By Ben Kerrigan And Martin Cole-
Bola Tinubu will become Nigeria’s president despite court challenges, says minister
Information minister, who has said there is ‘no basis’ to form interim government, amid claims of February elections being fixed.
The Nigerian president-elect, Bola Tinubu, will be inaugurated as scheduled on 29 May despite court challenges to the election result, the country’s information minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, (pictured)has said.
His assertion during a visit to the UK to counter claims that the 25 February election in Africa had been stage managed was a bold claim of confidence that the efforts of the opposition to annul his emergence as the winner of the elections will come to nothing.
Some of his critics say Mohammed’s words appears to ride rough shod over the court’s decision to determine that position, an indicates a level of underhandedness by Tinubu’s team. No election in the history of Nigeria has ever been overturned in court.
However, the court which has jurisdiction is expected to have the last say, bearing in mind that cases of this nature often take a long time to resolve.
Rumours that the president elect has already compromised the legal process with his deep pockets makes it almost impossible to imagine any alternative outcome by a court. Evidence to support the spreading claim in many quarters in Nigeria are unsupported, but Tinubu who once governed Lagos, and is said to have been a prominent godfather figure without whose knowledge no important activity occurs, is known to be extremely wealthy.
Nigeria’s presidential election was marred with ballot snatching at poll stations, and results were not directly uploaded to INEC in line with the constitution, leading to allegations of fraudulent malpractice. Legal challenges from opposition parties like the APC and Labour Party have called for the cancellation of the elections.
Lai Mohammed said there was “no basis” for an interim government to be formed until the court challenges could be resolved.
Tinubu was declared the winner of the election which took place on February 25. The result is being challenged in court by Obi – who came third – and by the second-placed opposition People’s Democratic party (PDP) led by Atiku Abubakar. They accuse Tinubu’s team and INEC of voter suppression, intimidation o voters, and electoral fraud. They claim to have evidence of inconsistency in votes registered and those officially declared.
President elect: Bola Ahmed Tinubu Image: PREMIUM TIMES
The APC has asked the courts to strike down the Obi challenge on a series of technicalities.
This week, the reputable Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote an open letter to Joe Biden urging him to rethink his decision to endorse the results. The author of Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah claimed the poll had been imperilled by “deliberate manipulation” and the “electoral commission ignored so many glaring red flags in its rush to announce a winner”.
The Obi petition to the election tribunal has to be settled within 180 days of being filed in March and after that there can be further appeals to higher courts. His team claim to have irrefutable evidence the elections were rigged.
Mohammed said the opposition “have a right to challenge the results in court but they do not have a right to call for insurrection. They do not have a right to say because they have lost, and the other candidate is sworn in, that will be the end of democracy. You do not go to court, and at the same time try to intimidate the judiciary. They are unpatriotic because they are calling for insurrection”.
Accusing Obi’s running mate, Yusuf Baba-Ahmed of treason, Mohamemd said: “If the running mate of a presidential candidate says if you swear in a validly elected candidate as president that would be the end of democracy, that is treason pure and simple. As a lawyer I know it is a treasonable felony to call for the end of democracy.”
He said Obi had never disowned these remarks, even though they threatened the stability of the country. “Democracy surviving in Nigeria is very important for democracy in Africa,” he added.
Meanwhile, award winning journalist for the Nigerian PREMIUM TIMES, Yusuf Akinpelu, told The Eye Of Media.Com that the election were for the most part fair, and Nigerians need to unite and accept the results o the election while pursuing any feeling of electoral fraud to the Nigerian judiciary.
” If the elections were defrauded and the opposition have concrete evidence to prove this, they can present this to the court, he said. Despite pessimism in some circles, the Nigerian judiciary has complete autonomy and will base its ruling on facts presented before a judge. Nigerian courts are known to have issued rulings against powerful political figures who many people had thought would have sway over the judiciary.
Political candidates throughout the history of Nigerian elections often feel aggrieved with the outcome, but the court system is there to resolve those matters. Although Peter Obi was very popular among the youths, many Nigerian voted along tribal lines, and there were other influences like what people had to gain from the winning side. I don’t think Peter Obi had the reach to win the last elections even accounting for some of the undemocratic activities that marred the voting process”.
However, other critics have pointed to the fact the police and army were nowhere to be seen when they were needed most, allegedly evidencing the corruption of the ruling party.
One political commentator from Nigeria who insisted on anonymity told this publication; ”the political ruling elite have control over the police and the Nigerian army. When the police look the other way in the face of egregious acts of violence, this is always a clear sign of complicity in the corruption process that follows. How can a man convicted of drug dealing in the U.S be president of Nigeria? The results of the Nigerian elections were not representative of the wishes of the people”.
Tinubu has been credited with substantially improving the city of Lagos during his tenure as governor, and his supporters say he has the experience to strategically put people in place to change the country and improve its economic situation.
Opposition parties contesting the election results in Nigeria literally have just over a month to produce any miracles they expect.
The information minister dismissed fears that controversy over the disputed election results would weaken the new president’s legitimacy , following endless protests.
Legal challenges to election results are common in Nigeria’s widely corrupt nation, where the quest or power and riches often overrides all other considerations.
Alleged INEC Fraud
Obi’s campaign, have accused the election commission of failing to upload the results in real time as expected, alleging the delay in publishing to have been due to collusion by the ruling party to with electoral commission officials to manipulate results. There have even been circulating claims that INEC’s boss, Mahmood Yakubu, was bribed to the tune of $170m dollars to alter the results.
Many Nigerians have called for him to step down and be replaced.
INEC boss: Mahmood Yakubu Image: Chatham House.org
Mohammed disputes all the claims. He said: “a technical glitch” meant the presidential results could not be viewed on the portal, unlike the results for other elections being held on the same day. He said “INEC suspected a cyber-attack and in order to protect the integrity of the data decided to float another portal, and that portal did not start working until much later in the day”. But he added that election agents for every participating political party in 186,000 polling units had signed off forms endorsing the tabulated results. “No one has come forward to say there is a discrepancy on what is shown on these forms and what is on INEC portal,” he said.
He insists the elections “were the most transparent and authentic in the country’s history. They were free and fair”, insisting that the outgoing president, Muhammadu Buhari, “was ready to lose this election rather than win at all costs”.
The official results showed Tinubu secured 8.79m votes, while Abubakar won 6.9m votes and Obi scored 6.1m. Neither Obi or the other challenger were close to meeting Nigeria’s other constitutional requirement of winning at least 25% of the votes in at least 25 states in the country’s federation. Tinubu passed that threshold in 29 states.
The dispute over the presidential elections spilled over to the gubernatorial elections which occurred nearly a month later, with tense tribal disputes between the Yoruba and Igbo tribe in the ormer capital of Lagos where numerous scenes of violence broke out over territorial ownership of the city.