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When it became clear that both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP) would litigate their February 25 presidential poll loss, cyber warriors obviously beholden to both parties took on the campaign with a ferocity that has no precedent in Nigeria. Their primary objective was to ensure that the winner, the All Progressives Congress (APC), must not assume office; but if it did, it must not have peace of mind on the throne. To achieve this goal, the losing parties and their social media warriors, together with a host of silent and shadowy supporters in high places, briefly toyed with fomenting insurrection. That plot collapsed very quickly. It led the anti-APC conspirators to settle for the last and perhaps most vicious strategy left in their armamentarium: discrediting, blackmailing and weakening the judiciary in order to achieve a preplanned outcome. The plotters envisaged three main outcomes: secure total cancellation of the February 25 election, or secure a runoff, or get a declaration that either the PDP or LP won.
The APC presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was the target all along. If there was a declaration today that the PDP had won, indicating that candidate Atiku Abubakar would be sworn in, the LP would quickly reconcile with that outcome and congratulate the ‘victor’. And if the LP were to be declared victorious, the PDP would respond amicably in kind. It is not certain how the political North would respond to an LP victory, given the ethnic and regional peculiarities of Nigeria’s history, but both the LP and the Southeast would be comfortable with an Atiku victory.
Both parties have refused to attack each other since the poll result was declared on February 28. Instead they have focused on subverting the Tinubu victory, and failing that, attempting to bring the country down. Former senate president Ahmad Lawan did not clinch the APC presidential primary, and was even less likely to win the presidential contest; but had he won, the virulence on display against the APC presidential victory, a virulence given fillip by the inexplicable lack of unity in the Southwest, would have been considerably reduced.
It is from the foregoing that the unethical and malignant campaign against the judiciary, particularly against the Supreme Court, the leadership of Chief Justice of Nigeria Olukayode Ariwoola, and the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), must be understood. The judiciary is merely suffering collateral damage. The courts are not the main target. CJN Ariwoola is in fact not also a target in the real sense of the word. The PDP, LP and cyber warriors are focusing on the judiciary to intimidate that arm of government into playing their script. The plot and the tactics being deployed to achieve a nefarious outcome are explicable. What is inexpiable is the seeming silence of the secret service and the law enforcement agencies in the face of the massive negative propaganda and unmitigated fake news being hurled at the judiciary. Until judgement is delivered in the case, the plots and campaigns will continue without let. It goes without saying that any verdict other than the three outcomes mentioned above would be unsatisfactory to the conspirators.
The campaign to weaken and damage the judiciary began actively in late March when some online media outfits published photographs of Justice Ariwoola on wheelchair at an airport, according to them, in disguise, and pretending to be ill, but on his way to a London hotel for a secret meeting with the then president-elect, Asiwaju Tinubu. Not only was the face of the CJN quite visible and without any disguise, it turned out the president-elect was resting in France. The tendentious story was triggered and circulated to suggest that under Justice Ariwoola, a Yoruba man like the president-elect, securing justice in any petition would be far-fetched. The lawyer who took the photograph later apologised for his indiscretion and the innuendoes attached to the picture, but the opposition parties’ cyber warriors would not be placated. Since then, multiple stories have been deliberately and methodically concocted against the CJN and the judiciary to insinuate bias against them.
President Tinubu was also alleged to have made a phone call to the CJN, and the CJN was in turn alleged to have mounted pressure on the Department of State Service (DSS) in order to subvert or obstruct justice in favour of the president. There were of course no calls of any kind. Then, also, counsels to both the PDP and LP, together with suborned media establishments, have sought to influence public opinion after every court session of the PEPC with snide remarks and twisted interpretations of the ongoing court hearing. The attacks are relentless and malicious, and there is apparently no stopping the opposition and their assignees. Worse, only last week, the cyber bullies reported the resignation, on the grounds of principle, of a member of the PEPC, Justice Boloukuoromo Ugo. It was another deliberate falsehood. There was no resignation but a calculated and orchestrated campaign to sow seeds of distrust and doubts among the justices and in the minds of Nigerians.
and fearful that the plots were not gaining the traction they had hoped, the PDP/LP plotters raised a brief but furious campaign through the courts to secure live coverage for the PEPC trial. They hoped to make up for their lack of substance with copious application of drama, in fact melodrama. That inane flurry also petered out into fatuity. It was not clear to any rational person how 11 witnesses for the LP and 37 witnesses for the PDP could hope to persuade the election court that election malpractice took place in Nigeria’s over 176,000 polling units, let alone prove that there was substantial non-compliance with the Electoral Act.
Both PDP and LP leaders, not to talk of their cynical presidential candidates, knew that they were engaged in a quixotic enterprise to overturn the election. To remedy their failings, they have resorted to all kinds of legal and political tricks capable of destroying the judiciary. They have seized upon a few controversial past judgements of the apex court to drive home the point that the Supreme Court could not be trusted.
The presidential election petitions have been consolidated. Try as hard as the petitioners may, it is hard to contemplate any outcome that would send them into raptures.
The justices have been maligned and blackmailed. But it would require a greater leap of faith on their part, and a lot of contempt for the facts before them, for the justices to bend the law in favour of calumniators simply because they had the temerity to ridicule the courts and the justices. Unable to prove anything, the petitioners will still continue to rail at the justices before the judgement is delivered and after. The mystery is why the law enforcement agencies have not gone after those who concoct and spread deliberate falsehoods.
The Nation
