely on the technicality of whether or not the candidate who was declared winner after the polls was properly nominated by his party.
If the decision to oust the incumbent, who won the popular votes is sustained, and victory is conferred on the litigant, Aisha Alhassan, history will be made in Nigeria as the first elected female governor, would have been recorded.
Considering that the first woman governor in the United States of America was, Nellie Tayloe Ross, who succeeded her husband in the state of Wyoming in 1925, (USA gained independence July 4,1776) women have come a long way in Nigeria, as it would have taken far less length of time for a woman to become governor compared to the USA where it took about 150 years.
Before Alhassan ,Virgy Etiaba was deputy governor and acted as governor in Anambra State (for about 90 days) when the incumbent governor was removed by the courts, so her emergence as acting governor is different, since she was a third party.
Prior to the last judicial pronouncement, Rivers State Election Tribunal had upturned the election of Nyesom Wike, leaving the aggressive and dynamic politician, (who defiled the political logic in Rivers State) in limbo as he awaits the outcome of his challenge of the judgement at the Court of Appeal. Similar to the situation in Rivers State, is the cancelation of elections in the majority of the Local Government Areas in neighboring Akwa Ibom State, where the hope of incumbent governor, Emmanuel Udom ,is also hanging in the balance.
While in Rivers State, it is a full rerun , in Akwa Ibom, it’s a partial rerun and in Taraba State, it is outright declaration of the candidate who garnered the second highest votes, Alhassan, the victor simply because the actual winner’s name was improperly put on the ballot.
If the outcome of the appeal cases in the courts go in favour of the litigants instead of the appellants, the governorship election timetable in the affected states-Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Taraba – would be permanently altered and the number of states with staggered dates for governorship elections, would have increased by three to 11 of the 36 states in Nigeria .
Sometimes, the elections are held two years apart from other states courtesy of the judicial rulings in the last eight to 10 years, hence it could be said without equivocation that the judiciary has significantly altered the election timetable in Nigeria.
So, in a rather fortuitous manner , holding all governorship elections on the same day and at the same time across Nigeria has become a relic of the past, to the relief of the electoral umpire, INEC.
The new INEC chairman, Mahmoud Yakubu, recently confirmed the above assertion in an interview, when he noted that the staggering of governorship election dates is a blessing in disguise as it has eased manpower and logistics burden on INEC, since conducting elections on same day, stretches its resources.
Although not in a chronological order, the reshaping of governorship elections calendar started in Anambra State where Peter Obi’s mandate, which was originally ‘stolen’ and given to Andy Uba, was returned via the courts, after Uba had acted in that capacity for sometime. It was followed by the court victory of Adams Oshiomhole over Osaremen Osunbor after a couple of years into his tenure as governor in Edo State . Similar judicial circumstance of reversal of governorship mandate occurred in Rivers State when Celestine Omehia was replaced by Rotimi Amaechi via an unprecedented and yet to be fathomed Supreme Court judgement. In Ondo State, the reversal of victory at the polls and replacement with judicial pronouncement of Olusegun Mimiko over Olusegun Agagu occurred, just as it also happened in Osun State where the courts determined who became governor, between Olagunsoye Oyinlola and Rauf Aregbesola who is now serving a second term. In Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose has the enviable record of a double ‘Dutch’ luck of being sacked by the judiciary and returning later to reclaim the mandate of his people, which he currently holds by defeating, in the polls, an incumbent governor, Kayode Fayemi,whose predecessor was earlier granted judicial victory over Fayose.
In Kogi State, Abdulahi Idris was not spared in 2008,when he was sacked by the Supreme Court but he won the rerun and later handed over to Idris Wada, the incumbent governor who is now preparing for second term election this December.
Having started in the south-east state of Anambra like a virus, the procurement of electoral victory through the courts has been spreading across Nigeria like wild fire during harmattan, but this has taken place more in the southern part.
The only state in north central part of Nigeria where the tsunami of determining governorship election victories by the judiciary, made a ‘ land fall’ was in Kogi,way back in 2008 .
By freak or design, thus far, the judiciary has not usurped the role traditionally reserved for the Independent National Electoral Comission, INEC in the northeast and north west regions as they seem to have been immune until the recent event in Taraba state.
Curiously, most of the quashed governorship elections are hinged on technical grounds, which underscores the complaint about lack of transparency and internal democracy in the process of putting forward candidates for elections by political parties which do not conduct party primaries, according to laid down electoral rules.
Perhaps it is the perverseness of the (in)justice which relies on technical lapses to, as it were, rob good politicians the mandate freely given by the masses at the polls through the judiciary that prompted , President Muhamadu Buhari to challenge the recently inaugurated chairman of INEC, Mahmoud Yakubu , and his team to look into how the legal loopholes can be closed so that fairness, equity and justice, not only justice, ( which is the case when only technical issues are considered) would be the underpinning principle and pedestal on which our electoral system is anchored.
