I believe that the honourable judges presiding over the Presidential Election Tribunal in Nigeria: Hon. Justice Haruna Tsammani (North East), Hon. Justice Stephen Jonah Ada (North Central), Hon. Justice Mistura Omodere Bolaji-Yusuf (South West), Hon. Justice Boloukuoromo Moses Ugo (South South), and Hon. Justice Abba Bello Mohammed (North West), do not live in the moon. They have been living in Nigeria long before the 2023 elections. I am also inclined to believe that they know a million times more than those of us who are not versed in law know about election tribunals in Nigeria. I believe strongly the judges know that, in the history of Nigeria, no other election tribunal has raised the consciousness of Nigerians more than the 2023 presidential election which they are currently presiding over.
As far as Nigeria and the 2023 presidential election tribunal are concerned, the mantra, “All Eyes On The Judiciary”, which has assumed the position of a fearless watchdog should tell judges that it is no longer business as usual. Whether, in spite of protests coming from all sections and all walks of life in Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu who destroyed democracy here in Nigeria is taking Nigerian military to restore democracy in Niger or not, the honourable judges should be wise enough to understand that what is currently happening in Niger has intensified the volatile situation in Nigeria. Yes, until the savagery that happened in the name of 2023 elections, Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s truism that Nigerians smile while they suffer in the hands of their political leaders remained incontestable.
Nigerians did not seem to have any alternative than to smile in the midst of the choking poverty and the misery imposed on them by those who feed fat at their expenses but claim to be their leaders. To keep smiling in the midst of all the odds against them became, whether we believe it or not, a rewarding survival strategy. Has it not been repeatedly said that Nigerians are the happiest people on earth? Students of social anthropology and the behavioural sciences can make this a good case for doctoral dissertations. All the same, the truth is that our people have suffered and smiled enough in the midst of the suffering. There is time limit for everything that happens under the sun. I am therefore inclined to think that the days of democratic tyranny in Nigeria is now easy to count if only our political lords and the judiciary can dare to read the handwritings on the wall correctly. What I am not in the position to predict is the cost of counting the days.
But I know that Nigerians, particularly our youths, are no longer in the mood to smile while they suffer. They are now lamenting seriously. The judiciary therefore needs to be cautious because if their verdict fails to satisfy the requirements of justice it may detonate their simmering anger and set the country ablaze. Nigerians are now currently charged for action. The following is an example of what happens when people are badly provoked and there is no sign of redress. On March 3, 1991, four police officers, Stacey C. Koon, Laurence M. Powell, Theodore J. Briseno and Timothy E. Wind beat an African-American, Rodney King, to pulps for allegedly refusing to get out of his car at a police checkpoint. When the videotape of the beating was shown to the public, it generated wild and global outrage. Two journalists, Richard A. Serrano and Tracy Wilkinson, filed the report of the incident in the Los *Angeles Times* of April 30, 1992.
According to them, after a *not guilty* verdict had been declared by a Ventura County Superior Court Jury in favour of the policemen on April 29, 1992, “The 81-second video, filmed by an amateur, showed officers delivering repeated baton blows and kicks as King rolled on the ground. Its images have been seared into the minds of viewers the world over who have watched the tape broadcast repeatedly.” The twelve jurors who acquitted the four policemen that brutalized Rodney King were whites. The four policemen who brutalized him were equally whites. Rodney King was a black man. The incident proved not only to be a case of racism taking too far but also a case of the court turning round to be the worst enemy of the very person that needed protection and redress. A few hours after the verdict had been announced to the public many places in Los Angeles went into flames as African-American demonstrators wanted to prove to the all-white tribunal that their racist verdict could no longer pass unchecked in the last lap of the twentieth century.
Racial oppression in America had lived too long, they said, and should die. Writing about this Los Angeles incident later, another journalist, Jerry Irish, said: “I am making the final revisions on this essay as Los Angeles reacts to the jury verdict in the Rodney King case. The anger and despair that poverty and injustice always breed are palpable, not just in the misguided violence, but in the anguish all people of good will are experiencing as they watch the inevitable results of political, economic, and legal systems that serve fewer and fewer people. The gap between the rich and poor, powerful and powerless, in this City of Angels has been widening to the point of obscenity, leading some observers to liken Los Angeles to a third world oligarchy.” Here and now, Nigeria stands for the third world oligarchy mentioned 32 years ago in Los Angeles.
Ahmed Bola Tinubu is currently the supreme commander of the oligarchy. If there is any lesson we can learn from the Los Angeles incident, it is simply this: When the people are pinned against the wall of despair, when they are unjustifiably compelled to be poor, miserable and hopeless, when they are systematically denied of all sources of decent living, when they cannot trust their leaders, when they have justifiable reasons to be angry, when they cannot trust the police as the guardians of law and order, when the law that should be their last hope turns round to become their worst enemy with the result that they cannot trust the justice system, and finally when the nation itself ignores the justifiable rage of the neglected younger generation as it happened during the End-SARS protest of October 2020 and during the electoral savagery of the 2023 elections, there is bound to be some violent explosion someday unless the situation redressed.
The problem with Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his cohorts is not simply that they make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. Only God does not make mistakes. The real problem with them is that they have become sadists. They take joy in seeing the people they claim to be leading suffer. Because they take joy in seeing the people suffer, they tighten the cord of the suffering each time they feel that it is getting loose and that it is beginning to give the people some respite. When they feel that there is nothing at hand to make the people suffer, they will invent something there and then. Above all, because they take joy in seeing the people suffer, they have lost their conscience and are impervious to criticisms. And when a person hardens his heart and becomes impervious to criticisms only God can save the situation. When a man who calls himself a leader is blinded by selfishness, greed and brazenness, when all these combine to smother his conscience, the concept of sober reflection becomes a mirage.
When the conscience of the man who claims to be the president of his country is dead, that country is dead. Nigeria is dead. It is not just dying. And when that happens, as it is currently happening, someone else is needed to call such a man and his group back to their good senses. Bola Ahmed Tinubu needs help to ensure that he does not plunge Nigeria into a catastrophe of immense proportion. The only institution that has all that it takes to save this country from Tinubu now is the judiciary. All eyes have been on the judiciary because of our respect for the law. It does not mean that the members of the Presidential Election Tribunal are in a better position in this particular case to tell Nigerians the person who won the presidential election.
Nigerians do not wait for any court to tell them that Bola Ahmed Tinubu stole the electoral mandate that was not given to him. It is the electorate that should tell the court so because they know more than the court whom they voted to be their president. But since it is the prerogative of the court to ensure that truth and justice prevail each time they are disputed, to make room for peace and harmony, the court has been given enough evidence which prove that Tinubu illegally imposed himself on Nigerians as their president. Bola Ahmed Tinubu has threatened the judiciary that if he is removed for not measuring up to the demands of the electoral laws of the land there will be chaos and anarchy in the country. Under normal circumstances that should be an empty threat because he is not bigger than Nigeria. Rather, what is likely to cause chaos and anarchy will be any attempt to pervert the justice that is so glaring.
• Rev. Fr. John Odey is a Priest of the Catholic Diocese of Abakaliki.
