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By Victor Opara
In all democratic cultures, developed and emerging, the rule of law is a respected and indispensable value system without which democracy itself will be a sham and in danger of extinction. The importance of the rule of law is such that the decisions of judicial institutions are regarded as oracular in nature and are taken as sacrosanct.
In the United States of America after which we modeled our own democracy, when the court decides as it did in the case of George W. Bush and Al Gore, you are bound to accept the court verdict without question regardless of how you feel.
But in Nigeria, it is not the case as the political actors often go out of their way to impugn the integrity of the very judicial system just because the matter did not turn out their way. The truth is that in all judicial proceedings, the facts speak for themselves (Rex Ipsa Loquito), as lawyers put it.
A good example is what happened in Imo West Senatorial election in which Hope Uzodimma, the incumbent senator expectedly won. His challenger, Senator Osita Izunaso, not satisfied with the outcome of the election, took the next logical step which was filing an appeal at the Election Tribunal. Again, he lost because of the incontrovertible fact that the election was free of any untoward manipulation. He and his legal team could not sustain the issues they raised in their originating prayers. Again, because the so-called prayers were offered to a false deity who betrayed its inefficacy in a resounding manner in the face of farce.
Not being a good sportsman, Izunaso has engaged the services of hatchet writers to malign not just Senator Hope Uzodimma but also the Tribunal. Emmanuel Onwubiko, in his paid puerile and trite write-up in a national newspaper on November 4, 2015, spent time alleging irregularities that Izunaso and his legal team could not sustain before the Tribunal. Like a drowning man clutching at every available straw, Onwubiko, who claims to be a civil society activist, lampooned the police for saying the truth about what they observed at the election, which is that it was held in the best tradition of democratic practice.
Onwubiko risked contempt of the Tribunal by attacking the person of the judges and casting aspersions on their judicial integrity. One is really not surprised that Izunaso is doing this. It runs in his system and his pedigree is much of that of a bad loser.
But the bitter truth which Izunaso, in private, will accept is that in the politics of Orlu Zone (Imo West Senatorial District), Senator Hope Uzodimma is a colossus. Before Uzodimma decided to mount the rostrum himself to canvass for votes, he was the financer of the politics of the zone which produced the godfathers of Izunaso and who made it possible for him (Izunaso) to come into political limelight. But Izunaso behaved true to type and betrayed all of them and is today biting the very hand that fed his political mouth.
By resorting to media trial, is Izunaso striving to get in the media what he could not achieve at the Tribunal? He has appealed the Tribunal’s judgment. Why not allow the rule of law to take its full course? Why engage the services of a mercenary writer to fight a battle he knows he will not and cannot win? I want to believe that Izunaso knows that mercenaries do not win wars! Tested warlords and seasoned political strategists with the willpower like Hope Uzodimma, do.
That is not even the issue here. We are concerned about impudence, incivility and intemperate language of his hatchet man, Onwubiko, whose misrepresentation of facts and insult on the judicial institution as well as the police, exposed his tendency for indiscretion. Perhaps, Onwubiko is not aware that this is not the first time Izunaso is losing to Uzodimma in an election. In the first instance, he went all the way to the Supreme Court and he was resoundingly floored. This time around, Izunaso has gone ahead to appeal the decision of the Tribunal and he will crash again to prove that in Orlu Politics, Uzodimma holds all the aces and there is nothing Izunaso and Onwubiko can do about that. As the ghost of Julius Caesar told his traitor friend, Marcus Brutus, we shall, indeed, meet in Philippi.
· Opara who resides on 115, Old Orlu Road, Owerri is a Political Commentator.
Ezeboko11@yahoo.com