Since 2019 elections the judiciary appeared to have usurped the position of the electorate in determining who wins election in the country, thereby giving politicians leeway to lay claim to mandate that was never theirs in the first place
By Chibuike Chiemerie
Senator Godswill Akpabio, former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, is a politician with nine lives. Before he became a minister, his case of financial infractions was making a steady progress before he decided to dump his political party, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, for the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. Immediately after his defection to the ruling party was perfected, the same government that was prosecuting him developed a cold feat. Even the lawyer who was prosecuting him at the court, Barrister Festus Keyamo, SAN was to be the Minister of State in the ministry where Akapbio was the substantive minister. The moral burden on the part of the ruling party to redeploy Keyamo to the Ministry of Labour and Productivity to affirm that the man the ruling party appointed as a minister has baggage that does not qualify him to occupy such public office. Despite the entire hullabaloo about his financial malfeasance, he survived and was sworn-in as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
During the presidential primary of the ruling APC he contested and failed. Weeks after the primary of the ruling party was held, informed source, revealed that Akpabio arm-twisted his party that the already held primary in his state should be revisited , a suggestion the national secretariat of the party listened to and followed. That aberration saw the conduct of a fresh primary for the senatorial seat in Akwa Ibom where he comes from. He was fraudulently given the ticket by the Supreme Court even when the lower court saw reason why the name of Akpabio should not be in the ballot. Again, the former minister survived and won the election in an election that is controversial as Senator-elect.
The same story is bandied about the outgoing Senate President, Senator Ahmed Lawan who equally participated in the presidential primary of the ruling APC. One Mr.Machina who contested and won the primary but the spin doctors of the ruling party of Yobe State where the duo come from went to town to say that Machina was holding the mandate in trust for Lawan. Machina vehemently opposed such spinning at the High Court and Appeal Court, and he won. Lawan, against his own conviction but the prodding of his party approached the Supreme Court, and won. The Supreme Court made him the candidate of the Yobe South Senatorial constituency, and the controversial election proper he won and is now a Senator-elect.
From the attitude of the Supreme Court in the recent decisions, it suggests that courts are in the verge of taking over the duties of the electorate in deciding who becomes what politically in the country. The cases that brought the governors of Bayelsa and Imo States are still fresh in the minds of the electorate who are livid with the decision that has denied the electorate the fundamental rights of choosing who governs them now and after.
Dorothy Jibuno, a Public Affairs analyst told this medium that the decisions churned out by the apex court in the recent times have eroded the confidence of the electorate in the democratic processes because the will of the people in election of any sort does not matter any longer. She said the time has come for the apex court to redeem its image by making sure that the 2023 presidential election which is being challenged is given the desired justice not judgment. If the apex court gets it wrong in the pending 2023 Presidential election disagreement, and again wish away the will of the people, it is going to send bad signal to the electorate which would undermined the cooperate existence of the country.
Whatever is the stand of the analysts the takeover of the electoral decision by the courts instead of the electorate is a bad omen that would not do any party any good.
