What’s to be done when change is imperative but the political conjuncture makes it improbable? A coalition of major opposition parties offers a promising path.

By Chudi Okoye

A defeat of the corrupt and incompetent ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), in the February 2023 presidential election would have marked Nigeria’s stride as a maturing democracy. Unfortunately this did not happen, vexing a great many Nigerians desperate for change. Of course, APC didn’t come through the 2023 election unscathed. Its share of votes plunged – by 19 percentage points relative to 2019; and although the party survived the tough legal challenges mounted by the main opposition parties, it governs with a much shrunken mandate.

APC deserved a walloping after the galloping disaster of Muhammadu Buhari’s two terms. But an even more significant indicator of Nigeria’s democratic growth would be a defeat of the current president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in the election of 2027. The defeat of an incumbent and a peaceful transfer of power to the successful opposition are considered a powerful sign of democratic consolidation. We’ve just seen this yet again in Liberia, with Joseph Boakai’s defeat of the incumbent president, George Weah.

We might say, then, that the defeat of Tinubu in 2027 is a democratic imperative for Nigeria. But what are the odds of achieving this feat? And what’s the most promising path for the opposition?

Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February presidential election, has proposed what may be a workable, and walkable, path to that end. In a speech he delivered on 14 November whilst receiving the national executive committee of the Inter-Party Advisory Council, Nigeria (IPAC), the former vice-president called for a merger of the major opposition parties, so they can present a formidable front against the ruling party, APC, which, he averred, is exhibiting proto-dictatorial tendencies and is turning Nigeria into a one-party state.

It is strong stuff. Predictably, it elicited an equally strong rebuke from the APC. A spokesperson for the party said that Atiku was suffering from an “irrational fear of one-party dictatorship,” and advised him “to concentrate on repairing his damaged political psyche and attempt to revive his comatose PDP.”

No surprises there, I’d say. It’s par for the course for the seemingly jittery ruling party.

The slight surprise, rather, comes from the conflicting reaction of the opposition parties, as reported in the media. Punch reported that the Labour Party (LP) expressed an interest in the idea, while the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) appeared to hedge, offering a condition for its participation in any merger. Vanguard, on the other hand, reported that Labour has denied offering any positive signaling, quoting the exact same Labour spokesperson cited by Punch in its own report.

Meanwhile former Senator and prodigious kibitzer, Shehu Sani, has panned the proposition, penning on his Twitter page: “Merging PDP with the young, agile, and restless Labor supporters will be like fixing a Ferrari engine into a peogeot (sic).”

I am not sure which is the more accurate reporting about Labour’s reaction: the positive signaling presented by Punch or the rebuff reported by Vanguard. Perhaps, it’s simple political somersault: Labour was for the idea before it came out against it. Or, it might be merely a political dance to appear none-too-eager so as not to weaken the party’s position in a prospective political bargain. Whatever the case, it would be unfortunate if the opposition elements fail to at least explore the benefits of political cooperation.

First of all, a merger would mean a reversal of the very dynamic – opposition fragmentation – that enabled APC to eke out an improbable, though heavily contested, victory in the February election. Enlightened party interest should propel the opposition parties towards reconsolidation, the better to take on a fierce, if fumbling, APC that did not deserve to win the last election.

Beyond this, a move to coalition formation would only follow a tradition that has persisted– either in the form of a governing or an electoral alliance – throughout Nigeria’s political history. In the 1959 general election which heralded Nigeria’s independence, none of the regional parties emerged with sufficient seats to form a national government on its own. So the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) and the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) entered into a governing alliance. This led to the leader of the former, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, becoming governor-general and later, in 1963, president; while Sir Tafawa Balewa, NPC deputy leader and chief minister since 1957, was a shoo-in as prime minister.

As it happened, the NPC-NCNC coalition had become increasingly frayed and unstable as the 1964 general election approached. In the chaotic lead-up to the election, the kaleidoscope of Nigerian politics was re-scrambled. New electoral alliances were formed to fight the election: NPC, along with Ládòkè Akíntọ́lá’s Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) and a straggle of other parties formed the Nigerian National Alliance (NNA); while the NCNC, Action Group and a rump of other political groupings coalesced into the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA).

The political conflagrations from that election led to the January 1966 coup d’état and the collapse of the 1st Republic.

When democratic politics returned and election was held in 1979 to usher in the 2nd Republic, Alhaji Shehu Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria (NPN) secured the largest share of votes. But the party was not strong enough to form a national government on its own. So, in a repeat of the 1st Republic model, NPN entered into a governing accord with Azikiwe’s Nigerian People’s Party (NPP), with the latter offered a few ministerial portfolios in the NPN government.

The alliance did not subsist, however. Nor did the 2nd Republic itself. Still, when the military re-opened the political space for the 3rd Republic in 1992, a rash of political formations erupted, forcing the military to create by fiat a two-party system comprising the Social Democratic Party (SDP), ideologically positioned “a little to the left,” and the National Republican Convention (NRC), pitched “a little to the right.” These parties were veritable coalitions, each comprising a diversity of interests and tendencies compelled to cluster – by an ineluctable, nearest-neighbor political algorithm – into the superstructures created by the military. But the “voodoo democracy” of the 3rd Republic (apologies to Prof. Soyinka) was soon scuttled by the military.

