A Judgement And Its Jackals -By Kene Obiezu

The Presidential Election Petition Court sitting in Abuja delivered its eagerly awaited judgment on Wednesday, September 6, 2023.

In affirming the victory of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the February 25, 2023 elections, it duly delivered a rude shock to those who expected a different outcome.

Nigerians are no strangers to seismic shocks. On personal and national level, many Nigerians have lived things that no one should fairly have to live in a thousand life times.

Nigerians have seen it all: from absolutely shocking and senseless depredations visited on public funds to heinous terrorist attacks visited on families and their children.

However, in the hierarchy of shocks, political events in the country have come to pack quite the punch, showing several times that they can deliver quite a heavy dose.

In 2015, amidst deep-seated resentment of the Goodluck Jonathan Ebele presidency, history was made when Muhammadu Buhari came tops in the election.

That he went on to deliver a shocking governance in his time in office did not take away from the fact that for the first time in Nigeria’s political history, an incumbent president had lost elections.

It is doubtful that the last vestiges of the EndSARS protests in Nigeria will ever be wiped away. The youth-led nationwide protest was a moment in Nigeria’s history that will live forever.

Ahead of the 2023 election, echoes of the movement which was swiped at decades-long injustice surfaced and congealed into a significant part of the Obidient movement.

But for all that the EndSARS protests were unruly and unwieldy, Peter Obi, around whom the Obidient movement revolves, has shown himself a different kind of Nigerian politician peddling a different kind of politics.

His entrance into the presidential race marked a watershed in Nigeria’s political history.

The Independent National Electoral Commission said he did not win the election.

The PEPT has now affirmed the decision of the PEPT. Judicial options are yet to be exhausted, and there are still a handful of Nigerians who nurse faint hopes that there can be a judicial intervention to correct the travesty which transpired on February 25. But this number continues to dwindle and each passing day bleeds this hope of any true substance.

The election may have been tightly fought as a contest, but the nagging feeling remains that forces beyond the considerable force of voters and their votes played a crucial if disruptive role in determining the destination of electoral victory in this instance.

In the immediate aftermath of the process which was reportedly marred by unprecedented irregularities, the overwhelming phrase was “go to court” as if the Nigerian judiciary has done enough in recent times to make a compelling case that its reputation as a flippant institution is unfair at best.

It appears the case that this judgment though not unexpected has only served to further cast the judiciary in an unfavorable light as an institution whose lack of courage and decisiveness continue to mark it out as a weak institution.

The judgment of court may have finally nailed the coffin of those whose claims for electoral victory in the last polls counter those of Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

They may even be able to sneer and devise new sobriquets for those they have easily dismissed as sore losers, but the challenge runs deeper than that.

It is depressing that even many years since Nigeria returned to democracy, the judiciary is yet to do enough to seriously be considered an institution that keeps its head above water in a country savaged by corruption.

Those celebrating the judgment in which substantial questions of electoral malpractice largely went unanswered are making a rod for their backs.

For as long as similarly grave questions continue to go unanswered in Nigeria, the country would be worse for it.

For as long as institutions continue to consistently fail to hit the mark in terms of performance in Nigeria, Africa’s most important country can expect a wild ride in the abyss of dysfunction and destabilization.

It is not simply a case of jackals picking apart a judgment piece by piece. It is more about concerns that those determined to pick the country apart always seem to have their hands full.

Kene Obiezu,

keneobiezu@gmail.com