The Supreme Court and Yar’Adua’s Stolen Mandate 

By Ogaga Ifowodo

{mosgoogle}Regrettably, it didn’t take long for the judiciary to sink to the lowest depths under Ibrahim Babangida, especially in the thick of the June 12 infamy. Thus, in spite of the Supreme Court’s new-found courage, I remained sceptical of the possibility of a judicial redress of the electoral disgrace that handed our country lock, stock and barrel to Obasanjo’s Power Drunk Party (PDP). Will the Supreme Court lead the judiciary to once again stand between power and the people, ready to void all unconstitutional acts? In order that I might dare to hope it would, I set a personal litmus test with two cases. If justice was done in Anambra and Oyo states where the PDP most scandalously outplayed its hand, then perhaps hope might just be restored to the country as a whole. Although the Supreme Court, quite unimpeachably, found against Alhaji Rashidi Ladoja in a sister case, it has nevertheless laid down the path of judicial courage and integrity with the Anambra case for the various (s)election tribunals, and, in particular, the presidential (s)election tribunal. I am now willing to trust the Supreme Court to rule for the people’s sovereign will if and when it should hear an appeal from the petition challenging Yar-Adua’s selection. All the evidence, including the wanton disregard of crucial judgements by the court before the polls, points conclusively towards one decision only: annulment of the 21 April presidential selection.  

But my fear of judicial timidity had less to do with how their lordships might interpret the overwhelming evidence of this crime against the Nigerian people than with the well-known reluctance of the courts to sack a government already in “effective control” of the state. There is also the seductive argument about the benefit of not disrupting the machinery of government, given its potential to foster chaos  — and, in our peculiar history, the risk of opening the floodgates to military opportunists. We can add to these two lines of reactionary caution the enormous costs that a new election would impose on the treasury. Would the Supreme Court, in spite of these considerations, do justice “even if the heavens fall?” 

Then there is the factor of what may be called the Yar’Adua conundrum. By it I mean the glowing testimonials of him we hear by the day and the “danger” of his laundering a stolen mandate. Everything about the man seems to spell humility and the public loves a humble man in power; will forgive him anything. In pledging to be a servant-leader who will lead by example, he strikes a note every Nigerian has been dying to hear. Since Yar’Adua is not a fool, he knows that the only chance he has of winning conditional legitimacy, any quantum of popular support for his purloined mandate, lies in steering a populist course. After all, he is touted by the few who claim intimate knowledge of him as a man of certifiable progressive credentials. As a politician, he knows that time is of the essence and it serves him well to pander to the disenfranchised and angry electorate before the Supreme Court gives a final verdict on the petition seeking to void his selection. The error of swearing him in even when his selection was being hotly contested allows him time enough to endear himself to a despondent citizenry eager to grab at any straw of hope.  

Should he have proved by then to be a man set on overcoming the fatal taint to his office, impatient to set the country on the path to self-actualisation, and have created the likable image of a visionary leader who only happens to have arrived at power by a flawed process, wouldn’t the people’s anger soon give way to hosannas? That master of witticisms, Alexander Pope, had said, “For Forms of Government let fools contest;/Whate’er is best administer’d is best.” So democratic or not, why should the long-suffered Nigerian people not think so as well about an illegitimate but potentially popular presidency? Yar’Adua has already entered the good books of many for accepting without hesitation the Supreme Court’s judgement and directing, though quite wrongly, immediate restoration of Obi to office. In a country where the bar of moral values has not only been lowered to the ground but, in fact, buried, this step which points away from Obasanjo’s disdain for the rule of law softens the hearts of many more by the day. And, surely, if somehow we could look in the seeds of time and tell that each one planted by Yar’Adua would blossom to green our barren land and make us all proud and happy to be Nigerians again, would we let the little matter of a fraudulent election stand in the way of our support for him? In any case, what is to be preferred:  a free and fair election or a leader we can trust? 

It is safe to imagine that when the learned justices of the Supreme Court sit to unravel the legal knots tied for us by a military constitution made worse by political pirates they advert their minds to questions pertaining to the morality of law, the tenets of an ethical social philosophy, and how to use judge-made law as a tool of public good. I believe also that being jurists who by their position on the highest bench are deemed infallible because final  —  though, happily, not final because infallible, as the learned Justice Oputa was quick to point out  —  they are fully cognisant of the awful power of precedent. I am inclined, therefore, to think that in the matter of mitigating the damage done to the nation by Obasanjo’s do-or-die (s)election, they will choose to lead the judicial arm towards justice, however persuasive any rationalisations to the contrary. Certainly, the learned justices, by the example of their recent decisions, will have no truck with the Machiavellianism of “the end justifies the means” which a failure to annul the presidential election would uphold. For it is clear that the victory we celebrate in the Anambra case remains contingent on the outcome of the petition against Yar’Adua’s selection. I do not mean to devalue the broader dimensions of justice served by the court in that case. It should be clear, however, that Anambra, as Oyo State, merely represents the hideous limbs of the leprous body-politic bequeathed to us by Obasanjo and his band of mercenaries.

It is true, of course, that what the Supreme Court decided in the Anambra case was not an election petition; that it only interpreted a crucial section of the constitution and made consequent orders. But what the public knows is that justice has been done. A parallel would be when a Mafia boss is nabbed for tax evasion, and not for serial murder and mayhem. It is not the dry matter of the legal commencement and end of a governor’s tenure that sent people to the streets in jubilation. Rather, it is the restoration of the sovereign will of Anambrians who elected Obi, and not Ngige or Uba, as their governor. They dance now and praise the court for putting an end to the imposition of a governor on them in scornful disregard of their will. If this is the case, then the Supreme Court must accept the duty of closing the circle of justice breached by the tragic electoral crime of the presidential selection. If Yar’Adua is the man to lead Nigeria, let the people say so in a free and fair election.