The Supreme Court last week affirmed the victory of President Tinubu in the February 25 presidential election. The seven justices of the apex court dismissed the appeals of Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) for lack of merit. The apex court’s ruling brings to a closure all matters relating to the 2023 presidential poll. The matter as far as litigation is concerned has finally ended and no suit will be further entertained on it again.
Despite the validation of Tinubu’s victory, many Nigerians believe that his is not a popular mandate of the people. Like that of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, the conduct of the 2023 election was shoddy and tainted with irregularities and infractions. Many Nigerians believe the process of that election was not credible enough.
This is the challenge the APC administration will grapple with in the next four years and after. Nigerians will never forget INEC’s perfidy and culpability in the 2023 flawed and discredited polls. It does not matter what the justices of the PEPC or the Supreme Court said on the matter. The people of Nigeria had already made up their mind on the matter. Some are already gearing up for 2027 contest. That one may be too early to contemplate as well. All the same, it is worth it.
Respect for the nation’s judiciary is being eroded daily on account of diverse rulings emanating from election petition courts, especially the presidential election. While the apex court’s judgement marks the end of the matter for the presidential election petition matters, it has not really ended for Nigerians. For weeks, months and years they will still talk on the matter. They will continue to interrogate the matter in private and public places, including newsstands, bus stops, markets, beer parlours, betting centres, barbers shops, coffee, nkwobi and amala joints. Students will interrogate the judgement in their long essays and thesis.
Lecturers and scholars will discuss it at conferences and many scholarly articles will be written on these judgements arising from the 2023 poorly conducted polls, the worst by INEC in the past 23 years. Those who lost will never be happy or be pacified. They will not forget because the contest was not free, fair and credible enough. It wasn’t transparent either. Local and foreign observers said much to this effect. INEC contributed so much to the failure of the election by deliberately failing to follow its own rules. It changed the rules in the middle of the game willfully and justified the perfidy at every juncture or fora.
The shoddy conduct of the 2023 polls will haunt INEC and its officials for many years to come. They may shamelessly carry those avoidable imperfections to the November 11 gubernatorial polls in Kogi, Imo and Bayelsa states and boldly give the people another tainted election results which will also be resolved at the election courts.
For Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, they had put up a gallant fight from the beginning to the end. It was a fiercely fought legal battle that reverberated the world over. Their effort to upturn Tinubu’s victory did not succeed. The judgment has also enriched our electoral jurisprudence. I salute Atiku and Obi for exhausting all the legal channels to ventilate their misgivings over the highly flawed 2023 polls. Their attempt to right the wrongs of the poll was never in vain. They remain gallant even in defeat.
For President Tinubu, it is another wave of victory in a highly contentious poll with intense legal fireworks. He won at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC). The apex court has also validated his victory. But in all of this, the celebration was modest and somehow muted for obvious reasons. Despite the weighty evidences and allegations against Tinubu, he survived. He should also be magnanimous in victory and extend the hand of friendship to his fellow contestants. The election is really over. What matters now is how to move the country forward until 2027.
This is about the most litigated presidential election result in the political history of Nigeria in terms of exposing all faults and mining for hidden flaws of the candidates from all parts of the world. The 2023 presidential election litigation can only be compared to that of 1979 between President Shehu Shagari and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, which led to the classical interpretation of two-thirds of 19 states. The rest, as they say in local parlance, has become history.
Following his victory at the apex court, the President who was in a mild celebratory mood assured his aides jokingly that their jobs are secured. By inference, it then means that Tinubu’s job is also assured for the next four years. However, what will happen in 2027 presidential poll is still in the womb of time. Whether Tinubu will get four plus four will be determined by how best he manages the affairs of this great country in the next four years. For Tinubu, this is the time to really work, work and work. Politics and campaigns are indeed over. He will no longer be distracted by litigations. What will give him sleepless nights is the falling value of the naira, rising inflation and other challenges the country is facing at the moment.
This is the time for him to really hit the ground running. The counting has started. He will be judged by how he rules or governs the country in the months ahead. As the president of the most populous black nation in the world, he should regard the entire country as his constituency as treat them as such in terms of appointments and location of projects. Tinubu should be the president of all Nigerians and not of his ethnic South West region. His approach to leadership must reflect the federal character principle as enshrined in the 1999 constitution. Unfortunately, Tinubu did not reflect the federal character in most of his appointments.
Let him be bold enough to patriotically manage our diversity. The Buhari administration terribly mismanaged our diversity. It will be in the best interest of Tinubu never to mismanage the nation’s diversity and the economy as his predecessor, Buhari. It is the duty of the president to convince Nigerians that he actually prepared for this job for so many years. After all, it took him a very long time to plan to become Nigeria’s leader. For him, it was a life-long ambition to be the president of Africa’s most populous nation. Now that he has realized his life ambition, let him deliver all the dividends of democracy he promised during the campaigns. Good enough, they are legion and he knows them all. Time is ticking very fast and Nigerians have started counting.
Since restructuring has been an agenda of the APC government, Tinubu must not shy away from it as Buhari did. Prominent Nigerians still believe that Nigeria cannot achieve much with its present structure and unitary government disguised as a federal government. This is perhaps why the former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, recently called for a new constitution for the country. Some other Nigerians have made similar calls in the recent past. Tinubu must not evade this task as history beckons on him to do it. Beyond this, let him ensure steady electricity along with adequate security.
