And so Atiku Abubakar’s political fortune came crashing down. It did
so in such anti-climactic manner. It grossly deflated Atiku and his
supporters’ high hopes and bonhomie feeling they built into the case
at the Supreme Court. Effectively, it was a sealing to Atiku’s lurid
claim to a mandate after he was trashed so badly in the February
election, starting from his polling unit. It was the end of the queer
server story. It is the end of the grand baloney Atiku and PDP said was
their challenge of an election they were visibly trashed. Some have said
that it was also the end of Atiku’s own chequered political history
pockmarked by stories of elephantine graft and gargantuan perfidy but
some still say Atiku’s own parody at the tribunal is a way of ensuring
he keeps his stranglehold on the PDP presidential ticket, at least for
the 2023 contest where he will be swimming against the tide of the
presidency going south. Crest-fallen, Atiku has said he fought a good
fight but tht the judiciary was sabotaged. PDP has said it is still in
shock but the nation has moved on.
The Supreme Court decision to trash Atiku and PDP’s petition was, to
most Nigerians, sudden. It came like a sudden bolt; out of the blues
sort of. It came like a thief in the night. I am sure that neither
Atiku, his PDP confederates nor the APC and least of all, President
Buhari who is away on official duties in Saudi Arabia expected the
verdict to come when it did. Mid last week, information went out that
the Supreme Court was to start hearing Atiku’s petition on the 30th
October. To most Nigerians, that was the start of the case many
Nigerians see as a non-issue but which Atiku and his cohorts had hyped
far beyond its very sparse value. Many Nigerians expected a replay of
the sordid drama and hyperbole that happened at the Court of Appeal
tribunal. Many expected the kind of interplay that earlier happened at
the tribunal and most importantly expected the kind of detailed,
long-drawn and entwining judgment that happened at the Appeal tribunal.
But some Nigerians that know felt the Supreme Court merely reviews the
judgment of the Appeal tribunal and has no room for the twists and turns
that took place at the tribunal. Many said the Supreme Court is not cut
out for elaborate time-wasting but rather would study the judgment of
the Appeal tribunal; looking out for possible fault-lines to invalidate
it or approve the judgment if nothing impinges it. So to these Nigerians
that were in the know about the workings of the Supreme Court, there
would be no time for the extensive and long-drawn display that attended
Atiku’s case at the tribunal.
Many however, did not nurse the belief that it will take just one
sitting and under three hours for the Supreme Court to trash what has
been seen as cooked-up hogwash by Atiku and PDP after suffering a defeat
at the presidential election. But that was actually what happened. The
seven-man panel of Supreme Court justices led by the Chief Justice of
Nigeria threw away the Atiku and PDP appeal against what was seen as the
most detailed and grounded election petition ruling by the Presidential
Appeal Court Tribunal. The Supreme court was unanimous in the decision
that the appeal lacked merit, which re-echoed the well-held opinion that
Atiku and PDP indulged in a deliberate waste of the time of the tribunal
and the Supreme Court without advancing credible evidences to back their
wild claims. The Supreme Court has said it will communicate the reasons
behind its judgment later to the parties in the case. That it took the
Supreme Court just one sitting of under three hours to unanimously throw
away Atiku and PDP’s case shows that the case was built nothing,
sustained by nothing and was about nothing but a deft effort to snatch
victory from the jaws of crushing defeat. It was so bad that after the
extensive Presidential Tribunal verdict, one of the strongest PDP
backbones, Governor Nyesom Wike quickly congratulated Buhari and pulled
off the dubious omnibus but not so for the rest of PDP and Atiku that
hoped that somehow they can con victory from the scam they cooked up as
election petition.
Much had been said of the hollowness of Atiku and PDP’s case to bear
another repetition here but the Supreme Court verdict put paid to a
somewhat awkward effort by some cohorts of PDP to impugn the integrity
of the Presidential Election Tribunal for delivering justice in such
cadent manner it did. After the tribunal meticulously pried open the
emptiness of Atiku and PDP’s petition and dismissed it from all fronts
as lacking merit, bereft of proof, lacking in evidence and credibility,
the PDP and its allies had indulged in an extensive project to defame
and smear the tribunal while doing everything to blackmail and twist the
Supreme Court to decide its ensuing appeal in its favour. Typical of
PDP, it advanced no tangible ground to protest the well-researched and
well-received verdict of the presidential appeal tribunal but raked so
much tar to haul at the verdict and the panel that gave it. It waved so
lyrical of how the Supreme Court will grant its Presidential Election
Tribunal though it showed no further evidence than the shamefully
scrambled outing it did at the tribunal for such high hope. In the
height of PDP’s blackmail of the judiciary, it deigned no scruples
going public with names of judges it wants to hear Atiku’s appeal at
the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court had to come out officially to
lampoon a known ageless PDP errand boy and self-styled spokesman of the
ambiguous CUPP for his puerile attempts to smear and blackmail the
Supreme Court for the benefit of Atiku and PDP.
Practically, the Supreme Court unanimous decision on the Atiku and PDP
petition solidifies the decision of the Presidential Election Petition
Tribunal and rubbishes the grand efforts of Atiku and PDP to scoop power
through dubious means. It seals Atiku’s wild hallucination of winning
an election where he and most of his henchmen were defeated right at the
polling units. It put paid the weird and curious story of a back end
server known exclusively to Atiku and his hirelings which proclaimed him
victor in an election he was defeated roundly on the field. The Supreme
Court decision capped the many strange, ludicrous and queer claims Atiku
and PDP cobbled up and dumped at the presidential tribunal for which
they and their witnesses engaged in a chaotic and more queer melodrama
at the tribunal to disprove right at the tribunal by their hugely
contradictory evidences riddled by unprovable moonlight tales and
dubious claims.
Most importantly, the Supreme Court decision, the way and manner it
came proved poignantly the apt statement of cerebral Senior Advocate,
Human Rights Activist and Spokesman for President Buhari Campaign,
Festus Keyamo who leafed through Atiku and PDP petition and dismissed it
as the most useless election petition in Nigeria’s history. That both
the Appeal Tribunal unanimously dismissed all grounds of this bogus
petition and that the Supreme Court unanimously agreed with the ruling
shows indeed that what looks like Atiku’s valedictory showing in the
nation’s political space was a huge fraud that cannot survive
elementary scrutiny.
Peter Claver Oparah.
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com