With the emergence of the 4th Republic in 1999, there was yet a recrudescence of the coalition dynamic in Nigerian politics. We’ve had seven presidential elections so far in the 4th Republic. Results from the first six indicate a persistent duopolistic tendency, with two political conglomerates commanding a disproportionate share of votes, as seen in the following tallies: 1999 – 100% (there were only two parties); 2003 – 94.1%; 2007 – 88.3%; 2011 – 90.8%; 2015 – 98.9%; and 2019 – 96.8% (see chart above).

It was only in the 2023 election that we saw a departure from the two-party dominant outcome, with the leading parties, APC and PDP, securing a combined share of 65.7%. The Labour Party emerged as a third force, propelled from obscurity by the Peter Obi factor. Its 25.4% share of the votes and command of 11 states plus the FCT was many orders of magnitude above any previous third party performance.

This statistical trend begs the question of the best electoral strategy to defeat a floundering APC in the 2027 election. Should the opposition parties reconsolidate? Or is there a chance that either PDP or LP, each on its own, will emerge triumphant?

A single-party win is not impossible. But a coalition strategy would greatly improve the odds. A cooperative strategy makes sense when we consider the result of the 2023 presidential election, with the PDP candidate and the two former PDP members who decamped to LP and NNPP winning a combined 60.7%. Opposition coalition is further advised, being the very means by which APC emerged in 2013, to defeat a swaggering PDP just two years later.

Although it was PDP’s Atiku that has suggested the idea of a pan-opposition merger, this should not be, or be seen as, a play by him for another presidential punt in 2027. I’d expect Atiku to play a prosocial, statesmanlike role in building an opposition alliance for others before he exits the political stage – perhaps as a personal revenge but more in aid of Nigeria’s democratic development.

I would suggest, further, that any opposition electoral alliance that likely emerges should present a 2027 ticket led by Labour’s Peter Obi. This is not merely because Obi was the second runner-up in the February election. He has also attracted an ardent progressive base unmatched by any other candidate. This is important because, in Nigeria’s ever-opportunistic political culture, Labour, like other opposition parties, will likely lose some of its electoral cache before the next election, as plum-seeking politicians pivot to the ruling party. A strong base of personal support offers Obi a bargaining chip to bid for leadership in any emergent opposition alliance.

In addition to this, Obi also embodies a unique political calculus melding ideology and geopolitics. He represents the mainstreaming of progressive (though not radical) politics, and his election would constitute a geopolitical correction for the South East so far denied presidential accession. No other candidate in the coming electoral cycle will embody such a vital convergence in quite the same way as Obi.

This brings me, finally, to the argument made by Senator Shehu Sani concerning the incompatibility of PDP and Labour.

This is an incredibly ignorant comment, I would argue, with due respect to the senator. Democratic history anywhere in the world shows that mass political parties harbor within their ranks a diverse range of political tendencies. This is the case with the Democratic and Republican parties in the US, the UK’s Labour and Tory parties, and their counterparts elsewhere, all of which have moderate or centrist factions as well as more radical elements. All such parties also cultivate a generational mix. There is no reason therefore why the Nigerian Labour Party’s “young, agile and restless” horde, to use Shehu Sani’s description, cannot cohabit with PDP’s wizened, if staid but well-connected, political operators. Ferrari and Peugeot can certainly share the same garage!

If the opposition parties hope to win the next election and rescue Nigeria from the clutch of a dysfunctional ruling party, their best strategic option is to orchestrate a formidable coalition. Change won’t come by revolution, though it is increasingly invocated by starry-eyed and frustrated public intellectuals. Political theorists have long identified the conditions that can trigger revolutions if they converge. Some of these are present in Nigeria today: extreme hardship and mass discontent; acute perception of governmental failure; political decay and distrust of institutions. But other triggering factors are missing or not yet acute: widespread revolutionary consciousness cutting across primordial and class divides; intra-elite fissures and emergence of dissident elites; institutional decay paralyzing state coercive apparatuses; and a favorable global environment.

Military intervention is arguably less implausible than revolution as a mechanism for change, but it is barely more probable. The Nigerian military is totally discredited as a political institution and significantly depleted as a martial force. Whether in their stratocratic or civilianized guises, our erstwhile military rulers are deeply implicated in the Nigerian quagmire. So there is no moral justification for military intervention.

What do you do when change is imperative but the political conjuncture makes it improbable? Our best hope for a needed near-term change in Nigeria is a coalition of the major opposition parties, invigored by our present agonies and rising discontent.

Debates over the outcome of the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria seem to have taken a dark turn following the recent appeal court ruling on election petitions, with some critics rejecting the evidence of data, and others, not trusting the courts, apparently hoping for a forceful resolution.

By Chudi Okoye

The embers of disputation over the 25th February 2023 presidential election in Nigeria are still burning, re-inflamed by the controversial 6th September judgment of the appeal court’s Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT). And it will likely continue to smolder even after the Supreme Court has pronounced on the matter.

