by Tony Afejuku
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.
Edo election tribunal and Nigeria’s judiciary-less judiciary (2)
by Tony Afejuku
Indeed, for the sake of posterity, and of our dear, dear fatherland we must for once, in our part of Nigeria, let the ruling on the alleged certificate forgery petition against the Comrade-Governor enhance our thoughts on the need for civic and political justice. De bono et malo (“Come what may”), we must endeavour to use this petition to rescue justice, noble and fertile justice, from the jaws of curious justice. The Nigerian judiciary must not only give justice; it must also be seen to be giving justice that is not dubious at all times. Unfortunately, this country has for quite sometime, beginning some decades back, been witnessing justice without tastes. In fact, the motto of the Nigerian judiciary now seems to be something likes this: “There’s no accounting for tastes” (De gustibus non est disputandum). If not, why this now famous phrase quoted time after time in mockery of the Nigerian judiciary: “Sentenced but not convicted”? Why this famous phrase which now famously belonged to the Nigerian judicial lexicon and jargon?
Let me make it clearly and abundantly obvious that I am not saying (and I have not said) that our Comrade-Governor is guilty of certificate forgery as General Charles Airhiavbere alleged in his petition. What I am saying (and have said), which needs reiteration here is that such a grave allegation now in the open consciousness of the masses and that of the teeming supporters of Mr. Adams Aliyu (or Aliu) Oshiomhole needed (and still needs) to be tackled on its merit or lack of it in open “ court”.
The Edo election tribunal ought to be that open” court” of first instance. Rather than striking it out, the tribunal ought to have accepted the petitioner’s plea to hear it. Unless there was more to it, Mr. Oshiomhole himself ought to or should have allowed it to be taken, heard and addressed squarely there and then. Unless I am suffering from a deception of vision (deceptio visus), I don’t see how the High Court, which the Edo tribunal has asked or advised the petitioner to go to argue his case of alleged certificate forgery against the Comrade-Governor, can decide the matter expeditiously and Dei Gratia (“By the grace of God”).
For one thing, the Nigerian judiciary as it currently is, is God-less and has no direct access to the Divinity. But I have heard from two reporters covering the tribunal’s proceedings that the petitioner has appealed the ruling, as I posited here in my first instalment. It is gratifying and gladdening that he has done so. But let me aver here and now, as follows: until the present Chief Justice of Nigeria sets machinery in motion to cleanse and revolutionise the judiciary, nothing tangible may happen positively for the petitioner. But I like his choice, which is to choose the lesser of two evils (de duobus malis, minus est semper eligendum). Certainly, going on appeal rather than going to a High Court is the lesser of two evils. I don’t know the grounds of the appeal and the legal foundation on which it is being erected. But it is worth a try. After all, there are still some angels in the judiciary. Am I contradicting myself? Don’t put any blame on me. Nigeria itself is full of countless contradictions.
A few days ago, University of Benin off-loaded (pardon this phrase) 146 or so “students” who allegedly forged certificates to gain admission into its portals. Many of the alleged cheats were in their final academic session. How they beat the system to get that far is anybody’s guess. But evil always somehow inevitably meets its waterloo that must halt and apprehend it. Of course, in an institution headed by a Vice-Chancellor who one day posterity shall remember with a wholesome and welcome nostalgia as “The Oshodin of UNIBEN”, no certificate forger can escape the furnace of justice. Did UNIBEN need to wait for a High Court of our judiciary-less judiciary to terminate rightly the “studentship” of the fake students?
A role model such as the Comrade-Governor is to teeming students in the land should not be seen or heard to be an exam or a certificate cheat. If gold should rust, what will iron do? But any human-being can go off board or do wrong anytime or once in a while. We can and will understand if this is the case in the current circumstance. But the Comrade-Governor must speak up, and if the masses and their friends desire it, he then can resign with full or un-full benefits as the masses and their friends who once-upon-a-time saw and accepted him as their idol may so deem fit to say. But that is if our Governor-in-the-news thinks the petitioner is right and admits it ianuis clausis (“behind closed doors”) with his commissioners and party’s top echelon(s). If not, justice then must take its full course. I believe that this ought to be so, for justice is the heart and soul and nerves and brain of any nation and of any institution including our current judiciary-less judiciary. When justice dies, everything dies.
