Damaging good cases, By Hakeem Baba- Ahmed

‘Those who accomplish great things  pay attention to little one’. African proverb

Spending  the Easter period as I did  with younger relations who will not stop unwinnable arguments over the recent elections is the nearest thing to torture.Pausing only for prayers during the month of Ramadan when patience and tolerance are scarce and boundaries generously elastic, you grit your teeth amidst scandalous allegations, weird conspiracy theories, depressing projections and undoubtedly blemished actions of sundry participants, in the hope  that there will be a few bright points you can pick and dust for use.Passion ran high as logic flowed low.It was a post-mortem of the elections between three deeply -committed relations who supported PDP, LP and APC with unmatched commitment.No one conceded a single point in a fight involving three people, and the levels of anger and bitterness in the debates was frightening.My take is the existence of widespread and deep divisions over what happened on February and March this year, and a worrying conviction that it will be facile thinking to assume that all grievances that the elections dredged will be washed away with the decisions of the judiciary.

All three participants  in the argument believed their parties won the elections.The PDP man believed INEC was bought over and programmed to return Tinubu.He had the facts to prove it, at a stage,even claiming that PDP was born rigged.His catalogue of knowledge of how rigged the elections were, by INEC and by APC was breathtaking, although they left you wondering what prepared him to know so much.They had less money and less State clout than APC, but they had beaten APC black and blue, whose Muslim-muslim campaign alone and the image of a flailing Tinubu was supposed to have lost it the elections.INEC’ s failure to fulfill all righteousness in displaying announced votes from polling units was the evidence needed to confirm that its figures were cooked and seasoned and served on a nation expecting a miracle.

The LP supporter insists that LP won the elections outrightly, with every young Nigerian and others tired of poor governance, corruption, insecurity and injustice voting for it.The process of snatching that victory and pushing back the party to the third place started from when it became clear that Obi/Datti were going to change the Nigerian political landscape for ever.Without crude and dangerous manipulation by INEC, Obi/Datti would have retired the Nigerian political oligarchy, and that is one step to a real revolution.The LP man would not accept that many younger Nigerians and others who are victims of the oligarch could have willingly voted for them.He would not accept that the incredible percentages of votes won by the Labour Party in the South East could have been illegitimate.Lagos was not SE, yet see what happened, he made his case.See  parts of the Middle Belt and pockets of Northern  Christian communities.So, the other two asked, the Church played the Christian card,  yet cried to the heavens over Tinubu’s Muslim-Muslim ticket.Are Northern Christians and Igbo who have made FCT, Nassarawa, parts of Niger State and Kogi States  their home more progressive than non-Christians?

It was that kind of argument.Every thing made sense, and nothing did.The APC stalwart sat back and merely reinforced what INEC had said: Tinubu won fair and square.Yes,the religious card was a successful gamble.Those who gambled against it lost.PDP said it had no place in Nigeria of the future, and offends every value all faiths stand for. LP was guiltier, and the tiresome ‘yes,Daddy’ audio clip made the Muslim-Muslim gambit look like a morning prayer.Tinubu appears to know that the Nigerian voter was as  attached to his ethnic identity as he was to his faith.Everything  had been thrown at him, yet here he was, declared elect in an election where  thinking trumped tradition.He had simply out-smarted the others, done his homework, groveled and cajoled, bought votes, and made clerics rich, but he was just a Nigerian politician who thought.

So why this vehemence and bitterness over a process that is not even concluded? This was the bit that worried me. The noises compounding and eroding even further, the integrity of the judiciary suggests that it will be foolhardy to expect that the judiciary will resolve all the allegations  about rigging, in  the weighty constitutional issues surrounding the FCT,the limitations of INEC during the elections and sundry issues, in a manner that  allows the nation to move on to the next elections.There is a broad spread of opinion that appears to have made up its mind that the courts are compromised and should not have the final say. (Although I cannot say I am entirely surprised given the effect of distance on the psyche, I saw a glimpse of this in Chimamanda’s  published letter to President Biden of the US). It is of course replete in the social media, and is meeting its match in comments that Tinubu will be sworn-in on 29th of May if the courts say so, even if we fight with bits of the heavens that could fall on the day.

I admit to some disappointment in our Chimamanda’s letter, and I mention it here briefly only because it falls within the wide spectrum of views that US and countries like them should pay little heed to our judiciary and what it decides about the elections.This is not the place for it, but Chimamanda’s US does not currently represent  the best judge to drag her other country to.History will record the US’s place in the growth and development of democratic systems, but it is also replete with records that the country will not want revisited when it comes to discussing  man’s journey to liberty and freedom. Huge amounts are spent by poor countries these days to have access to media that reveal the embarrassingly thin skin of the US democracy.To denounce an election when it deserves denouncing is an act supreme courage.To denounce the only process that could expose it as fraud is to be guilty of unpardonable irresponsibility.Our Chimamamanda chose polite language to affirm what we have always known: that there are two democracies.She came from one where all elections are acceptable unless they trigger horrific civil wars, and she now lives in another where you could have anything ranging from an attempted coup by an out-going president to an unchallenged election where majority of voters do not decide a president.Opinions of countries like the US are important, but not if they encourage a damaging subversion of our institution and a consequent unending crises.

Warts and all, election disputes end up being adjudicated.Responsible conduct is one that reinforces its capacity and integrity to live up to the highest standards of justice and a sense of history.Those who are contemplating designer justice because they had planned for only one electoral outcome should not have submitted to the democratic process.Millions of Nigerians who have opinions over the credibility of the last elections should encourage a thorough and credible interrogation  of its conduct.To prejudge its outcome is  to damage a good case.If your opponent had won, you will, in all probability have taken a permanent residence in the courts.