That is perhaps not unexpected, and maybe not untoward, in a vast, multinational and multifurcated polity such as Nigeria. What is disturbing, however, is that in the maelstrom of debate about the election, there seems to be not just disaccord but cognitive disagreement between the opposing sides. One side believes in the primacy of data, and derives its perspective from a strict application of rational and empirical logic. The other side, reflecting a long tradition of philosophy, appears to prioritize intuition and dogmatic belief. One side predicates its assessment on what is rational and provable. The other seems to believe that more fundamental truths about the election are revealed through intuition, and not necessarily empirical data.

This dichotomy was at play, to some extent, in the proceedings of the PEPT. But it is far more evident in the ensuing public debate over the PEPT’s ruling. The opposing sides in the debate seem to be based in parallel domains of cognition: one probing, analytic; the other dogmatic, full of certainty. It is, to all appearances, episteme vs. doxa, to invoke the ancient Greeks.

As the debate has unfolded, I have looked again at the 2023 presidential election result as announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), comparing it to data from previous elections. I specifically performed an analysis looking at presidential election results from 2011 to 2023, to assess the statistical impact of what one critic described to me as “the magnitude of the electoral fraud and corruption that happened.” I wanted to subject this stirring discourse of widespread fraud, seen in the petitions themselves but more truculently in wider debates, to empirical test.

We know from official results that the All Progressives Congress (APC), which was created in 2013 through a merger of the major opposition parties, had won power by securing 53.96% of votes cast in the 2015 presidential election. This was a significant improvement to the 39.81% that APC’s precursor parties had secured in the preceding 2011 election. The newly-formed party would improve its share of votes, though marginally to 55.60%, in 2019. However in the 2023 election, APC’s vote share took a tumble, plunging 19 percentage points to 36.61%.

Conversely, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – which hitherto had dominated the political space, winning the first four presidential elections of the Fourth Republic (1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011) with an impressive range of scores between 58.87% and 69.60% – would see its share of votes decline to 44.96% in 2015 and 41.22% in 2019, as the APC ascended. However, in the 2023 election, PDP, along with other opposition parties led by its renegade members (the Labor Party with Peter Obi and the New Nigeria People’s Party with Rabiu Kwankwaso), secured 60.70% of the votes, clearly gaining all the points lost by a shrunken APC.

I ran a statistical test (a two-tailed t-test) to compare these two arrays (APC’s vs. PDP/splinter parties’) and got a miniscule t-statistic of -0.03, with a p-value of 0.98 validating the null hypothesis of no difference (PS: the greater the value of a t-statistic, the greater the evidence against the null hypothesis which assumes no difference; but the closer this value is to 0, the more likely there isn’t a significant difference. Conversely, if p-value is higher than the standard 0.05, as in our test result, then the null hypothesis of no difference is not rejected.)

It wasn’t just a t-test that I deployed to evaluate the election results. I also ran a correlation (CORREL) test and, as expected, found that the two arrays are negatively correlated, with a coefficient (r) of -0.99. The t-test suggests that the electoral malpractices in 2023, such as there were, likely did not have a statistically significant impact on results; while the CORREL test indicates that the magnitude of change observed in the APC array correlates perfectly (and negatively) with that in the PDP/splinter parties array.

It would have been worrying if there were a statistically significant p-value in the t-test, or if the coefficient in the CORREL test were lower. Any of these would have indicated a distortion, suggesting that the opposition parties did not gain the same amount of vote share lost by APC.

These statistical tests show that whatever it was the APC got up to in the 2023 presidential election, the party ended up with a shrunken mandate, winning only because of the fragmentation of the opposition parties.

I had earlier articulated this point in a post-mortem article I wrote for Awka Times in early March, shortly after the election:

It cannot be gainsaid that the opposition parties’ strategic blunder was the primary reason for their electoral misfortune in 2023. This fact gets forgotten in the fevered aftermath of the election, with the opposition parties and their enraged supporters focusing only on the possible collusion between the electoral umpire and the ruling party. In 2013, in order to take on then incumbent PDP, various political formations had come together – including Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), a breakaway faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and a faction of PDP (nPDP) – and formed APC. The new party would win power in the 2015 election, toppling a 16-year incumbent. By contrast, in 2022, rather than join forces to face a fumbling incumbent, leading aspirants in the opposition PDP – uncertain about their prospects in a deeply machinated PDP primary process which was unfolding – fled to fringe parties where they could easily snag presidential nominations.

In the same article, whilst acknowledging what I described as “grubby electoral machination” on the part of the ruling party, APC, I also concluded:

The evidence is clear and the conclusion inescapable: it is not so much that the ruling party, APC, ‘won’ the 2023 presidential election; it is rather that the main opposition parties may have lost it. These parties saw electoral victory looming, but they reached in and pulled out an ostensible defeat.

