Nigerians Should Not Allow Supreme Court Choose President For Them
Presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 2023, Prince Adewole Adebayo, maintains that the Supreme court judgement that validated the election of President Bola Tinubu is in order. He blamed the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and and that of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi, for filing not serious petitions at the Presidential Election Petition Court and the Supreme Court. Adebayo said his aim is to make Tinubu a successful one-term president in an interview with OLADIPUPO AWOJOBI. Excerpts:
The Supreme Court has affirmed the February 25, 2023 election of President Bola Tinubu as you predicted back in March after the Independent National Electoral Commission (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 a 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 petitions 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 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 the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had performed 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 is 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 the person 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 Act are just ceremonial. Take the IRev for example, on October 1. 2021 in Abuja, one year before the election, I said that IRev will not help anyone because it does not change what happens at polling units. 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 the PDP used violence. People misunderstood IRev, so when the cases started people had an exaggerated view of what it was because the petitioners took IRev to be the reason 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 the 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 do is to dominate.
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 State on the 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 units 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.
You didn’t win the presidential election but you have a manifesto, “Hope Again,” Tinubu has “Renewed Hope” that is in a way similar to yours. In what ways can you help him, after all 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 there, my aim is to make President Tinubu the most successful president ever, but a one-term president.
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, 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 State, they said that David Lyon, who won the election and they knew he won could not 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 voted for party?
No, the people voted for the candidate. Are you saying that if the Labour Party had not brought Peter Obi some of the people who followed Obi will vote for LP, I have my doubt. Many people who followed me would not look at the SDP if not for me. If Peter Obi had been the candidate of SDP and I candidate of LP, I tell you the follower- ship would not be the same for both parties.
Back to the issue of the court removing governors and putting in others, are your saying that a case like Imo State where ‘Supreme Court’ governor tag still hangs over Hope Uzodimma’ head should have been sent back to the electorate for 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 has two chambers, Chamber 1 to hear the complaint and Chamber 2 to entertain the appeal from Chamber 1. The court should have, may be 90 days, for the process that must conclude before inauguration.
