November 04, (THEWILL) – The 2023 Presidential Election was concluded on Thursday, October 26, p 2023 when the Supreme Court affirmed the election of Bola Tinubu as Nigeria’s President.
Tinubu’s election was challenged by his two major opponents – Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party.
Atiku and Obi asked the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal to declare each of them the winner of the election. They pleaded with the tribunal to nullify the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)’s declaration of Tinubu as elected president. Both petitions were dismissed. Not satisfied, Atiku and Obi approached the Supreme Court.
In his reaction to the judgment, Atiku on Monday, October 30, 2023 addressed a World Press Conference in Abuja where he condemned the ruling of the Supreme Court and made few proposals that he said he believed would help in future elections. He also said that he would not quit politics.
On the proposals, he said, “We can urgently make constitutional amendments that will prevent any court or tribunal from hiding behind technicalities and legal sophistry to affirm electoral heists and undermine the will of the people. Our democracy must mean something; it must be substantive. Above all, it must be expressed through free, fair and transparent elections that respect the will of the people.
“Firstly, we must make electronic voting and collation of results mandatory. This is the 21st century and countries less advanced than Nigeria are doing so already. It is only bold initiatives that transform societies.
“Secondly, we must provide that all litigation arising from a disputed election must be concluded before the inauguration of a winner. This was the case in 1979. The current time frame between elections and inauguration of winners is inadequate to dispense with election litigations.
“What we have currently is akin to asking thieves to keep their loot and use the same to defend themselves while the case of their robbery is being decided. It only encourages mandate banditry rather than discourages it.
“Thirdly, in order to ensure popular mandate and real representation, we must move to require a candidate for President to earn 50 per cent plus 1 of the valid votes cast, failing which a run-off between the top two candidates will be held. Most countries that elect their presidents use this Two-Round System (with slight variations) rather than our current First-Past-the-Post system.
“Examples include France, Finland, Austria, Bulgaria, Portugal, Poland, Turkey and Russia, Argentina, Brazil, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Namibia, Mozambique, Madagascar and even Liberia where a run-off is expected to hold in the coming days.
“Fourthly, in order to reduce the desperation of incumbents and distractions from governing and also to promote equity and national unity, we need to move to a single six-year term for President to be rotated among the six geo-political zones. This will prevent the ganging up of two or more geo-political zones to alternate the presidency among themselves to the exclusion of other zones.
“INEC should be mandated to verify the credentials submitted to it by candidates and their parties and where it is unable to do so – perhaps because the institutions involved did not respond in time – it must publicly state so and have it on record.
“A situation where a candidate submits contradictory credentials to INEC in different election cycles and the electoral umpire accepts them without question points to gross negligence, at best, or collusion to break the law by the leadership of the INEC, at worst. The submission of contradictory qualifying documents by a candidate as well as those found to be forged or falsified should disqualify a candidate even if the falsification or forgery is discovered after the person had been sworn into office.
“The burden of proving that a document submitted to INEC is forged should not be on the opposing candidates in the election. It is never the responsibility of an applicant for a job to prove that the person who eventually got the job did so with forged documents”.
Atiku also said that in addition to the proposed constitutional amendments, the Electoral Act should be amended to provide that, “except where they explicitly violate the Constitution and other laws, the rules and procedures laid down by the electoral umpire and made public for the benefit of the contestants and the voters will be treated as sacrosanct by the courts in deciding on election disputes.
“A referee cannot be allowed to set the rules for the game only to change or ignore them when one side has scored a goal or is about to win the match. We must restore confidence in our electoral system which the current leadership of INEC has completely eroded and undermined. Also, we need well-thought out provisions in the legislation and regulations to reform the judiciary, including the introduction of an automated case assignment system; transparency in the appointment of judges; a practice directory that stresses that the goal of judges in election cases should be to discover and affirm voters’ choice rather than disregarding voters’ choice for the sake of technicalities.
“There should also be publicly available annual evaluation of the performance of judges using agreed criteria. By improving the transparency of the electoral process and reducing the incentives to cheat, in addition to transparency in the appointment of judges and other judicial reforms, the number of election petitions as well as corruption in the judiciary will be significantly reduced. More importantly, we would have succeeded in taking away the right to elect leaders from the courts and return it to the voters to whom it truly belong”.
He added, “As for me and my party, this phase of our work is done. However, I am not going away. For as long as I breathe I will continue to struggle, with other Nigerians, to deepen our democracy and rule of law and for the kind of political and economic restructuring the country needs to reach its true potential. That struggle should now be led by the younger generation of Nigerians who have even more at stake than my generation”.
Many political analysts and watchers of political developments in the country have interpreted his words that the future political challenges will be led by younger elements to mean that Atiku will no more participate as an aspirant in future Presidential election.
Others feel differently, saying Atiku had said that to be Nigerian President is his life time ambition and that he will continue to contest until he achieve his ambition to be the country’s president.
Atiku Abubakar born on November 25, 1946 will be 81 years-old in 2027 when another Presidential election will be conducted.
THEWILL recalls that Atiku has made five failed attempts at becoming Nigeria’s President.
Atiku who was on his second term with Obasanjo in 2007, defected to the defunct Action Congress, a political party founded by Bola Tinubu and other former state governors in the Alliance for Democracy, including Chief Bisi Akande, Alhaji Lam Adesina, Chief Olusegun Osoba, among others. Atiku emerged as the presidential candidate of the Action Congress. He lost the election to late President Umaru Yar’adua of the PDP who was Obasanjo’s anointed candidate.
Atiku came a distant third with over 2.4 million votes in the controversial 2007 election which many observers described as a charade. After the election,he dumped the AC and returned to the PDP.
In 2011, Atiku once again went into the presidential race. In the party’s primary, he was defeated by former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Having seen the sign that Jonathan, who was the incumbent president at the time, would be favoured to go for a second term, he led about five PDP Governors to walk out of the party’s convention and established the newPDP.
In 2014, after the Action Congress of Nigeria, All Nigeria People’s Party, Congress for Progressives Change and All Progressives Grand Alliance through a coalition formed the All Progressives Congress, Atiku and his allies in the nPDP teamed up with the APC. He declared for President once more. In 2015, he contested the APC presidential ticket along with the immediate past President, Muhammadu Buhari, and former Kano State governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso in the party’s primary at Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos. He came third behind Buhari and Kwankwaso.
Realising that Buhari will contest for a second term in office in 2019, Atiku went back to the PDP and picked the party’s Presidential ticket.
Reluctantly supported by stakeholders in the PDP, Atiku lost the presidential election to former President Buhari. He returned in the build-up to the 2023 election and he clinched the PDP presidential ticket, but lost the election to current President Bola Tinubu.
Although Atiku’s presidential bid failed in the last election, he was said to have assured his supporters, when queried about his desperation to become Nigeria’s President, that as long as he remained alive, he would continue to pursue his ambition of becoming president.
“It is a life-long ambition and as long as I’m alive and strong and healthy, I will continue to pursue it,” he said.
When THEWILL contacted Atiku’s media aide, Mr Paul Ibe, for his reaction, he said the former Vice President had not said anything new since last week’s World Press Conference.
“Although I am bereaved and I am in the village, but I don’t think His Excellency Atiku Abubakar has said anything new than what he said at the press conference. I will refer you to the speech at the press conference. Did he say he will not contest in future election? No!” Ibe said.
About the Author
AYO ESAN, has been actively reporting and analyzing political events for different newspapers for over 18 years. He has also successfully covered national and state elections in Nigeria since the inception of this democracy in 1999.