This conclusion, which is self-evident, is nonetheless controverted by those who prefer to focus on flaws in the election process and the integrity of the results. The argument goes that we simply cannot trust the official data, and therefore that any statistical analysis based on such data would be – as one fellow eristic put it to me – nothing but “mad science.” In our debate over the 2023 election, this friend insisted that INEC had “manufactured its own result,” and that this was the reason it did not upload results in real time to the public viewing portal, IReV. He further argued that whereas INEC could not falsify “traditional figures” reflecting ethnic-based voting, which presumably would have been easily detected, the commission instead deliberately altered trend-breaking results, which made up the bulk of the total votes, “where candidates (like Peter Obi) made inroads outside their ethnic zones.” Such “true figures,” my sparring partner claimed, were “either not released, [or were] rigged or manufactured.” He claimed that the worst incidence of this electoral misfeasance occurred in states like “Rivers, Benue, Lagos [and] Edo”. He also argued that it required a patient, evidence-led inquiry to expose this “highly suspicious intervention” by INEC, but the PEPT merely “dismissed it [on] frivolous technicalities, [thereby] playing into the crooked INEC hands.”

I have taken the trouble to dissect the foregoing argument because it gets to the kernel of the issue. The formal petitions filed by the opposition parties made much the same argument, merely with more tactful vocabulary. The protagonist in my informal debate made the claim more forcefully, boldly concluding that “we know what happened [in] the 2023 presidential [and] the whole world reported on it.”

It is really hard to fathom, but important to engage, this deliberate flight from empiricism. While no one is disputing the charge of irregularities in the 2023 presidential election (really, how could anyone?), the question is whether these were modal and if they significantly impacted the ultimate results, as our electoral laws require for an election to be invalidated. Section 135(1) of the Electoral Act 2022 stipulates that an election should not be “invalidated” if the courts consider that it was “conducted substantially in accordance with the principles” of the electoral laws and – this is key – that “non-compliance did not affect substantially the result of the election.”

This provision, as I argued in a recent Awka Times article, evinces a conservative disposition in our electoral laws with regard to election nullification. The provision has a long provenance in our electoral jurisprudence, going back even to some 1970s military decrees promulgated to usher in the Second Republic (Section 135(1) of the Electoral Act 22 is an exact replica of Section 111(1) of the Electoral Decree 73 of 1977, as amended by the Electoral Decree 32 of 1979). To overcome this tilt in the statutes, an election petition ought to be prosecuted with the strictest adherence to empiricism and an abundance of scrutable evidence.

In its 6th September judgment, the tribunal dismissed all the petitions, in part because, it said, they were “vague, generic, imprecise and nebulous,” and that much of the evidence tendered by the petitioners were unspecific or inadmissible. But many partisan critics of the judgment will not confront this fact. It is as if they think the rules of evidence should not apply in these cases; that the substitution of fact with fervency should suffice to establish the impact of the observed irregularities in the electoral process.

Let me restate a point I made earlier: I do not in any way dispute the observed flaws and irregularities in the administration of the 2023 presidential election. Nor am I insouciant about their reality. Like many critics, I am outraged that the process was so untidy, more so because some of what we witnessed were evidently machinated.

But there are two points of punctuation here. One is to ask if the observed flaws do rise to the level of substantial non-compliance required by our laws for an election to be overturned. Many have cited critical election reports produced by observer teams from the European Union and the African Union, among others. There’s no question these are useful reports, but of course they have no probative value. The petitioners also presented a plethora of evidence, but the much admitted by the PEPT was considered by that tribunal to be deficient. We will see if the Supreme Court thinks differently.

A second point to ponder relates to the impact of the observed irregularities on election results. Each of the main petitioners, Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar, claimed that they’d won the election. However, as the tribunal pointed out, they did not provide an alternative tabulation of results to support the claim. Besides, there seems to be little justification for such claim from an inspection of the results. With APC shedding a huge 19 percentage points in the 2023 election (in effect, a 34% decline from its share of votes in 2019), it is difficult to see how the umpire, INEC, could have manipulated results substantially to favor the ruling party. This point gets glossed over by many of the critics.

Another insight from the official results that is discountenanced by critics relates to the spread of votes. My debate partner mentioned above claimed that INEC only released authentic results showing “traditional figures” (read ethnic votes) and manipulated the “true figures” reflecting votes gained by candidates outside their ethnic zone. But this claim is patently false. The official results show significant penetration of non-native zones by all the major candidates. Take Peter Obi, for instance, who was specifically mentioned to support the claim. Obi’s command of nearly 88% of the votes in his native South East geopolitical zone might give the impression that only his authentic votes in that zone were released by INEC. But his vote haul in the region represents only 32% of his total votes across the country. It is the same with the other major candidates. APC’s Bola Tinubu won 54% of the votes in his native South West zone, which represents 26% of his total national poll. For his part, PDP’s Atiku Abubakar won 51% of votes cast in his native North East zone, but this represents only 25% of his national total. It is only NNPP’s Rabiu Kwankwaso who picked up a meager 19% of the votes cast in his native North West zone, this comprising a whopping 85% of his total votes, thus confirming NNPP as a regional party. So, the claim that INEC corrupted the candidates’ national votes and released only their authentic ethnic votes is not supported by the official data, which the critics have refused to accept.

