Imperative of Maintaining The Peace in Kogi State

The bitter political wrangle should be settled within the law

All disputants must continue to eschew violence, submit their grievances to the due process of the law and maintain the peace. In the meantime, we urge our judicial officers before who these grievances have been submitted to rise up to their oath of office of doing justice to all without fear or favour

Because of the potentially explosive nature of the political situation in Kogi State, we had in our front page comment of Tuesday, November 24, 2015 urged caution while advocating judicial arbitration for the resolution of the electoral crisis created by an obvious lacuna in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) and the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended). The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had on Sunday, November 22, 2015 declared as inconclusive the gubernatorial contest in Kogi State on the ground that the margin of win between the leading candidate, Prince Abubakar Audu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and incumbent Governor Idris Wada of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was lower than the number of votes cancelled in 91 polling units of the state. However, hours after the INEC declaration, Audu was announced dead, creating a political situation that was not envisaged by the framers of the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act.

Knowing full well that the electoral body would have to make a decision one way or the other, which might be subject to partisan interpretations by politicians and subsequently undermine the neutrality and credibility of the electoral agency, we proposed a judicial intervention that stood a better chance of being acceptable to all.

As we stated in that editorial, that a candidate whose victory at the polls was imminent should die following an inconclusive election is a convergence that may have beaten the foresight and creativity of our law givers. Our position therefore was (and still is) that this is a challenge that can only effectively be resolved within the ambit of the law. Unfortunately, a golden opportunity was missed when the Attorney General of the Federation and Justice Minister, Mallam Abubakar Malami (SAN), chose to give his verdict on the issue rather than seek judicial guidance from the apex court.

The Attorney-General’s intervention was particularly unfortunate because it knocked the bottom off whatever credible argument INEC might have had for the decision it made. After all, the commission is an independent agency created by the constitution and funded directly from the Consolidated Revenue Fund as a safeguard against executive interference. Obviously INEC, with a legal department headed by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, leading a team of legal consultants made of SANs, was capable of reaching a legal position that it could articulate to the public.

We think, therefore, that senior public officials ought to be more circumspect in their conduct and utterances so as not to jeopardise the integrity of critical institutions whose responsibilities cannot be effectively discharged without public confidence. As things stand, it is now almost certain that the process before and after the election (should it hold as scheduled) could be bedevilled by litigation.

The late Audu’s running mate, Hon. James Faleke, who incidentally did not participate in the initial APC gubernatorial primaries that produced the late candidate, argued that the party should adopt him as the flag-bearer for the supplementary poll. Meanwhile, a section of the party in the state has already endorsed the late Audu’s son, Mohammed, to replace his father while there is a growing school of thought that Yahaya Bello, the runner-up in the primaries that produced Audu, should be given the party’s ticket. That for us would be politically and legally logical and hopefully, less acrimonious. However, amid all these claims, Governor Wada of the PDP insists that with Audu’s death, the APC no longer has a valid candidate and for that reason alone, he should be returned as duly elected.

The spate of disputations notwithstanding, it is cheering that all the aggrieved parties have expressed interest for exploring legal avenues for the resolution of their discontent. This is the way it should be. And this was our earlier proposition.

Our final appeal, therefore, is that all disputants must continue to eschew violence, submit their grievances to the due process of the law and maintain the peace. In the meantime, we urge our judicial officers before who these grievances have been submitted to rise up to their oath of office of doing justice to all without fear or favour, so that at the end of the day they would have helped to illuminate and not further darkened the grey areas of our law.