‘The judge is not neutral. The judge is required by law to be on the side of the accused until the prosecutor has proved the accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt. In the case of election, the law requires judges to be on the side of INEC until the petitioner has used balance of probability to convince him otherwise beyond reasonable doubt’
Presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 presidential election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has asserted that the Supreme Court judgement that validated the election of President Bola Tinubu was in order. He blamed Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi for filling non-serious petitions over a serious election. He noted that the petitioners received technical answers from the Presidential Election Petition Court and the Supreme Court because they filed technical questions. Adebayo said his aim was to make Tinubu a successful one-term president. He spoke with CHUKWUDI NWEJE.
The Supreme Court has affirmed the February 25 election of President Bola Tinubu as you predicted in March after INEC announced the result of the election. How did you know the direction the judgement would go?
I am a lawyer and I knew that there were no relevant grounds in the petitions filed by Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi. I have handled pre-election and post-election cases up to the Supreme Court for close to 20 years. I have a unique advantage of not needing to seek legal advice from anyone; I know what the law is. Secondly, I am old enough in the Bar to be a judge of the Supreme Court or Chief Judge of Nigeria, so before I take a matter to court, I judge it myself and ask myself what I would do if such petition were before me. I also participated in the election and got reports from all the polling units. Every report that went to the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) also came to me. Everything I predicted about this election happened as I said it would, so I was not surprised. The only people that surprised me were the voters. I didn’t expect that knowing how irresponsible the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had been in government, that the voters would vote for any politician from any of the two parties.
Does this now mean that everything Nigerians laboured for in the Electoral Act 2022, like INEC transmitting result to IRev, has been in vain?
I don’t think so. I think the problem is that Nigerians had the wrong expectations from certain things. People want the law to do for them that which they can do for themselves. There is no Electoral Act that you will pass that will let the Supreme Court Justices to choose a good president for you. The idea is that you should choose one by yourself, and one of the easiest ways to choose them is to make sure that only good people emerge from the political practice. So, if you are labouring for an electoral act, you have to also support it with an electoral culture.
Again, some of the provisions in the electoral act are just ceremonial. Take the IRev for example. On October 1 2021 in Abuja, more than one year before the election, I said that IRev will not help anyone because it does not change what happened at the polling unit. The polling unit is where you choose your leaders. The polling booth is where Nigerians will say this is the future we vote for; this is the future we want. IRev was a public relations stunt by INEC to say instead of relying on the newspaper, television and radio stations to tell you who won or lost, we will give it to you live.
IRev will not tell you if the votes recorded for APC was purchased with money or if PDP used violence. People misunderstood IRev. So when the cases started, people had an exaggerated view of what IRev was because the petitioners took IRev to be the reason why they lost the election.
There are other provisions in the Electoral Act that were not necessary, like requiring political parties to send a register of their members to INEC within a specified period before the election. That is against the autonomy of political parties.
Luckily, the Supreme Court said it was not relevant. Otherwise, Peter Obi would have been disqualified because he did not meet the required number of days as a member of Labour Party when he emerged the presidential candidate. Some of the provisions in the Electoral Act are good, some are too intrusive. I think what we should work on going forward from 2023 is a political culture that encourages honest people to come into politics, and encourages the voters to have a more sacred approach to voting. From what I experienced in this election the whole exercise is still seen as a business. There may be some honest people but in a democracy, what the majority does dominates.
We should be working towards 2027. The President has nominated nine incompatible persons to become Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) in INEC and nobody is raising objections. This is 2027 elections being done already. These people, if confirmed, have a tenure or five years so they will conduct the next election.
What was wrong with the petitions filed by the PDP and the Labour Party? You said they contained irrelevant information.
The whole thing was a non-serious petition over a serious election. If you are complaining about 86, 000 polling units and you bring only three witnesses within time and an additional 10 when your time has expired, it shows you are not serious. If you are complaining that you were cheated, who gave you the information? I was in Ondo on election day. Atiku Abubakar was in Yola. Peter Obi was in Agulu, Anambra State, and Tinubu was in Lagos. So, none of us was qualified to speak outside what we saw in our own polling unit and around our town. If you go to court to say I was cheated in Lagos, you should bring the person that told you to court. If I had decided to file a petition, I have over 20,000 witnesses from different polling units that I would have called. I’m still in contact with them. So, the petitions of Atiku and Obi were poorly proposed, poorly litigated and appropriately adjudicated. The entirety of what was before the Presidential Election Petition Court and the Supreme Court did not advance the cause of democracy, the cause of electioneering, or how to get them better. They were litigating irrelevant things.