This refusal by critics to confront the actual election data is really a form of vincible ignorance, as it’s been characterized in moral philosophy since Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century and Origen in the 3rd. Along with the unwillingness to seriously engage the election tribunal’s legal reasoning, it does a lot of damage to the case being made. It gives the impression of an election challenge based not fully on facts but on dogma, the critics sometimes making their case with religious fervency.

But what we are dealing with here is not religion. It is competitive politics. It is election. It is law and the courts. We have to shed our dogmatic beliefs and come to court with empirical evidence. The justices are not our priests, providing unction to salve our wounded egos and shattered expectations. They are there to apply evidence to the provisions of law.

Some critics, upset with the conduct of the election and the appeal court’s ruling, are now calling for international sanctions and the pariahrization of Nigeria. Others, in subtle and not-so-subtle words, are even inviting military intervention, already convinced that the Supreme Court’s adjudication of the election petition would not be favorable. I guess it was alarm about this dangerous drift, and perhaps a belief that Nigeria cannot afford a political crisis in addition to a deepening economic crisis, that prompted Prof. Wole Soyinka’s intervention last week, overtly validating the 2023 election result and warning about surreptitious efforts to invite the military into our democratic disputes.

I share this concern with Prof. Wole Soyinka. However, I profoundly disagree with his claim – in pushing back against the insinuations to military intervention – that Peter Obi’s Labor Party has dissolved into a “regional party.” The election results do not bear out such claim, as I showed above. Yes, Obi cornered a commanding share of ballots in his native South East, but that haul represented only a third of his total votes across the country. I explained in another article why the South-easterners, who in previous elections voted overwhelmingly for candidates outside their zone, often against homegrown prospects, this time voted overwhelmingly for Obi, largely because of a perception that he had national appeal.

Prof. Soyinka erred in labeling Labor as a regional party. But his refutation of the claims about the 2023 presidential election, and his subtle warning against a dalliance with military intervention, cannot be so easily dismissed.

Stage is set to settle the legal, even if not the political, squabbles over the controversial February 2023 presidential election in Nigeria.

By Chudi Okoye

It could hardly have been a more disappointing judgment for the eager petitioners. It was, without mincing words, a rash deconstruction and pinching demolition of their case, laced with piercing commentaries and, in places, even pithy reprimands. Little wonder some wags have said their lordships acted almost as defense attorneys for the respondents.

One after another, in a surprisingly unanimous decision, members of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT), in lead or contributing opinion, picked apart all three petitions brought by the opposition parties – the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Labor Party (LP) and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) – to challenge the declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as winner of the 25th February 2023 presidential election in Nigeria.

In the judgment delivered on 6th September 2023, the appeal court tribunal rejected the opposition parties’ petitions on various grounds, among them the following:

(a) That much of the allegations made in the petitions about widespread irregularities, corrupt practices and substantial non-compliance with the Electoral Act and INEC guidelines were “vague, generic, imprecise and nebulous,” and not supported with credible or admissible evidence or particulars specifying the polling units, collation centres or other places where the alleged irregularities and malpractices occurred;

(b) That the petitioners, having alleged widespread manipulation of results, vote suppression and inaccurate computation which depressed their votes and conversely inflated Tinubu’s, failed to present alternative results to support their claim of winning the election;

(c) That several of the witnesses called by the petitioners (10 of LP’s 13; 15 of PDP’s 27) were unacceptable, and that the statements on oath, testimonies and exhibits tendered by such witnesses were inadmissible, since these witnesses and their materials were tendered much later during hearings and not within 21 days of result declaration when the petitions were being filed (as required by Section 285(5) of the constitution as well as Section 132(7) and Paragraphs 4(5) to 4(6) of the 1st Schedule of the Electoral Act, 2022);

(d) That the petitioners did not have standing, and that time had lapsed anyway, to raise objections pertaining to the presumed double nomination of Tinubu’s running-mate, Kashim Shettima, an issue which, in any case, had been set aside in an earlier ruling by the Supreme Court;

(e) That the controversial issue of Tinubu’s forfeiture in a 1993 US drug case which the petitioners averred to be disqualifying, was in fact not germane, since this concerned a civil or non-conviction-based forfeiture, not a criminal forfeiture as envisaged under Section 137(1)(d) of the 1999 constitution; and also

(f) That some interpretations of the constitution and the Electoral Act adopted in the petitions were wrong, notably those presuming a special status for the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, as well as those claiming that real-time electronic transmission of election results to INEC database and instant upload to its public viewing portal, IReV, were mandated.

At the end of the marathon judgment lasting over 12 hours, the tribunal’s chairman, Justice Haruna S. Tsammani, delivered his crushing conclusion and final orders:

Having considered and decided that the three petitions… are all devoid of merit, [they] are hereby dismissed. Accordingly, I affirm the declaration and return of Bola Ahmed Tinubu by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the duly elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The parties in the Petitions are to bear their respective costs.

The other four members of the tribunal – Justices Stephen J. Adah, Misitura O. Bolaji-Yusuff, Boloukuromo M. Ugo, and Abba B. Mohammed – also read their contributing rulings, all concurring with the lead.

