THE IMPARTIAL OBSERVER

Nigeria’s surrealistic politics

Hank Eso

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

Nigeria’s much-awaited 2003 general election now belongs to history, but not its vestiges and political fallout, many of which are being surrealistically played out in on the national political stage and courts. As far as elections go, the 2003 election was to have been a watershed event and the barometer marking the emergence of Nigeria as a truly democratic nation with a successful civilian-to-civilian transition and thus, the death knell on Nigerian military adventurism into partisan politics. While these goals may have been partly achieved, the 2003 elections also threw up some political consternation and imponderables that continue to confound Nigerians and Nigeria observers.

As the dust of the 2003 elections begin to settle and the jostling for appointive positions and political booty become more intense, a huge pall hangs over Nigeria. Deep in the belly of the nation’s real-politik, a swirling rumble is gaining gusto, masking the turbulence within, while belying the calm and make-belief tranquility on the surface. As much as one prays for a matured handling of the present controversies and agitations over political disenfranchisement, concerns persist in various quarters that enough is not being done by the leadership to redress the loss of credibility by the PDP-led government, INEC and, indeed, some elements within the Nigerian judiciary that have managed to insinuate themselves into PDP’s vexatious political shenanigans.

Amidst claims of electoral fraud, rigging, accusations of duplicity, etc., nowhere is the post-elections tension in Nigeria more palpable than in Anambra State. A drive through the capital Awka, on the Onitsha-Enugu Expressway, tells a troubling story. There, the campaign billboards of Governor Chris Ngige and his deputy Dr. Okey Udeh are masked and defaced with tar and black paint in protest – an evident sign of non-acceptance of the duo, even though they were sworn in on 29^th May against a groundswell of public outcry and opposition. Anambrarians of all ages, faith, ideology, and party affiliation remain resolved and unapologetic in their claim that they elected Mr. Peter Obi to lead them and not Dr. Chris Ngige. Those not from Anambra and some self-serving Anambrarians, have self-righteously decreed otherwise. But I know that their action will not stand.

As if to confirm that Dr. Ngige is and remains a usurper to the throne – and therefore not his own man politically – eyewitnesses present at his inaugural ceremony recalled with unmistakable shock and disgust, a sordid affair that played out there. The event was, they feared, prescient of what Anambra politics might be over the next four years. Half way through Governor Ngige’s swearing in, a dust-raising multi-car convoy stormed the venue to disgorge Chief Chris Uba (Eselu) and his marauding brigade of cronies, charlatans, and hangers-on. State protocol was breached without apology. And none was offered or called for by the new Governor. The entire pantomime was reminiscent of the relation and dramatic episodes between Sir Emeka Offor and the erstwhile Anambra Governor, Dr. Chinwoke Mbadinuju. In Anambra, a saying that has gained currency goes thus: “Anambra has three Governors; INEC-imposed Governor Chris Ngige, the de facto Governor Chief Chris Uba, and the popularly elected Governor Mr. Peter Obi. One lady even sanctified the saying, Biblically speaking – “Peter Obi is that Rock on which a stable Anambra State will be built.”

Anambrarians have cause to be worried about the fate of their embattled and long traumatized State. The past four years under a PDP government had been catastrophic in every sense. Now, it is already common knowledge that Dr. Ngige had to submit his cabinet list to Chief Chris Uba for sanctioning. Chief Uba handpicked a crony of his, Mr. Uchenna Emodi, for the position of Secretary to the Government Anambra after rejecting Ngige’s personal choice for the post. And so, the Anambra saga continues. The mother of all ironies is that both Chris Ngige and Uchenna Emodi are well-educated and hold higher university degrees. In contrast, their political master and benefactor, Chief Uba, is a filthy rich high school dropout who barely finished Class Three, but is undoubtedly today the political kingmaker in Anambra State. Many in Anambra expect a showdown soon enough between Dr. Ngige and Chief Uba. While they brace themselves for the onslaught, they also worry that like the proverbial grass that suffers when two elephant fight or make love, that they, the good people of Anambra State will bear the brunt of such a power tussle when it eventually happens.

