Ogun, governance and
the election tribunals
By Olukoshi
Saturday,
May
10, 2008
Recently, the Ogun State Election Petition Tribunal upheld,
in a far reaching judgment, the April 14 election of Otunba
Gbenga Daniel as governor of Ogun State after extensively
reviewing the evidence submitted in protest of that election
by the Action Congress Candidate, Otunba Dipo Dina.
It will be recalled that immediately after the election, the
Resident Electoral Commissioner of the State, Mr. Godfrey
declared Otunba Gbenga Daniel winner of the election with
a vote tally which was much higher than that of his closet
challenger, Senator Ibikunle Amosun of the All Nigeria People’s
Party and Otunba Dipo Dina of the AC as well as that of Alhaji
Gbenga Kaka of the Democratic People’s Alliance (DPA).
It is well known that both the ANPP candidate and the AC candidate
instituted well publicised legal proceedings against the victory
of the incumbent by taking advantage of the redress mechanism
provided by the Tribunal. Indeed, even after the recent judgment
of the Tribunal, the AC candidate had served notice of his
intention to carry his protest further to the Appeal Court,
while the ANPP candidate had also continued to separately
prosecute his legal struggle. I am not a lawyer to address
the fine parts of law and other technicalities adduced in
the recent judgment but, it is of interest to note that the
judgment did take on board several of the well publicized
complaints regarding irregularities in the election. In contrast
to the allegation that the case involving the ANPP candidate
was once dismissed in an earlier judgment on technical grounds,
this latter judgment did consider with painstaking efforts
the substance of the actual conduct of the elections.
Although, it is legitimate for those who feel aggrieved by
the conduct of elections to explore constitutional channels
of seeking redress, this writer had objected on a previous
occasion to the attitude which subtly seeks to intimidate
the judiciary by whipping up public sentiment against well
considered judicial pronouncements. The impression given by
this reprehensible disposition is that a section of the public
will only accept or applaud the judgments which favour them
while condemning or shouting down, hysterically those which
go against them. Curiously, there has been very little editorial
analysis of the weighty issues covered by the recent verdict
of the election tribunal with respect to the petition of the
AC candidate.
Shorn of legal jargon, it would appear that the issue in contention
in Ogun State is whether the election had complied substantially
with the provision of the 2006 Electoral Act and whether the
irregularities and hitches alleged were severe enough to cancel
the outcome of the elections.
Remarkably, inspite of sensational statements made to the
effect that the opposition had video recordings of scenes
of rigging, it turned out that none of these clips conveyed
solid evidence of rigging while several of them were far from
specific about date and locale, and worse still, were not
accompanied by voice. In other words, the public was inundated
by a trial in the media which sought to predetermine the outcome
of the judicial proceedings by supposition rather than hard
facts.
We must await the outcome of the ongoing judicial sessions
on the Ogun elections. It is nonetheless partinnet to recall
that virtually if not all published opinion polls before the
April, 2007, elections predicted victory for the incumbent,
even if by a narrower margin than was actually recorded in
the election. Infact, this writer does not recall that any
serious pre-election analysis and scientific opinion testing
thought that any of the opposition candidates, acting alone
could defeat the incumbent candidate; some analysts did predict
however, and in my view correctly, that if the opposition
candidates in the State unite, they could give the incumbent
a good run for his advantages and acclaimed skills.
It is a matter of history that this did not happen and the
opposition by fracturing and entering the terrain on their
respective steams made themselves highly vulnerable to the
well articulated campaign of Otunba Ghenga Daniel. For example,
it is a common knowledge that while the opposition relied
on the media and banked on a possible disqualification of
the incumbent through EFCC petitions, the governor energetically
undertook a tour of the entire 232 wards in the State holding
village parliaments, distributing generators and providing
pipe borne water.
It is important to grasp this context in order to make an
informed and honest comment on the election and to understand
that irregularities notwithstanding, it represented in substance
the choice of the people of the state.
It is shameful that many commentators have in their analysis
not taken full account of this political context which in
my view, validate the recent judicial victory of the incumbent
candidate.
•Olukoshi, a management consultant is based in Lagos
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