It was not an entirely unexpected decision. Of course there was always a theoretical chance that the tribunal could pull a surprise and find for the petitioners, what with the plethora of allegations entered in the multiple petitions. However, even at a distance far removed from the nattering crowd of pessimists who thought it had all been fixed, it wasn’t too hard to see that the petitions had little chance of succeeding.

In several previous writings – one for instance in the first week of March before the appeal court panel had been constituted, and another on 3rd September just before the tribunal delivered its ruling – I had indicated skepticism that the opposition parties could succeed in their attempt to overturn the election.

In those earlier writings, I considered the nature of the opposition’s complaints about the conduct of the election; the evidence being adduced; the laws being invoked; and also the ambient political factors that could inform the judicial decision, all against what I considered the imperative of system preservation. I triaged all these factors to reach my conclusion. And it was this: that even though the administration of the 2023 presidential election was inarguably flawed, it was nonetheless improbable, though not impossible, that the appeal court would overturn the election of President Bola Tinubu, especially given the high bar of proving electoral infractions to the legal standard required for a verdict of substantial non-compliance to be returned; and given as well the high systemic cost of removing a president.

Mixed Reactions
Reactions to the ruling were swift and sustained, and predictably mixed. Some considered the judgment a triumph of legal reasoning, praising the appeal court panel for its professionalism in sticking to the law and its ‘bravery’ in standing firm despite the ambient noise. The ruling party, APC, hailed the decision, saying “[t]his epochal judgment has reinforced our democracy and underscored the vibrancy and independence of the judiciary.” Others too were gratified. PDP’s renegade chieftain, Nyesom Wike, a former presidential primary contender in the party and former governor of Rivers State now serving as Federal Capital Territory Minister in the APC administration, praised the tribunal’s decision, saying “Nigerians have spoken, and the court has confirmed it.”

Some legal experts reviewing the case were more measured. One, Ige Asemudara of Royal Practice Legal Practitioners & Consultants, said he would not call the judgment “good or bad,” though he considered it was delivered based on the understanding of the evidence and submissions of counsel as presented before the justices. He said moreover that he would “commend the judges because the judgment they delivered showed serious work has been put in place.” He noted too that “the jurisprudence [and] various philosophies underlying these decisions were long established.”

Another lawyer, Wahab Abdul of Wahab Olawale Abdul Agiidi & Co Chambers, noted too that the justices, contrary to expectation, did a very thorough analysis of the cases to reach their decision.

However, many others, especially those sympathetic to the petitioners, adjudged the ruling a miscarriage of justice. In the days since the ruling was delivered, in the more sober mainstream media as well as the ungoverned social media, not a few have labeled the judgment a judicial fraud, arguing there was a fix from the very start and that the ruling was a predetermined outcome. Several irate commentators alleged, without offering any evidence, that members of the tribunal had been ‘leaned on’ or offered unspecified inducements to deliver that judgment. In one instance on social media, a critic of the decision – no less a lawyer – declared that the judgment was “not a court decision at all [but] the product of bribery.” One usually measured newspaper columnist – also a lawyer – chimed in with a sparsely evidenced piece alleging that “Nigerian justices have been selling election judgments to incumbent presidents since 1979,” the implication unmistakable as to the instant case.

It has been more heat than light, to put it mildly, a truly astonishing fest of fiery condemnations; all the more remarkable since several of the critics, even lawyers, say they’ve not bothered to read the released judgment. It would seem that many, regrettably including supposed legal experts, preferred fervent polemic over a sober engagement of the legal issues.

The petitioners themselves all condemned the ruling. Atiku Abubakar of PDP said it was “bereft of substantial justice.” As for Peter Obi, although one of his lead counsels, Prof. Awa Kalu (SAN), has conceded the ‘impossibility’ of proving their case due to the difficulty in meeting the stringent requirement of both the constitution and the Electoral Act (that intended witnesses and their depositions be frontloaded with the petitions within 21 days of result declaration), the Labor Party candidate nevertheless said the tribunal’s decision “fell short of expectation.”

Unsurprisingly, both petitioners have announced their intention to file appeals at the Supreme Court. The apex court will have 60 days from the date of the tribunal ruling to deliver its own judgment, according to Section 285(7) of the 1999 constitution and Section 132(9) of the Electoral Act. So this matter should be resolved, one way or another, no later than 5th November.

The question, then, is: what are the chances of the appeals, when they are filed, succeeding at the Supreme Court?

Considering the points that inspired my initial prediction for the appellate decision, and also taking into account how tightly the appeal court argued the issues and the array of related stare decisis precedents it cited, I would estimate a mid- to fairly-high probability for apex court affirmation of the ruling; more so because some of the deficiencies found in previous presidential election petitions which had led to their dismissal by the apex court appear to be present in the current petitions, at least going by the judgment of the tribunal. There’s always of course the possibility of a surprise; but lest we forget, there’s also the overarching disposition of our electoral laws, going back even to the military decrees ushering in the Second Republic, which frowns at the nullification of elections except where there are substantial and proven infractions. This instinct is revealed in Section 135(1) of the Electoral Act 2022 which stipulates that an election should not be “invalidated” if the courts consider that it was “conducted substantially in accordance with the principles” of the electoral laws and that “non-compliance did not affect substantially the result of the election.”

