Tenure Elongation: A Judicial Heist

Tenure Elongation: A Judicial Heist
By Sam Onimisi
It is no longer news that the governorship election did not hold in five states – courtesy of a judicial ruling extending the tenure of the governors’ of those states by one year – with effect from the date they were sworn in after the re-run elections. Not being a lawyer does not deprive citizens of common sense based on morality. The legal doctrine which says that you cannot put something on nothing was the pivot of the tenure elongation. However, if the issues canvassed by parties to the suit are scrutinized, it would not only show something, it would in fact throw up a lot of things upon which some things can be put. Whether the parties canvassed these things in the course of argument is not the issue here. Need we remind ourselves of the cases?
Gubernatorial elections were nullified in five states in which re-run elections were ordered by the various Electoral Petition Tribunals. The nullification was on the ground of declaration of false results by the electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral commission, INEC. Judgment was entered against the beneficiaries of the electoral robbery, thus necessitating re-run elections. I think that a person convicted of crime ought to be treated as a criminal and punished as such, and I believe that election nullification is not enough penalties for electoral fraud. To allow the same contestants to stand for re-run election is an abetment of crime, in my lay opinion. Conviction ought to have led to their disqualification as candidates for the re-run race. If it is argued that the umpire and not the candidate were convicted by the Tribunals, then the INEC ought not to have been allowed to handle the re-run elections. Perhaps this is one lacuna in the Electoral Act which needs to be amended. An umpire convicted of fraud but permitted to play the same role again between the same set of contestants, will repeat the fraud if only to justify the first fraud – and that was what happened. This is especially so if the result of the first contest was procured by bribe. The Professor Maurice Iwu – led INEC was notorious for all manners of electoral malfeasance which includes election re-run robberies.
Of recent, there were allegations that the judgments which returned the ACN candidates in Osun and Ekiti States were procured by the party although no one has challenged it in a superior court. The Election Appeal Tribunals were variously accused of bribery and corruption; to the extent that the allegation has not been proved, the courts may go scot-free. However, when shall we know the extent of the infidelity or probity of our Judiciary? It is rumoured that the five governors got the courts to compromise justice for the tenure elongation. Is there any way of proving this allegation at any place other than in the court of law? If the Electoral Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal are guilty of trading away justice for pecuniary gains, then the Courts are a significant part of the rot that permeates the democratic process and, a major contributor to the violence in the polity of the country. How then do we reform or change the Courts for justice to prevail?
When the Courts or Tribunals nullified the elections, they ordered that re-run election be held within a period of three months or so. In the interim, the Speakers of the Governors’ Political Party stepped in as Acting Governors and handed over to the Governors after re-run election. It means that the Party was never out of power and did not suffer the consequences of the fraud it committed for or through its candidates. The persons of the Governor merely relocated from the State House while directing the acting Governors to spend state funds for re-run campaigns. It is a matter of conjecture if the governors were not paid their salaries and allowances for those three months – since no one will admit for now. When the elections were cancelled, the courts failed to make any pronouncement or orders on the action taken by the governors during their illegal tenure in power.
To assume that their actions were null and void while their appointees and enactments remain in force to their benefits is to make a foul mockery of the law, the courts and morality. Now, having lost nothing during the period of the acting governor, how were the governors punished for their electoral crime?
Why then must they be rewarded for the crime they committed by way of tenure elongation? What lessons has the Court taught culprits if those who deserve punishment were rewarded with one year extra mandate without election? How could the Courts extend an elective tenure beyond and above the three months during which the governors were out of power? If the tenure must be extended, should it have been more than the period of the interim regime? If one cannot put something on nothing, why should the Courts reward criminals with extension which they neither asked for nor deserved? Is it not reasonable or logical to posit that the tenure extension was actually procured or handsomely paid for? In whose interest and for what loss was their tenure extended? If there are saints, can any be found in the Nigerian Judiciary, given these macabre decisions? Or is the tenure extension judgment the product of amazing grace?
It is a pity that in the practice of partisan politics, leaders often ignore the mote in their own eyes while making noise about the plank in the opponents’ eyes. While the ACN enjoys the victory obtained allegedly by bribe from the courts, the PDP basks in the joy of tenure elongation of five of its governor, also allegedly procured by bribe. If the judiciary dispense justice for bribe, the electoral umpire awards poll results for bribe and nobody or agency could do anything to correct it, it is doubtful if such a system will lead anywhere but perdition. In the absence of a just and fair arbiter, no society can live in peace and so, the gravity of Judicial abracadabra has imports capable of destroying both the briber and the bribee, and worse still, the victims who have actually been defrauded by the procured judgments – the electorate. A politico-judicial conspiracy is a deadly poison in a socio-political environment already riddled with corruption, suspicion, tension and hopelessness.
Now, the most painful aspect of this judicial heist of tenure extension is the prolonged suffering of the electorate who had some faint hope that the nightmare represented by the governors would be terminated this year. Were the governors to be performers or true reformers, their services will be missed by all if they are made to go prematurely. In fact, if they had actually contributed to development, one will wish that the law be amended to grant them a third or fourth term as the case may be. However, most of them are non-performers and agents of destruction to other ethnic groups in their states over whom they otherwise have no right to rule, but for the useless structure and system of government imposed on us by the military.
The states as they are and ruled by the governors have been reduced to their personal estates or the inheritance of their ethnic groups and now that the judiciary has joined the harlotry, the states will be further weakened by political rapists who, at the end of their regime in 2012, would have despoiled the people beyond redemption. In the circumstance, I have a word of advice for the five governors: utilize the awarded or undeserved one year extension to undo the negative actions you have taken or correct the errors you have inadvertently or premeditatedly committed in the last eight years. Let the ninth year be a year of restoration, a year of rectitude and of repentance, otherwise the collective curse of the electorate will sentence them to unending misery which the ultimate Judge of all will confirm, affirm and enforce without appeal.