Traversing parts of tension-soaked Nigeria recently, I felt a wrenching sense that the ruling PDP might have, even if belatedly, come to the realization that while they might have trumped the nation and ANPP in particular, the tinderbox called Anambra State might be the unraveling of all their political machinations. I suspect that the PDP hierarchy is praying and hoping that the Anambra Election Petition Tribunal will have the raw courage to rule in favor of Peter Obi, hence giving PDP leaders an outlet to play law-abiding citizens, by giving up a State they never really won in the first instance in deference to a court ruling. But assuming that happens, the situation in Anambra might still get ugly, for the PDP house in Anambra is a house divided against itself.

Anambra State PDP is bedeviled by its calculated inability to decide who were its real candidates for the National Assembly elections. Then also, the PDP candidates –the real and the imagined-- are being challenged at the Tribunal in Awka by no less than six parties over irregularities that favored PDP at the polls. But the mother of all challenges is coming from Chief Ben Obi, Mrs. Joy Emodi, and Nicholas Ukachukwu as senators-elect for Anambra Central, North, and South senatorial zones. Their names were by legerdemain expunged from the victory list after the elections by Anambra State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Alhaji Sulaiman Hassan, reportedly at the behest of the PDP hierarchy in Abuja. The three and several others also eventually got the boot from the ranks of PDP. The outright theft of the seats putatively won by Chief Ben Obi, Mrs. Joy Emodi, and Nicholas Ukachukwu -- and the usurpation of Peter Obi’s mandate by Dr. Chris Ngige -- have turned Anambra politics on its head and confirms that the elections in the State were very far from anything that can de described as free and fair.

As the Anambra saga plays itself out, a larger and more troubling saga has unfolded on the national stage, courtesy of the Abia South senatorial district, Justice Wilson Egbo-Egbo of the Federal High Court, Abuja, and the ubiquitous INEC. In the thick of the muddle is Senate President Adolphus Wabara who, having clearly lost his senate seat to Elder Dan Imo -- the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) senatorial candidate for Abia South senatorial district, rushed off to Abuja to use the courts there to conjure up results that eluded him at the polls. What is blatantly clear and curious about the Wabara saga is that the INEC had earlier declared Elder Dan Imo -- who polled 47,250 votes to Wabara 39, 614 votes -- the winner of the Abia South senatorial elections. Indeed, the Nigerian media reported on good authority that President Olusegun Obasanjo had congratulated Imo before the about-face happened. Rather than address his loss of the election at the Abia Election Petition Tribunal, Wabara knowingly bypassed the Tribunal and headed to Abuja, where he sought relief in the chambers of Mr. Justice Wilson Egbo-Egbo by asking him to compel the INEC to issue him a certificate of recognition as the winner of the April 12, 2003 National Assembly elections for the Abia South senatorial seat. On June 2, 2003, our learned judge Hon. Justice Wilson Egbo-Egbo acquiesced to the request; and so began another round of our unending electoral and political controversy.

The raging controversy also smacks of judicial complicity. Though it was the singular act of one judge, it has cast the Nigerian judiciary in a very sad and bad light. At issue is, who is the rightful winner of the Abia South senatorial seat? Also at issue is whether Mr. Justice Wilson Egbo-Egbo’s court and indeed any Federal High Court had the right to act on the case that was not statutorily within its remit, when doing so would evidently usurp the functions of the Election Tribunal. The reality is and remains that any consideration given to the resort to the Federal High Court in Abuja by Wabara and his supporters had nothing to do with the seeking legal redress. Rather, it was all about the zero-sum game and Nigerian prebendal politics. The shambolic game plan was another script in perpetuating an ongoing electoral and political fraud in furtherance of the outcome of PDP’s “shock and awe” political gerrymandering disguised as elections. Whereas Wabara might think of himself as Nigeria’s Senate President, others see him as a puppet dangling from the strings on PDP political puppeteers until drop time.