Consider that last phrase – about non-compliance substantially impacting election results. And then recall that the result of the February 2023 presidential election was such that a whopping 63.4% of the voters actually chose the opposition parties over the ruling APC. In fact, the leading opposition candidates – PDP’s Atiku Abubakar, LP’s Peter Obi, and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) – alone garnered a combined 60.7% of the votes. The result clearly indicates that whatever irregularities there might have been (and no one could claim there weren’t any), they could not have substantially impacted the outcome of the election. All three leading opposition candidates had been members of the PDP until the eve of the party primaries in 2022. So it was more likely the logic of opposition splintering that handed victory to the ruling party, as I argued in my analysis in early March.

For this and other reasons, it is hard to see how the Supreme Court would be inclined to overturn the verdict of the appeal court, more so given the conservative disposition of our electoral laws. Although we have seen some rather rash nullification of lower-level elections in recent time, the stakes here are higher and the conservative instinct of our electoral laws may prevail as the Supreme Court picks up the 2023 presidential election petitions.

That said, I wish to pick up one issue where I disagree somewhat with the tribunal’s ruling, this being the status of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, with regard to presidential elections.

The Abuja Question
Debate over the status of Abuja in presidential elections has been threatening since the inception of the Fourth Republic. Much has been written about it but, to my knowledge, until the 6th September ruling by the appeal court tribunal, there had not been any direct judicial pronouncement on the matter. The 1999 constitution, as amended, stipulates as follows at Section 134(2): to win the presidency, a candidate must secure

(a) … the majority of votes cast at the election; and

(b) … not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

The interpretation of this provision is taking centre stage because, unlike the previous elections in which no major party had secured less than 25% of the votes cast in Abuja, in the 2023 election only Labor met that threshold. Upon this result, opinion has bifurcated on the true meaning of the constitutional provision regarding Abuja, with the argument centering on the word “and” in the phrasing above. There have been two traditions of interpretation. One (I suppose a textualist view) insists that the constitution means that a minimum of 25% in Abuja, along with a minimum of 25% in two-thirds of the states, is essential to win a presidential election. On this reading, Abuja is construed as having a special status, being a “miniature” Nigeria, and therefore that it requires a unique threshold separate from the states.

Articulating this view in the aftermath of the election and result declaration, Prof. Mike Ozekhome, who ended up on Atiku’s legal team, argued as follows:

The FCT, Abuja, is the seat of power of the Nigerian leadership. It is a cosmopolitan convergence of all federating units of the nation [and] the political nerve centre of Nigeria. It has been imbued with such a special status as a miniature Nigeria in such a way that any elected president must have to compulsorily win the required 25% vote in the FCT, Abuja, after winning 25% votes in 24 States. The reasons for this are not far-fetched. FCT, Abuja, is the melting pot which unites all ethnic groups, tribes, religions, people of variegate backgrounds; and other distinct qualities and characteristics in our pluralistic society.

A different (seemingly structuralist) reading considers Abuja not imbued with a special status but having the cognate status of a state, as indeed averred in Section 299 of the constitution. On this reading, Abuja is added to the 36 constitutive states to make a composite 37, resolving to a two-thirds threshold of 24.67 states (rounded to 25) which is clearly exceeded by the 29 states that Tinubu had won, according to INEC. This is the interpretation advanced by respondents in the various petitions, and it was accepted by the tribunal.

The textualist reading which insists on the imperative of 25% in Abuja would deny Tinubu victory, since he secured only 19.8% in the FCT. But this construction would mean, would it not, that Abuja residents are elevated over and above and have a virtual veto over the rest of the country. As the tribunal argued, this is an absurdity which clashes with the basic notion of equality, proclaimed by the constitution at Section 17(2)(a), that “every citizen shall have equality of rights, obligations and opportunities before the law.” Does the construction of a special status for Abuja not offend this basic principle? It is difficult to see how the Supreme Court could accept this interpretation, despite Ozekhome’s admirable eloquence on the status of Abuja.

There may be a way to thread the needle here, an alternative interpretation which reconciles the contending perspectives: the hints of a special status for Abuja versus the declarative principle of equality both of which are in the constitution. I think one way to reconcile the principle of equality enshrined in the constitution with the construction of a special status for Abuja would be to insist, not that a winning candidate should secure 25% in Abuja, but that they should secure a minimum of 25% in two-thirds of the votes cast in Abuja. A proper reading of Section 134(2)(b) should be that the candidate must secure (a) at least 25% in each of at least two-thirds of the 36 states, being 24 states; and also (b) at least 25% of two-thirds of the votes in Abuja, the FCT being a microcosm of Nigeria.

This reading approximates somewhat to the interpretation adopted by the Supreme Court in deciding the 1979 presidential election petition brought by the first runner-up in that election, Chief Obafemi Awolowo of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), against the supposed winner, Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN). However, in that earlier case the court offered an inversion of my proposed interpretation. By that 1979 ruling, Shagari was said to have secured a minimum of 25% in 12 states, being nearly two-thirds of the then 19 states; plus over two-thirds of 25% of the votes in the 13th state.

