SIMON KOLAWOLE FROM THISDAY
In my experience of presidential elections in Nigeria, I must necessarily admit that 2023 is the most dramatic so far — and something tells me I have not seen anything yet. I am not talking about the drama of candidates winning or losing in unexpected places. That is lovely. That is what I live for as a journalist: looking out for the unusual event, the outlier, the against-the-grain stories. The more, the merrier. As journalism students, we were taught that the uniqueness of an event is the story. We were told “dog bites man” is no news, except the man is prominent, say a governor or celebrity. The real news is “man bites dog”, except, well, the man in question just had a “404” or “Lokili” delicacy.
The unusualness of the 2023 presidential election is no longer about man biting dog. Otherwise, I would be enjoying it in full. We are now in a dangerous, perhaps unprecedented phase, one I have never seen before, one that is capable of turning the country upside down. In an election season, there are issues at every stage: before, during and after voting. During pre-election, there are court cases, intra-party crises, accusations of planned rigging, etc. During the election, there are accusations and counter-accusations of rigging. Winners would say the election was free and fair while losers would call it the worst in history. All these have become dog-bites-man stories to me.
However, I think this is the first time I am witnessing a situation where election petitions are before the tribunal and the petitioners and their supporters are practically in the media daily arguing their case, mounting enormous pressure on the judiciary and trying to delegitimise the institution even before the tribunal starts sitting. Usually, dog bites man: petitioners wait for the judgement before making comments. If the judgment is favourable to them, Nigeria’s judiciary gets rated as the best in sub-Saharan Africa. If things go otherwise, the judiciary becomes the most corrupt in the world. But the entire Nigerian judiciary is already on a wheelchair when the petitions are yet to be argued.
I can understand the campaign that the final verdict should be given before the May 29 inauguration. There are fears that once a new president is sworn in, the tribunal is highly unlikely to unseat him. So, it is argued that for the sake of fair play, or level field, the litigation should be dispensed with before May 29. Can a tribunal nullify the election of a sitting president? It has never happened before in Nigeria, but that does not mean it can’t happen. Mr Peter Obi unseated a governor in 2006 by going through the judicial process. It was rare, the first in the third republic, but it happened. In 2017, Kenya’s presidential poll was annulled and a rerun ordered by the Supreme Court. It was a first.
