affirming the election of President Muhammadu Buhari and striking out
the petition against the election by the defeated PDP presidential
candidate, Atiku Abubakar was largely expected by Nigerians who have
been shocked by the hollowness and abject void in the petition. In fact,
the way and manner the panel of judges went about to trash Atiku’s
case vindicated the widely shared opinion promoted by cerebral lawyer,
rights activist and present Minister of State for Niger Delta, Festus
Keyamo that Atiku’s petition is the most useless election petition in
the history of the country. The interesting judgment would have been
more damning if they had the license to express their frustration that
Atiku wasted the time of the tribunal and those of Nigerians in the
guise of challenging the electoral verdict Nigerians emphatically handed
on February 22. Today’s judgment is a fitting end to the ill-fated
fortune hunting by Atiku and his political soulmates in the Nigerian
electoral orbit.
Immediately after he was defeated in what was certainly one of
Nigeria’s most transparent elections, Atiku went on a binge of
allegations that he was rigged out of an election where he was beaten
right in his polling unit. He went to town with loud and noisome
allegations of being robbed of a mandate which he neither merits nor
had. He launched into an extensive project of resetting the very
narrative Nigerians enacted in that election and claimed that he was
robbed. He made extensive efforts to rubbish the conduct of the election
and to paint the election black in his desperate effort to show that he
won the election. He went about thumping and threatening to reclaim his
so-called mandate albeit many saw it as a way Atiku was trying to
mitigate the colossal loss he, the PDP and a wide array of loud
principalities that claimed to hold the country’s politics by the
jugular and who fell out with Buhari because of his scorched earth
approach to the national treasury, suffered in that election.
Even as many taunted him to give details of his claimed mandate, Atiku
and his supporters made no effort to do so. Rather, they elevated their
threat of going to court and retrieving their mandate to the substance
of their effort. If they meant to provoke tension amongst Buhari and his
supporters, they failed woefully as the later taunted them to do their
worst. It got to a stage where even some of his party members,
scandalized by the magnitude of the defeat he suffered, advised him
against indulging in such effortless tom-foolery as initiating a legal
challenge to an election he lost so miserably. But to all intents, Atiku
and his cheerleaders meant going to court as an omnibus that will serve
the multi-faceted role of mitigating their sense of disgrace, force
Buhari to panic, force a conciliatory reach out from Buhari and ensure
he firms up his grip on the structures of his PDP for future election
purposes. On almost all these counts, he failed as Buhari snubbed him,
Buhari’s supporters taunted him to no end and he did little to wipe
out the ensuing disgrace that followed his woeful electoral outing after
his loud boasts and those of the cachet of supports he got from
compromised, disgruntled political interests leading to the election.
Every stage of Atiku’s going to court was celebrated as if they were
the real victories themselves. He announced and re-announced his threat
of going to court. He celebrated his readiness to go to court. He made a
dance of his lawyers preparing to go to court. He called out a holiday
of his lawyers instituting a petition against Buhari and in similar
fashion, choreographed every stage of the tribunal process for his
famished supporters eager for a lifeline after the disgraceful
shellacking of February 2019.
Then, Atiku went to court and gradually, the court process gathered
steam and soon after that, Atiku was exposed to look like a crooked
scammer that wanted to scam victory from excruciating defeat. His outing
and those of his witnesses at the tribunal were disgraceful at best.
Atiku clung to two very leaky and collapsible grounds at the tribunals.
