And so Atiku Abubakar’s political fortune came crashing down. It did so in such anti-climactic manner. It grossly deflated Atiku and his supporters’ high hopes and bonhomie feeling they built into the case at the Supreme Court. Effectively, it was a sealing to Atiku’s lurid claim to a mandate after he was trashed so badly in the February election, starting from his polling unit. It was the end of the queer server story. It is the end of the grand baloney Atiku and PDP said was their challenge of an election they were visibly trashed. Some have said that it was also the end of Atiku’s own chequered political history pockmarked by stories of elephantine graft and gargantuan perfidy but some still say Atiku’s own parody at the tribunal is a way of ensuring he keeps his stranglehold on the PDP presidential ticket, at least for the 2023 contest where he will be swimming against the tide of the presidency going south. Crest-fallen, Atiku has said he fought a good fight but tht the judiciary was sabotaged. PDP has said it is still in shock but the nation has moved on.
The Supreme Court decision to trash Atiku and PDP’s petition was, to most Nigerians, sudden. It came like a sudden bolt; out of the blues sort of. It came like a thief in the night. I am sure that neither Atiku, his PDP confederates nor the APC and least of all, President Buhari who is away on official duties in Saudi Arabia expected the verdict to come when it did. Mid last week, information went out that the Supreme Court was to start hearing Atiku’s petition on the 30th October. To most Nigerians, that was the start of the case many Nigerians see as a non-issue but which Atiku and his cohorts had hyped far beyond its very sparse value. Many Nigerians expected a replay of the sordid drama and hyperbole that happened at the Court of Appeal tribunal. Many expected the kind of interplay that earlier happened at the tribunal and most importantly expected the kind of detailed, long-drawn and entwining judgment that happened at the Appeal tribunal.
But some Nigerians that know felt the Supreme Court merely reviews the judgment of the Appeal tribunal and has no room for the twists and turns that took place at the tribunal. Many said the Supreme Court is not cut out for elaborate time-wasting but rather would study the judgment of the Appeal tribunal; looking out for possible fault-lines to invalidate it or approve the judgment if nothing impinges it. So to these Nigerians that were in the know about the workings of the Supreme Court, there would be no time for the extensive and long-drawn display that attended Atiku’s case at the tribunal.
Many however, did not nurse the belief that it will take just one sitting and under three hours for the Supreme Court to trash what has been seen as cooked-up hogwash by Atiku and PDP after suffering a defeat at the presidential election. But that was actually what happened. The seven-man panel of Supreme Court justices led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria threw away the Atiku and PDP appeal against what was seen as the most detailed and grounded election petition ruling by the Presidential Appeal Court Tribunal. The Supreme court was unanimous in the decision that the appeal lacked merit, which re-echoed the well-held opinion that Atiku and PDP indulged in a deliberate waste of the time of the tribunal and the Supreme Court without advancing credible evidences to back their wild claims. The Supreme Court has said it will communicate the reasons behind its judgment later to the parties in the case. That it took the Supreme Court just one sitting of under three hours to unanimously throw away Atiku and PDP’s case shows that the case was built nothing, sustained by nothing and was about nothing but a deft effort to snatch victory from the jaws of crushing defeat. It was so bad that after the extensive Presidential Tribunal verdict, one of the strongest PDP backbones, Governor Nyesom Wike quickly congratulated Buhari and pulled off the dubious omnibus but not so for the rest of PDP and Atiku that hoped that somehow they can con victory from the scam they cooked up as election petition.
Much had been said of the hollowness of Atiku and PDP’s case to bear another repetition here but the Supreme Court verdict put paid to a somewhat awkward effort by some cohorts of PDP to impugn the integrity of the Presidential Election Tribunal for delivering justice in such cadent manner it did. After the tribunal meticulously pried open the emptiness of Atiku and PDP’s petition and dismissed it from all fronts as lacking merit, bereft of proof, lacking in evidence and credibility, the PDP and its allies had indulged in an extensive project to defame and smear the tribunal while doing everything to blackmail and twist the Supreme Court to decide its ensuing appeal in its favour. Typical of PDP, it advanced no tangible ground to protest the well-researched and well-received verdict of the presidential appeal tribunal but raked so much tar to haul at the verdict and the panel that gave it. It waved so lyrical of how the Supreme Court will grant its Presidential Election Tribunal though it showed no further evidence than the shamefully scrambled outing it did at the tribunal for such high hope. In the height of PDP’s blackmail of the judiciary, it deigned no scruples going public with names of judges it wants to hear Atiku’s appeal at the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court had to come out officially to lampoon a known ageless PDP errand boy and self-styled spokesman of the ambiguous CUPP for his puerile attempts to smear and blackmail the Supreme Court for the benefit of Atiku and PDP.
Practically, the Supreme Court unanimous decision on the Atiku and PDP petition solidifies the decision of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal and rubbishes the grand efforts of Atiku and PDP to scoop power through dubious means. It seals Atiku’s wild hallucination of winning an election where he and most of his henchmen were defeated right at the polling units. It put paid the weird and curious story of a back end server known exclusively to Atiku and his hirelings which proclaimed him victor in an election he was defeated roundly on the field. The Supreme Court decision capped the many strange, ludicrous and queer claims Atiku and PDP cobbled up and dumped at the presidential tribunal for which they and their witnesses engaged in a chaotic and more queer melodrama at the tribunal to disprove right at the tribunal by their hugely contradictory evidences riddled by unprovable moonlight tales and dubious claims.
Most importantly, the Supreme Court decision, the way and manner it came proved poignantly the apt statement of cerebral Senior Advocate, Human Rights Activist and Spokesman for President Buhari Campaign, Festus Keyamo who leafed through Atiku and PDP petition and dismissed it as the most useless election petition in Nigeria’s history. That both the Appeal Tribunal unanimously dismissed all grounds of this bogus petition and that the Supreme Court unanimously agreed with the ruling shows indeed that what looks like Atiku’s valedictory showing in the nation’s political space was a huge fraud that cannot survive elementary scrutiny.
Peter Claver Oparah.
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com