COMMENTARY: Challengers of Bola Tinubu’s Election Will Appeal to Nigeria’s Supreme Court
By Emmanuel Ogebe
[Washington] A Nigerian court ruled Wednesday against a landmark challenge to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s election victory by opposition parties after a marathon hearing in Abuja.https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230906-nigeria-court-to-rule-on-opposition-election-challenge
“This petition is hereby declared unmeritorious,” said one of the judges at the end of a 12-hour reading of the court’s verdict — a record in Nigerian history.
Tinubu and Vice-Presidential running mate Kashim Shettima were declared victors of a controversial and disputed presidential election on February 25. The court ruled against multiple claims by Labour Party candidate Peter Obi, including fraud, violations of electoral process and allegations that Tinubu failed Constitutional thresholds of qualifications to run in the first place. The court denied the parallel suit from the Peoples’ Democratic Party [PDP] headed by former Vice President Abubakar Atiku in addition to a third opposition party.
Tinubu won mostly on technicalities as the court threw out evidence of forgeries of his Chicago State university certificates and witness testimony it claimed was not filed on time. It bizarrely claimed the multimillion dollar electronic voting systems, which detected fraudulent wins for Tinubu in two states won by Peter Obi and showed 39,000 missing results affecting millions of votes, were irrelevant.
During the trial which this writer traveled to Nigeria to cover, one barrister argued that trying to get poll results from the election agency was like Ukraine seeking arms from Russia to fight it. When he suggested that future elections should be all electronic, one of the Justices said, “In the US they have that, but Trump has things to say about it.”
As the court droned to a 10 pm closing after it began sitting at 9 am with no lunch breaks, former President Donald Trump’s name surfaced briefly. Railing against a European Union Election Observer report, one of the five justices said, “Trump has been complaining about the 2020 elections, but the Europeans have said nothing about that.” The European Union observer team condemned the conduct of the election, concluding that it marred the public’s trust in the election process. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/nigerias-elections-eroded-public-trust-voting-eu-observers-2023-06-28/#:~:text=Nigeria’s%20elections%20eroded%20public%20trust%20in%20voting%2C%20EU%20observers%20say,-Reuters&text=LAGOS%2C%20June%2028%20(Reuters),to%20enhance%20transparency%20and%20accountability.
Attorneys for the challengers have announced an appeal to Nigeria’s Supreme Court.
The court dealt with multiple challenges but two of the more serious matters also went in Tinubu’s favor. One was related to Tinubu’s forfeiture in 1993 of narcotic trafficking drug money during his stay in Chicago. It ruled that the $460,000 money-laundering forfeiture in US District Court was not based upon a conviction of Tinubu, and therefore the Constitution did not disqualify him to run for office in Nigeria.
The second claim was whether Tinubu’s party fulfilled a constitutional threshold of 25 percent of the votes in 24 states and the capital territory of Abuja to be president.
Abuja like Washington, D.C., doesn’t have statehood, a governor or voting members of the House of Representatives, so this rule helps equate it with the states. Unfortunately for the challengers, the court ruled that although Tinubu scored only 18 percent of the votes in Abuja compared to his challenger Peter Obi who scored more than 50 percent, Tinubu’s party made up for it in other states. It didn’t have to be Abuja.
It may be argued that candidates should have 25 percent of votes in Abuja to remediate the lack of full voting power in the capital territory. The rationale is to give equity and fairness to Abuja, and one may compare it with the U.S. Constitution’s use of an electoral college that balances the voting power of large states with smaller states.
The US electoral college was supposed to provide Southern slave-holding states with a little more leverage in determining the president of the United States, yet some argue it became anachronistic because you now have a split between who
wins the popular votes and who wins the electoral college, and sometimes it’s not the same thing.
Nigeria is a better model where you’re required to have 25 percent in 24 states and Abuja, but the Nigerian court ruled otherwise.
Election cases in Nigeria tend to be litigated (with the exception of the election in 2015), and the deeply disappointing court verdict on Sept. 6, 2023 is reminiscent of what late American pastor and politician Pat Robertson said, “Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy. We’ve made a terrible mistake.” A court of five deciding an election for millions of people strikes many as unjust. But most especially the verdict in this case is.
Recent elections in the United States are generally not contested much in court, save for the 2000 election, until Donald Trump filed more than 60 lawsuits claiming election fraud and lost all of them. All of Nigeria’s three election challenges likely will be heard in next Supreme Court.
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Emmanuel Ogebe, Esq, is a prominent US-based international human rights lawyer and Nigerian pro-democracy advocate with the US Nigeria Law Group in Washington. Last month, he marked the 27th anniversary of his abduction and torture by Gen. Abacha for demanding an investigation of the assassination of a pro-democracy icon over an election annulment.