How do you see the increasing role the courts have played in deciding electoral victory?
The court is not a place where you go and seek power. You seek justice from the court, but you seek power from the people at the polling units. Politicians in Nigeria have conceived the court as another step in their quest for power. Many countries don’t lend their judiciary to the electoral process; they limit judicial intervention to the minimum,
In Nigeria, because our constitution was written by politicians in such a way that the court has become a tool to tiptoe people to power. Between 2007 and 2021, the Supreme Court did a lot of activism that is not sustainable. They removed governors and put others, not minding how the people voted.
For example, in Rivers State, they said that Chibuike Amechi was improperly substituted by his party and therefore the votes scored by Celestine Omeihe, who campaigned and won the election, belonged to Amaechi. In Bayelsa, they said that David Lyon, who won the election and they knew he won cannot be governor because his running mate had issues, so the person who had no issues forfeited being governor. The political party sponsors the candidate, and it is a joint ticket between the governor and the running mate. What affects one affects the other. Is it not fair to say that the electorate vote parties? No, people vote for the candidate. Are you saying that if Labour Party had not brought Peter Obi some of the people who follow Obi will vote for LP? I have my doubt. Many people who follow me would not look at SDP if not for me. If Peter Obi had been the candidate of SDP and I candidate of LP, I tell you the followership would not be the same for both parties.
Back to the issue of the court removing governors and putting in another. Are you saying the election in Imo State where the Supreme Court named Hope Uzodimma governor should have been sent back to the electorate for a fresh election?
Not only in that case, there are many other cases. The court should as a matter of policy jurisprudence abhor the fact that it would not be the one making or unmaking the outcome of an election. The court should look at the process. If it can pass, let it pass. If it cannot pass, give the people a second chance to correct themselves. It has never been heard of that in a democracy, that five or seven people will sit in a chamber somewhere and adopt technical arguments to derail a democratic outcome. I would recommend that the judiciary is removed from election litigation. There should be a Constitutional Court that is convoked only during election period.
If such constitutional courts are established, who would be the members?
We can use retired judges and constitute them into constitutional courts. We can amend the law so that once election result is declared, it would be sent to the constitutional court. If anyone has complaints about the election, they would approach the court for redress. The process would be easy because as a petitioner, you don’t have to prove that INEC was wrong. You only have to object to the result and INEC will have to justify the result to you I will advise that the court have two chambers. Chamber One to hear the complaint and Chamber Two to entertain the appeal from Chamber One. The court should have, maybe 90 days for the process that must conclude before inauguration.
Some people, including lawyers still believe that the Supreme Court affirmation of Tinubu was more of technicality than legality. Where do you draw the line between the two?
Firstly, it is not everything people say is technical that is technical. Some of them are substantive law. Secondly, if you take your car to the workshop because it does not start, it could be an electrical problem if there is no battery. It could be a mechanical problem where the kick starter is not working, or it could be a chemical problem where there is no fuel in the tank. So there are many reasons why the car won’t start. It is the same way when you come to court.
If you owe me money and I ask you for the money and you refuse to give me and I forget about it for seven years, if I call you after seven years for the money, the statute of limitation is gone because law is that any debt not claimed within six years is statute-barred, so that simple thing becomes technical to people. The judge is a servant to the law, not the owner. All of us, including the judges, must obey the law. The judge obeys the law the most.
So, when after the judgement of the Presidential Election Petition Court, Atiku Abubakar went to Chicago State University and brought documents, there was nothing the Supreme Court could do. Even if the judges wanted to accept those documents, they couldn’t because the law is that after 180 days, anything concerning election petition cannot be entertained anymore. I will give you a scenario. If you have an election petition at the tribunal and the judge is flying on the 179th day to deliver judgement and his flight is cancelled and he arrives on the 181 day, he cannot deliver that judgement again because the time has expired.