Happily, the INEC chairman has promised to build on the remarkable foundation that the out-gone Commission led by Atahiru Jega laid and reflected in the unprecedented feat of an incumbent president losing an election to opposition party and candidate.
In a very quiet but revolutionary way, the reform of the electoral process embarked upon by former president Umaru Musa Yar’adua (2007-2010) of blessed memory can be said to be paying off.
It is worthy of recall that it was under the watch of the late president that the Justice Mohamed Uwais committee to reform the electoral system was empaneled after the self-effacing and affable president admitted that the political process that ushered him into office as president in 2007 was flawed. He was so determined to correct perceived political injustice arising from flaws in the electoral system that he allowed the decision to be sustained when the election tribunal in Anambra State, upturned the election of Andy Uba, elected under the platform of the ruling PDP. Such political accommodation would not have happened under the watch of the previous president , Olusegun Obasanjo, whom opposition politicians accused of having the intention of making Nigeria, a one party state, going by the rate at which states in the south-west region, his home stead, were captured from the opposition party,CAN, into the ruling party, PDP fold, except in Lagos State where Bola Tinubu was able to ward off Obasanjo’s aggressive expansion intentions.
Love him or loathe him, it was the immediate past president, Goodluck Jonathan, whose determination and courage buoyed by the good example of late Yar’adua , (under whose watch the Supreme Court decision in favour of Rotimi Amaechi was held in Rivers State) that further strengthened the electoral reform resulting in the upturning of many more governorship elections in the courts to the extent that it has now become fashionable that judicial victory could be obtained at a given financial consideration like a commodity.
As a learned friend once quipped, in the past , it was the lawyers that got rich from ‘procurement’ of judgements, hence most of them allegedly became proud owners of private jets, but today, the judges have cut off the lawyers who are third parties and are collecting the largesse directly from politicians, so nobody should be surprised if very soon, judges also become jet set. If the allegations of sleight hands in the court judgements are true, are the judges not overreaching and risking exposing themselves to public odium? Only time will tell.
On a more serious note, it was the former president,  Jonathan, that took the liberalization of the electoral process to the next level by choosing an electoral umpire, Atahiru Jega, who was unknown to him prior to being appointed with the hope that the new INEC chairman would be impartial due to his activist pedigree. By allowing Jega to introduce a revolutionary method of electronic card reader and encrypted Permanent Voters Cards, PVC, into the election process in Nigeria, a system that was bound to be fraught with technical challenges, given its novelty and the relatively poor application of electronic systems in Nigeria, largely due to unstable electricity supply, Jonathan, an incumbent president seeking re-election exposed his chance of winning to risk and thus he lost.
In my view, the icing on the cake was when Jonathan decided to concede defeat even before vote counting was over and choose not to challenge the loss of his re-election bid last February ,even though there were ample technical and legal grounds to do so, particularly since there were large cases of electronic card readers failing to function optimally in the full glare of television audience .
The assertion above is underscored by the fact that the former INEC chairman, Humphrey Nwosu, was sacked at an election crunch time when votes were being collated under former military president, Ibrahim Babangida’s watch, and it triggered a melee of events that crystallized into the infamous June 12, 1996 hanging election that resulted in the unfortunate deaths of Moshood Abiola ,the presumed winner and former military dictator and Head of State,Sanni Abacha.
It’s also worth recalling that President Buhari had gone all the way to the Supreme Court trying to upturn previous elections of Obasanjo (2003), Yar’adua (2007) and Jonathan (2011), each time victory was awarded to those candidates against him in the polls. Against the  two scenarios described above, conceding defeat without manipulating INEC or resorting to judicial self help,( though some argue it was an act of cowardice as opposed to a noble one) redefined Jonathan’s presidency into two distinctive and interesting classifications: firstly, it was a regime of unbridled economic profligacy which ushered darkness into Nigeria’s economy and secondly, a period of remarkable political reforms and advancements which has brought light into the future of democracy in Nigeria.
So it’s a mixture of the good and the bad, of which the ugly was averted by not allowing to unfurl in Nigeria, what happened in Kenya when Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga presidential elections disputation resulted in massive blood letting between two ethnic groups of the rival politicians in Kenya after the incumbent president allegedly lost the 2007/8 presidential election to the challenger.
All told, each of the three past presidents of Nigeria since the return to party democracy in 1999, have defined their era in good or bad light, so it’s now left to President Buhari to write his own political story in the sands of time by furthering the course of democracy or getting it stultified.
My guess is that he will likely do the former rather than the latter, particularly because he is a reincarnated leader on a mission to ‘right’ the wrongs from his first coming to office as Head of State.
Only time will tell if my guess is affirmative or negative.
***Magnus Onyibe, a development strategist, futurologist, former commissioner in Delta State Government and alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts.