Not long ago, there was a report that the President or so of Hungary plagiarised his doctoral thesis. This happened well before an election which he won to be the President of his country. He has since quit office via the open and transparent door of resignation. This is part of the responsibilities and hallmarks of a responsible leader. Accept your error and move on, dear Comrade, if truly you have erred. After all, humanum est errare (“to err is human”). Don’t wait for the die to be cast in the Court of Appeal. Now let me quote a text message from an ardent reader of this column who initially did not quite see eye-to-eye with me when I began to let my pen speak on this matter: “Re-Edo election tribunal…. I didn’t know before now that the allegation by the General against Oshiomhole’s victory was as grievous as certificate forgery! And that your judiciary, the last hope, should be condoning IMPURITY! I am disappointed with the failure of the judiciary to COMPEL the Governor to produce whichever certificate is in dispute. Lanre Oseni.”
Anybody who loves justice must shudder at the ruling of the tribunal on this matter of alleged certificate forgery, which borders on pre-election rigging, I repeat and repeat and repeat. But why I am truly interested in this matter? Answer: Ducit amor patriae (“Love of country guides me”). For what legacy will our children’s or youths’ models and heroes leave for them, after all said and done? All men of honour must be prepared to stand for the fatherland whose positive values we must at all times protect. We must imbibe the lesson of duke et decorum est pro patria mori (“there’s no greater honour than to die for one’s country”.) Does our judiciary-less judiciary want us to have anything to do with this lesson? All great Nigerian students and true friends of the masses are waiting to imbibe this lesson, whether Nigeria’s judiciary-less judiciary is committed to its import or not.
And do I dislike the Comrade-Governor? No. Do I have any problem or any quarrel with him? No. And is the General, the petitioner my friend? No. Am I a politician? No. And am I a judge? No. Who am I? I am a humble Nigerian Tribune columnist, critic and writer committed to attacking pre-election abnormalities, election-in-progress ailments and post-election stench and rottenness in the Nigerian polity. The state of Denmark is rotten. Nigeria is that state of Denmark, O Hamlet!
Edo election tribunal and Nigeria’s judiciary-less judiciary (3)
by Tony Afejuku
But before I dwell on the last phase of election-rigging, Nigerian style, I must compel readers to go back a little time and recall the case and matter of “Toronto” Salau Buhari, a once-upon-a-time Speaker of Nigeria’s House of Representatives during the first term of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s presidency. When Mallam or Alhaji Buhari “Torontoed” the PDP and Nigeria and became, unlawfully, the Speaker of Parliament of the central legislators, he did the rightly and honourably wonderful thing by quitting his endearing post. Today he is in a political limbo, but I must continue to remember him and President Obasanjo for the timely display of the needful thing, the needful honour of resignation, rather than dragging the matter of the allegation to needless legal acts of gymnastics. President Obasanjo was sympathetic then to the cause and course of honour, and allowed “Toronto” Buhari to go. Clearly, the General and President from Owuland proved to Nigerians that he and the “Toronto” Speaker were not (and still are not) eiusdem farinae (“birds of a feather”).
One would expect the political advisers, friends, executive cabinet members of the Edo State Government and House of Assembly and leaders of the ACN, locally and nationally, to prevail on the Comrade- Governor to throw in the towel if truly their gubernatorial candidate did not, before the last gubernatorial election, possess the requisite and pertinent academic qualification and certificate allowed for the post of Governor. It is needless stubbornly to drag the case.
The tax payers of Edo State who are suffering from the pangs and pains of excessive and over-burdened taxation should be saved the further burden of allowing their money to be wasted on needless litigation. Or is the erstwhile Labour hero and model wasting his own money to prosecute the case? In any case, my simple advice to the inner circle and torch-bearers of ACN is to look at the proof (ecce signum) and take appropriate steps in the interest of righteous justice on behalf of the good and over-taxed workers and people of Edo State. They should not allow the petition of alleged certificate forgery against Mr. Adams Aliyu (or Aliu) Oshiomhole to go the full distance. Or they have absolute faith and confidence (fide et fiducia), for obvious reasons, on Nigeria’s judiciary-less judiciary?
Those who of late have seen the Governor ceaselessly on television have wondered if the amiable orator ever again rouse to positive action students, hawkers and Okada-riders, many of whom are genuinely academically certificated? And I wonder how students and academics in Edo State’s tertiary institutions are feeling now. The remover and appointer of Vice-Chancellors is truly in the news! Fiat lux (“Let there be light”) of righteous justice in Edo State, after all said and done.
