OLUSEGUN ADENIYI FROM THISDAY
I had the privilege of a long conversation with the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, last Saturday morning. I was in the house of a mutual friend when Obi dropped by. For almost two hours he shared interesting insights into why he believes he won the election. But what I enjoyed most were the stories of his varied experiences on the campaign trail across the country. I told Obi that he surpassed my expectations at the polls and repeated what I wrote in my column last week that I either overestimated the power of party structure or underestimated his own (Obi’s) capacity for mass mobilization. In the light of yesterday’s ruling, there may be a change in both tactics and strategies by Obi. His counsel, Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, had prayed the Appeal Court not to grant the application that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) be allowed to reconfigure the BVAS machines for gubernatorial and House of Assembly elections now rescheduled for 18th March.The bid failed.
In her compelling weekly column in PUNCH last Thursday, ‘What does Peter Obi do next?’, Dr Abimbola Adelakun promised to spend the next few weeks scouting for post-election insights to better understand “how to correctly account for the Peter Obi phenomenon.” I believe many scholars will be doing the same for more clarity about what transpired in Nigeria on 25th February. Abimbola also wrote: “But I hope Obi knows that what he achieved is phenomenal. I hope he allows himself to reflect on the import of his votes and astutely plan where to go from here. Something has been handed over to him, and what he does with it will be the subject of history.”
By a combination of reasons, including the demographics that project him as their symbol of hope for the country, Peter Obi has become a factor in Nigerian politics. Perhaps in recognition of that, Obi said several things that I took away from our conversation last Saturday. The most important is that he is not walking away after this election. He shared anecdotes from his life about being a long-distance runner in worthwhile ventures. And as I promised in my column last week, I will be interrogating what Obi’s aspiration means for our polity once the election legal processes are exhausted.
However, while Obi is optimistic of victory at the end of the legal process, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, also believes the election was rigged against him. Perhaps as evidence of that claim, Atiku led PDP bigwigs, including the national chairman, Iyorchia Ayu to protest at the INEC head office on Monday. Yesterday, he went a step further by assembling a legal team comprising 19 Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) to “establish the claim of illegality in the election and reclaim the mandate of the Nigerian people” from Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
When three people lay claim to a mandate that only one can secure, the court drama is bound to be interesting. Yesterday evening, a three-member panel of the appellate court led by Justice Ikyegh granted INEC permission to reconfigure the BVAS machines ahead of the governorship and Houses of Assembly elections across the 36 states. The panel, however, ordered INEC to upload the data on the BVAS machines to the back-end server and make the data’s CTC available to both Atiku and Obi. The latter was in court yesterday and I am sure he was disappointed that he wasn’t awarded the relief he sought.
The story began last Friday when Justice Ikyegh granted the two separate applications for the inspection of INEC materials, which both Atiku and Obi said they would use to prove that the poll was rigged against them or/and that they won. “All the electoral materials used in the conduct of the election for the office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” Justice Ikyegh ruled while also granting the duo permission to do electronic scanning and/or make photocopies of used ballot papers and “carry out digital forensic inspection of BVAS machines used for the conduct of the February 25 presidential election.”