If you go to court with a technical question, you cannot blame the court for giving you a technical answer. Atiku and Obi’s petitions were based on technical points. None of them said Tnubu did not win. They were only saying he is not qualified. They were using technical points to say that Tinubu had a problem in Chicago 30 years ago over forfeiture of money, therefore disqualify him. When they said Kashim Shettima did not withdraw from the senatorial contest properly, it is a technical point; you didn’t say he did not win. They went to court to argue technicality so the court gave them a technical answer. When the APC also wanted to disqualify Obi as a candidate because he did not meet the number of days, the court did not allow it.
I want us to understand something. Election matters are called sui generis, unique, (standing on its own). Election matters are technical proceedings. In election petitions, our laws require the tribunal to be on the side of INEC from the beginning. It is just as in a criminal case. The judge is not neutral. The judge is required by law to be on the side of the accused until the prosecutor has proved the accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt. In the case of election, the law requires judges to be on the side of INEC until the petitioner has used balance of probability to convince him otherwise beyond reasonable doubt.
A court in London has vacated the $11 billion judgement against Nigeria in a case of breach of contract with PI&D. What do you say to that?
It was a good development. It was a failure of governance. If you look at the contract itself, the procurement process is flawed. There was no proper vetting of the company. The company hasn’t done it anywhere else before. Several big men, who brought the company, just wanted to be feeding off the country. We need to get the foundation right to know that this is the problem of governance in Nigeria. It’s terrible that Nigeria’s legal system is so hollow that If you have litigation in a contract, that is wholly Nigerian, we don’t insist like India does that litigation should take place in Nigeria. No doubt Nigerian courts might still give the same award but we should at least as a matter of public policy make some of these corrections.
Our institutions also play a part in the crisis, including in the manner in which the contracts are terminated. We should understand that when you sign agreements in government, it should be honoured or at least you follow the proper way to terminate it. What happens most of the time is that when a new government comes, the new government will start to criminalise you. Some will go to court and win. I think we should work on that. Lastly, we should commend those who actually brought this to light, starting from President Muhammadu Buhari who brought it to the attention of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to Osinbajo himself, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, the EFCC and many others.
Nigeria recently failed in its bid to get into the United Nations Human Rights Commission, losing to Ghana and some other African countries. Is the country losing its status as the giant of Africa?
I think that what happened was that Nigeria withdrew and supported Ivory Coast. That was the information I got from diplomats. It is not as if Nigeria lost. You know these things are zoned, and we are in the same zone as Ivory Coast. Nigeria must have stepped down in exchange for something else. But I think the government has to tell Nigerians why Nigeria ceded to Ivory Coast so that Nigerians will understand,
The naira is on a free fall, exchanging at over N1,200 to $1, from N464.50 in May when Tinubu assumed office. What is happening?
What happened is that I didn’t become president. Where the naira is today is exactly where I warned it would be. Economics does not care about your politics. Any decision you make in a scenario will give the same result no matter who made the decision. What is happening is the consequence of what President Tinubu in his nee-liberal attitude said when he came in. He said he will not prioritise or ration forex, so somebody who wants to buy champagne from France will have to be treated same way with somebody who wants to import medical equipment to save lives. Government policy is saying that the two should go to the same market to source dollar.
We now prefer to consume foreign goods. The naira will continue to travel in the direction of our behaviour and right now our behaviour is driving $1 to N2,000, The National Assembly invited the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria to explain why the naira is sliding but they just imported SUVs. The National Assembly Complex and Aso Villa, where the president lives, are maintained by foreign companies. These are some of the things putting pressure on forex.
You have a manifesto: Hope Again. Tinubu has the Renewed Hope that is in some ways similar to yours. In what ways can you help him, since you both want the best for Nigeria?
I hope he wants the best for Nigeria. I believe him if he says so. I don’t know whether he wants the best for Nigeria after wanting the best for his friends.
The duty I owe Nigeria, not Tinubu is to do everything possible for him to succeed. I cannot force success down his throat and I cannot make him succeed against his wish. What I will do is not to distract him. I owe the country the duty to be a continuous opposition, it will be a good service to join Tinubu’s government and help him succeed but it is a greater service to remain in opposition and help democracy in the long run. We must develop the culture of building democratic alternatives where the country must not become a one-party state no matter how attractive it may be. In 2027 we will be out. My aim is to make President Tinubu the most successful president ever, but a one-term president.