As things stand, both Imo and INEC have filed motions challenging the Abuja Federal High Court jurisdiction in the case. Justice Egbo-Egbo has earned well-deserved criticisms from different quarters. Meanwhile, the PDP hierarchy, both in the Legislative and Executive branches, became fully complicit in the process by hurriedly arranging the swearing in of Senator Wabara as the new Senate President. But is so doing, they have opened the Pandora’s box and given fillip to all the accusations that the PDP has and continues to manipulate the political process by undue use of executive fiats and governmental assets. The present irony and dissembling state of affairs was aptly underscored by the National Consciousness Party’s (NCP) recent statement titled - "The Tragedy of an un-elected Senate President and the Ignoble role of the Judiciary.” It stated, inter alia, “the so-called election and swearing-in of an unelected Senator Adolph Wabara as President of the Senate has completed the circle of a disgraceful, monumental and unprecedented fraud that characterized the entire 2003 general elections.”

Several motives have been proffered as to why the PDP hierarchy favored and worked relentlessly for Senator Wabara to emerge as the Senate President and the third ranking Nigerian in the order of precedence and succession. One is that President Olusegun Obasanjo and PDP wanted a malleable legislative leadership and, indeed, one it could hoodwink and even blackmail if need be. No doubt, someone who did not win an election is likely to be beholden on those benefactors that made his ascendancy to the post possible. Senator Wabara may be astute and cosmopolitan. What is not clear is how and why he thinks that he will survive in PDP’s maelstrom, where Enwerem failed for being complacent, Okadigbo failed for being resolute and “stubborn,” and where Anyim had to make an early exist or risk being discredited and destroyed like the others before him.

In delving into this matter, two points are clear to me -- a simple mind -- and, as such, should be clear to any honest and simple-minded person. First, while it was within Wabara’s constitutional right to seek legal redress, he clearly had neither goodwill nor good faith when he circumvented the Election Tribunal in Abia State and rushed off to the Abuja Federal High Court to plead his case. Second, of the little grasp I have of the Nigerian Constitution and laws, I firmly belief that this case was not within the remit of Justice Egbo-Egbo’s court, not in so far as it had not first been heard by the Elections Tribunal and gone to a higher court on appeal. Indeed, that the Abuja Federal High Court lacked the jurisdiction to entertain the suit as per the provisions of Section 285(1) of the constitution which was quite categorical that only Election Petition Tribunals have original jurisdiction over post-election matters. INEC attorneys equally made this point in their brief to the Court, in which they averred: that the subject matter of dispute being an election matter the Federal High Court lacked Jurisdiction to entertain same as only an election petition tribunal is vested with exclusive Jurisdiction to entertain same. And that “the subject matter of dispute does not come within the purview of the provisions of section 25(1) of the 1999 constitution.”

If what transpired between Senator Wabara and Justice Egbo-Egbo was a mistake, it does not lack precedence. General Buhari made the same mistake when he bypassed the Election Petition Tribunal and took his challenge of Obasanjo’s victory to a Federal High Court. In seeking salve where one believes he is best favored, there is a tendency to forget that in the long run, no legality can be derived from an illegality. Justice Egbo-Egbo should have had the courage to refer Wabara’s case back to the Abia State Election Tribunal where it rightly belonged. In not dosing so, he wittingly or unwittingly opened himself and the nation's judiciary to an introspective and even hostile inquiry and criticism. It is sad that this is happening at a time when Nigerians await with baited breath for the Judiciary to rise to its constitutional duty in redressing electoral wrongs and misdeeds wherever they might have occurred. There is still ample room and hope for the Nigerian Judiciary and Election Tribunals to regain lost public confidence, despite the likes of Egbo-Egbo. The choice before them is to stand up for democracy or continue the current rot and trend of surrealistic politics that does not serve any public interest or offer Nigerians any redeeming value or succor.

Senator Wabara, will soon enough learn that the tasty piece of meat in his mouth belongs to an orphan child and was donated by a frugal but unforgiving community. Swallowing the meat means risking being choked. Successfully swallowing the piece of meat is to equally embrace the eternal curse of bellyaching. The one and only stark choice is to rise and walk the path on honor by voluntarily vacating the Abia South seat in the Nigerian Senate.

Until next week, keep the law, stay impartial, and observe closely.

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Hank Eso writes from Woodbridge, NJ. Since 1982 his political commentaries on Nigerian politics and global issues have appeared in The New Times (Lagos), African Profile International (New York) and The Nigerian And Africa Abroad. (New York).

Email: hankeso@aol.com