Written by Tony Afejuku
Monday, 08 October 2012
After all that transpired (and are still transpiring) about Justice Ayo Salami and his modus operandi before his suspension, I promised my good self that I would refrain from concerning In and Out with the p’s and q’s of the Nigerian judiciary. Perhaps I should also aver here very urgently that the way and manner that the judiciary went into Nigeria’s forest of laws to manufacture for ex-Governor Ibori of Delta State a peculiar alabaster of acquittal of all charges against him at different times, also affected my judgment and self-promise.
Of course, there are other pertinent examples to cite to justify my turn of mind concerning the Nigerian judiciary that everybody knows is now too corrupt to embrace the true notion and truthfulness of dura lex sed lex (“the law is hard, but it is the law”). I shall examine this aspect or doctrine of our corpus iuris (“body of laws”) shortly even though I am not a practitioner of the law.
The point I wish to present immediately coram populo is to the effect that the Edo Gubernatorial Election Petition Tribunal is compelling me to disagree with my principles and their habits and traditions. The more I try to let the matter go, the more it takes shape, in the new order of my journalistic and philosophical mind. In any case, the media must play its role as the fourth estate of the realm and release opinions that should enable the people and all sufferers of incalculable and exceptionally acute distress and injustice to find place in their environment and polity.
The judiciary is expected to play a hugely prominent role in this respect, but because in this country, the judiciary is turning or, better put, the judiciary has turned itself upside down, the media, regardless of its own inadequacies, must brace up and speak what it must speak as a noble challenge to the new order of our judiciary–less judiciary. Im being pessimistic about Nigeria’s judiciary? Sure. The reason, which is not really fare-fetched, has just been ballooned into prominence by the Edo Gubernatorial Election Petition Tribunal. But let me state, before I am charged for contempt, that the central focus of my submission today is the rejection of General Charles Airhiavbere’s, PDP’s gubernatorial candidate’s petition or challenge of the Comrade-Governor’s requisite educational qualification.
The Tribunal struck off this vital aspect (if not the most vital) of the General’s petition/submission, we were meant to believe, on the loose or untenable grounds of the Tribunal’s lack of jurisdiction to entertain the specific and material matter pertaining to the Comrade-Governor’s requisite qualification that the electoral law allows for prospective gubernatorial candidates. The Tribunal’s acceptance of the plea of coram non iudice tendered before it by the Comrade–Governor’s lawyers is a decision/judgment I would personally have appealed up to the Supreme Court (or even the ECOWAS Court or both), if I was the PDP’s gubernatorial candidate.
I don’t understand why the Tribunal in its wisdom, which is anything but progressive asked (or shall we say advised?) the PDP’s candidate to go to a High Court to pursue his case. Without wanting to admit it in open “court”, the Tribunal clearly knew and believed that the PDP’s candidate had a pertinent case before it, hence it asked (or advised?) him to argue it there. Is that a cleverly deliberate and deliberately clever way to prolong the case unnecessarily?
Let me also aver here that if that “strong” ground of the General’s petition before the Tribunal was acceptable to the Tribunal, the Comrade–Governor himself would exercise his right of appeal to the highest court in the land (or to ECOWAS Court). That would have been fair, fine and well in the spirit of justice that would not create any upheaval in Edo State or in the land of Nigeria. What this averment amounts to is that the PDP’s candidate should pursue the matter to the logical end in the spirit of dum spiro spero (“while I breathe, I hope”). He should go to further courts to plead the coram nobis caused (deliberately?) by the Edo Tribunal. The General must go the whole hog in the interests of our society, for the judgment of the Edo Gubernatorial Election Tribunal as per the requisite qualification of the Comrade-Governor is, in my view, certainly contra boros mores (“against the best interests of society”). So the soldier must soldier on.
Why do I say all this? Governor Oshiomhole is presently not an ordinary citizen of Edo State and of Nigeria. He ought to be or should be a model to be copied and to be followed by our teeming youths, at least. If he does not know, I put it to him, his lawyers, his party and teeming supporters that the youths’ silence that speaks volumes (dum tacent clamant) on this matter bordering on alleged certificate forgery is not one that is doing the ebullient Governor any good.
The Tribunal’s technical rejection of his number one opponent’s case of alleged certificate forgery against him, is something that Mr. Adams Aliyu (or Aliu) Oshiomhole should not allow on the mere grounds of technicality. Or is the allegation of General Airhiavbere right and correct in every particular and material way? Speak, Comrade, speak! The world (yours, mine and others’, including your party’s and teeming supporters’) will not come to an end if you do so. After all, while there’s life, there’s hope (dum vita est spes et). Now the Tribunal said that the alleged certificate forgery petition against our comrade–gentleman Governor should be seen as a pre-election matter.
Was the Tribunal telling us that it would condone examination and certificate cheats who would gain pre-election advantage that they ought not to or should not at all gain? In Nigerian Universities, at least, as at today, screenings of certificates of students happen every now and then at the points of entry, any time before the graduation of students (and even after their graduation once there is need to revisit earlier screening exercises).
What message was the Tribunal sending to the youths and potential and current University cheats with its dodgy judgment? Let us for the purpose of argument accept that our once-upon-a-time, that is, our pre-election oratorical and loquacious Governor, did not forge any certificate or that he did not hoodwink INEC to accept an abnormal certificate, what would stop an open Tribunal committed to truth, fact, morality and justice, all rolled into one, to test the veracities of the documents/arguments he would present and the counter ones from his opponent?
I find it strange that our Governor of glamour and ornaments in speech and gubernatorial decorum has suddenly become glum. Or is my observation off the mark? By the way, I have said this little to my Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) friends. The good news is that the glossy comrade is changing tactic for once. We all should wait for the final bomb that will send the equally taciturn General and his battalion of some new electoral gladiators scampering hither and thither for cover that may elude them. After all, in the present day Nigerian judicial system, as already indicated above, there is nothing any longer like dura lex sed lex. I am not a psephologist, although I am currently engaging myself in an enterprise on and a study of the pattern of election-rigging in Nigeria. It has three phases: the pre-election rigging phase; the election-in-progress rigging phase, and the post-election rigging phase. The “case” the Tribunal struck out definitely, in my journalistic, literary, philosophical, critical and common-sensical perspectives belongs to the pre-election rigging phase. The Tribunal ought to have heard it in full to determine the merit or otherwise of the General’s postulations, and on the legal grounds on which they are erected.
Last lines. Please join us, Primate Olabayo and I, to say full and steady prayers for Lady Patience Jonathan. What we are seeing is not looking too good. Your joining us in prayers will assist in a mighty way to postpone or banish that which shall be postponed or banished. In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, we pray. Amen.
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