Will Nigeria’s judiciary-less judiciary allow it? We all who were grown up and sensible enough in 1979 still remember vividly the electoral, or, better put, the post-electoral math of twelve-two-third that rigged Chief Obafemi Awolowo, diabolically, out of the Presidency. Some legal pundits have informed me that, that Supreme Court’s ruling or judgment is not citable in the annals of Nigeria’s jurisprudence maybe primarily on account of its indefensible jurisprudential logic. Recently, the late President Musa Yar’Adua faulted the electoral irregularities that won him the Presidency. But our judiciary-less judiciary gave consent to them. What I am trying to say, and in fact saying, is that our judiciary, the supposed bastion of our righteous justice has, over time, been turned into an instrument of post-election-rigging in Nigeria. By the way, why truly is Justice Salami suffering what he is suffering today? This question shall remain answer-less pro tempore because it is still sensitively hot in court. And I don’t wish to have any hot bath in the hot river of contempt which our judiciary-less judiciary may wish for me. Yet, we must state and re-state it that our judiciary, our expected Fidei Defensor (“Defender of the Faith”) of justice in the land has disappointed us time after time on matters of electoral justice.
At few weeks back, a SAN (Senior Advocate of Nigeria) who, as we say, did not catch a glimpse of my brake-light in college, I mean secondary school, informed me with great and lawful glee that he is a conqueror of money. He, according to him, at the time he broached the subject, had made above N300m on prosecuting election matters. He said this amount was even small when placed side by side other lawyers and SANs (I am withholding their names) who had made more than billions of naira on election cases. Of course, some of the judges who are aware of what the lawyers make, millions- and billions–wise, and who deliver their rulings and judgments cannot be left out of this nice way of millions-or billions-making.
Many a judge obviously becomes a bosom pal (fides Achaetes) of an election petitioner or his/her opponent. He or she who cares, can research or investigate this claim or allegation as the EFCC is currently doing, I hear. But such a researcher or investigator must look to the end (finem respice) for such an irreversible research or investigation, like the current exercise I have embarked on by doing this series, is risky, very risky. He or she who cares must watch his or her back. But I say: fiat iustitia ruat caelcum (“let justice be done though the heavens fall”.). We must say no to post-election-rigging via our judiciary-less judiciary.
O Moshood Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) of yester-years! How your party faithful and top echelon(s) sold you away! How they sold you away to your untoward end! How your victory was post-election rigged via your own men and people who connived with the gap-toothed master of dribbles and Nigeria’s judiciary-less judiciary to do you in!
In a way, Edo State’s PDP (and PDP national as well) are re-enacting the electoral pattern and joke of 1992 that unleashed today’s tragedies in our polity. If you disagree with this simple and humble averment, how do you sincerely, in your true Christian or Muslim or spiritual heart, explain the “Punic treachery” that is the lot of General Charles Airhiavbere today? Why the Punic war that his party has carried or is carrying on with him post-gubernatorial Edo State election? The General is obviously now bearing a double cross (fides Punica), but all men, all persons, including media practitioners of truth and decency must stand for light fide et amore (“by faith and love”). If you cannot, say nothing and send me no text messages or e-mails of abuse and insult of no consequence to my conviction that is ever ready to yield to a superior perspective. You simply must hold your tongue (Favete linguis). I conjure you.
The essay ends, but grant me the indulgence to ACKNOWLEDGE two remarkably pertinent text messages: (1) Sir, your articles on Edo gubernatorial election makes so much sense to the majority of Edo youths, elders and other well meaning Nigerians. Please I look forward to the concluding parts. Though I can’t afford papers daily, I have set aside money to buy Tribune on Mondays henceforth. Omoh Odihiri”; (2)” My big brother, Tony, your write-up about Edo tribunal is very right. God will bless you and your family. Amen +23480332535536.”
My thanks go to numerous others I cannot quote on this matter. I enjoyed your text messages and phone calls, even from detractors, who abused and insulted me for obvious reasons. It is not easy and funny to be a columnist. It is no joke at all - at all, at all, and at all.
Last lines: You can’t reach In and Out on phone for sometime. The penner is outside the shores of the Nigerian Tribune until further notice. But the penner’s lyre will not cease its notes. Thanks, readers dear for your understanding.
NigerianTribune
No comments:
Post a Comment