was no question of unsuitability, unpopularity or rigging because it was
as all-inclusive as possible for the community-based constituencies and
consensus was unanimously accepted as the expression of the will of the
visible majority. That was then.
Nowadays, elections have become a hydra-headed political process with
each process constituting a threat to democracy. The campaigns involve
highly antagonistic encounters between the mainly youthful, exuberant
and intoxicated thugs of the contending parties, mere mercenaries
manipulated for mayhem. Then the elections process emerges from the
preceding baptism of fire, primed to ignite its own deadly
confrontations, as champions of violence overwhelm the right to choose
and democracy takes cover.
What Atiku Abubakar is going through in Nigeria today represents the
most recent manifestation in the deconstruction of democracy whereby the
arbiter usurps the role of the kingmaker, preying on the evident
displacement of consensus and compromise for the greater good of the
majority by the inordinate and irreconcilable greed for political power,
beyond the legitimacy of popular support, especially among those who
have eaten the forbidden fruit of “incumbency”.
The Nigerian judiciary, or rather, Nigerian judges have effectively
colonized the democratic space with their self-determined interpretative
jurisdiction over purely political matters of popular mandate to govern
the affairs of people at the approved tiers. As a result, they too have
succumbed to the virulent virus that manipulated the minds of people to
place self above service in the warped perception of the import of
campaigns, elections and ultimately democracy.
The masses have wizened up to the judicial masquerades’ acquisition of
proprietary rights over their civic duty of voting for their leaders by
democratic process. They are agitated by the straight-faced demeanor of
agents of the third arm of government who, as it were, used the judicial
backdoor to overtake the process and import of elections and exercise an
undemocratic, autonomous, authoritative and conclusive fiat on the
emergence of “elected” leaders in the Executive and Legislature. When
you add the shocking exposure of casino-scale caches of foreign currency
stowed away in judges homes, you get a noxious potent brew of pent-up
public discontent against “political judges”.
This is the ominous background to the increasing public political
vigilance on the composition of judges for review of especially the
Atiku Abubakar election appeal petition. There is a widespread build-up
of resentment at the likelihood of the President of the Court of Appeal,
Zainab Bulkachuwa, for example, either presiding or selecting judges for
the election appeal panel when she is spouse of APC chieftain and the
APC Senator-Elect from Bauchi state, who was curiously “granted” the
ticket without participating in the primaries!
The principle of insulating the judiciary from politics now has
corollary in the imperative of isolating elective politics from judicial
manipulation borne out of the extra-judicial leanings and tendencies of
judges. In the case of the Atiku Election Appeal therefore, it is
strongly advocated that a more dispassionate and transparently
independent selection process be adopted in determining the judges to
hear the appeal such as balanced geo-political representation and/or
seniority status of judges of the Court of Appeal, excluding of course,
the unavoidably tainted.
At the end of the day, it will be in the judges’ interest that they are
seen to be fair and just in their handling of critical cases pertaining
to the determination of political/election outcome disputes like the
Atiku case against President Buhari’s INEC declared victory. The era of
adjudicating for a nation of illiterate and helpless citizenry has long
gone as some of the election upsets proved in the last elections. Even
at the Supreme Court where the buck of judicial king-making stops, these
rumbling undercurrents of public political vigilance must not be
neglected. Unless there is some rational harmony between popular
expectation and judicial pronouncement on election outcome disputes the
people who have been watching helplessly may decide to act for
slef-help.
Adamu Gwazuwang, a public analyst and commentator writes from Abuja.