These were; that a certain INEC server exists somewhere that proclaimed
him victor over Buhari in the election and that Buhari who had ruled
Nigeria both as a civilian and military ruler is not academically
qualified to lead the country. It was certain that Atiku knew the
silliness and hollowness of the two pillars he rested on but like a
professional con man, he is alleged to be, hoped that by some stroke of
negative arts, he will snatch victory from defeat. The INEC server
jeremiad is particularly silly. To go to the public with pathetic story
that a certain server known to him and his supporters only exists is not
only crazy but miserable. Fact is that Atiku and his henchmen banked
heavily on falsifying their ways to power through hacking supposed
electronic results of the election. For this reason, then Senate
President and Atiku’s campaign director, BukolaSaraki hurried the last
Senate to pass a revised version of the Electoral Law as that election
was around the corner. The key provision on this amended electoral law
was that INEC should transmit the results of the 2010 elections
electronically. Knowing their wily ways, President Buhari withheld
assent to the amended law and that was technically the death of that
plan to hack electronic results to favour Atiku. But because they
invested heavily in this ployin their ill-fatted Dubai Strategy, Atiku
and his supporters were so devastated by President Buhari’s refusal of
assent to the bill but they had no fall backs as the elections closed
in.
To invent a spurious, laughable and specious charge that INEC
transmitted the results of the election through an INEC server known to
Atiku and his supporters alone showed that ab initio, Atiku’s petition
was hinged on bubbles and cannot survive elementary scrutiny. But then,
that remained the main plank on which Atiku rested his hopeless case and
there was no way the case would have progressed without Atiku and his
henchmen making a fool of themselves insisting on a non-available INEC
server.
Again, the issue of President Buhari’s certificate is a beaten trash
that cannot fly no matter how it is pushed. It is a product of acute
desperation and stems from an obdurate belief that somehow, something
could be eked out of nothing. President Buhari has ruled this country
before as a military ruler and had headed several critical institutions
and none has called his credential to question. Most importantly,
President Buhari had contested the 2003, 2007 and 2011 elections without
questions raised about his credentials. It was only when the PDP sensed
defeat by the same Buhari in the run up to the 2015 election that they
cooked up the laughable charge to besmirch and arrest his potential
victory in the election. He proffered redoubtable evidence to stand for
the election and tovanquish the PDP but because the party is desperately
in need of straws for its dwindling fortunes, it had hung unto the
non-issue like a life machine even when various incontrovertible facts
have been adduced to show Buhari’s educational pedigree. That this
will form another leg of Atiku’s woeful petition clearly indicated
that Atiku merely went to the tribunal to engage in wild
window-shopping.
But then, the showing of Atiku and his witnesses at the tribunal were
shameful. All were a cocktail of fairy tales with no shred of evidence
and no proof. Strange enough, Atiku went to the byways and the highways
to buy very cheap and weightless witnesses that merely ridiculed
themselves and his case with the outlandish banalities they advanced at
the tribunal to buoy Atiku’s case. Preliminary cross examination
showed Atiku’s witnesses to be of no value either to his wild claim of
being robbed of a mandate he never had in the first instance or having
any electoral chances in an election he and his henchmen were beaten
down to their polling units. In fact, what Atiku and his witnesses did
at the tribunal were massive parody that invoked gargantuan comedy on
thenational scale as it lasted.
Curiously, Atiku neither allowed himself or his ley backers to come and
tell the tribunal how they were rigged out in their respective polling
booths where they lost miserably and he and his witnesses did nothing to
provide even the flimsiest evidence to prove their case except prurient
and hugely contradictory stories that refuse to add up to anything as
they closed their case. INEC, APC, President Buhari looked at Atiku and
co’s drama at the tribunal and concluded there was no need calling any
witnesses on an obvious nonsense as that would amount to wasting the
precious time of Nigerians. In fact, they concluded that Atiku was
engaged in the spurious art of testing the water with both feet. They
simply made their submission that the tribunal should throw out the
useless petition for what it is-a grand waste of time.
In dismissing all grounds of Atiku’s petition, the tribunal took time
to meticulously tear the petition asunder and leave it for what it is; a
huge expedition in fancy hunting and nothing more. The tribunal fell
short of describing the petition as an anti-climax as the petitioners
made no efforts to prove any of the grounds for which they were hunting
for relief. In intent, purpose and prosecution, Atku’s petition is a
huge joke as it was built on nothing. The intent was to con something
from nothing and the judges took meticulous time to trash out all the
details for all to see that Atiku was just filibustering by going to the
tribunal. At the end of the day, Atiku’s election petition ended like
a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Peter ClaverOparah
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com