If we applied that model to the 2023 case, Tinubu’s 90,902 votes in Abuja would amount to 79% of 25% of the 460,071 total valid votes in the FCT. So he crosses the threshold, as decided in 1979.

However, given how contentious that interpretation had been, with legal scholars considering it a fudge of law and political expediency, I am proposing a hopefully non-controversial interpretation which is the obverse of the 1979 construction: that the special status of Abuja as a microcosm of Nigeria – presumed throughout the constitution – requires for it exactly the same thing required for the whole of Nigeria: 25% of two-thirds of its votes. In this case then, Tinubu’s 90,902 votes in Abuja would be 29.6% of two-thirds of the FCT’s total valid votes of 460,071. So, on this reading which recognizes Abuja status but treats Abuja exactly as the whole country, Tinubu meets the qualified 25% threshold.

This interpretation, I suggest, is a more sophisticated reading of Section 134(2)(b) of the constitution than the arguably simplistic interpretation offered by the tribunal, following the respondents; and it is a more equitable reading than the overreaching construction proffered by the petitioners. It also resolves the 1979 fudge which applied different logics for the two components of Shagari’s score: “25% in two-thirds” for the 12 states, and “two-thirds in 25%” for the 13th state. My reading maintains “25% in two-thirds” for both the states and Abuja. It recognizes the cosmopolitan status of Abuja, but applies the exact same mathematical standard to the FCT as the states.

I am not a lawyer. But it beats me why no one, so far, appears to have alighted on this interpretation.

All eyes are now on the Supremes!

Whatever the Presidential Election Tribunal and eventually the Supreme Court decide regarding the 2023 presidential election petitions, Nigeria will be on edge. But some outcomes will be more politically portentous than others, and this will likely weigh with the courts as they reach their decision, especially with the current spate of coups in the neighboring region of Africa.

By Chudi Okoye

The petitions have been presented, the evidence tendered, and legal arguments rendered by opposition and ruling parties alike, and as well by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Five of the 18 political parties that contested the February 2023 presidential election in Nigeria – Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labor Party (LP), Allied Peoples Movement (APM), Action Peoples Party (APP) and Action Alliance (AA) – had filed separate petitions before the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) sitting in Abuja, praying the tribunal either to annul the presidential election altogether on allegations of widespread irregularities; or, in some cases, to vacate the declaration of Bola Tinubu as winner and instead affirm the petitioner as the rightful winner. Two of these parties, APP and AA, had pulled their petitions soon after pre-hearing commenced, leaving the field to just three parties which pressed their petitions to the end. Now, a frazzled nation awaits the ruling of the election tribunal, and eventually perhaps that of the Supreme Court, to see what becomes of the controversial 2023 presidential election.

Rumor had erupted in recent days alleging that the tribunal had set a date, September 16th, to render its judgment. This was however merely a speculation likely based on calculation that the tribunal, which commenced intake of petitions on March 20, has to present its ruling no later than 180 days thereafter, following Section 285(6) of the 1999 constitution and Section 132(8) of the Electoral Act. The rumor was immediately denied by the tribunal, but the calendar logic behind it cannot be dismissed.* So, now, Nigeria awaits the election tribunal, along perhaps with a bemused world.

A poignant slogan, “All Eyes on the Judiciary”, has since emerged in the Nigerian firmament to mark the momentous wait. The slogan is laden, full of expectations and foreboding; but it is also a not-so-subtle pressure on the judiciary. The slogan is also an inadvertent nod to the complexity of the matter before the apex judiciary. Whatever ruling they render, whether lawful or artful, it is likely to inflame the Nigerian polity, and this should be of concern given the current spate of military coups in the neighboring region of Africa.

The great American jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1845-1935), had put forward the view that judicial decisions are not driven merely by sterile and deterministic “logic” but also by societal factors:

“The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, and even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed.”

This view, I think, might be helpful in anticipating how the election tribunal in a matter of weeks, and the Supreme Court within 60 days thereafter, might rule on the 2023 presidential election petitions. I have argued this matter extensively with several lawyers and other informed folks with unequivocal opinion on it. I wish here to lay out my current thinking on the matter, following my previous intervention in early March examining prospects for the opposition’s legal recourse.

Political Conundrum
The outcome of the2023 presidential election really represents a conundrum for Nigeria. Consider again the following issues arising from the election:

1. The status of Abuja. Despite what many partisans and some legal experts claim about the clarity of the law, the language of the constitution on this matter is unclear. Section 134(2) of the constitution requires a winning candidate in a presidential election to have scored a share of votes

“not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja” (emphasis added).

This is imprecise wording, one must say, particularly with the seemingly conjunctive “and”. There would have been no confusion had the constitution used the expression “two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and also two-thirds in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.” As it is, the law only says “and” Abuja. So, we aren’t sure if the constitution means that Abuja should be considered a part of the cohort of states from which two-thirds is derived; or if the FCT requires a separate and additional 25% threshold. In my previous analysis of this matter in Awka Times, I pointed to some sections where the constitution seems to construe Abuja as another state (e.g. Section 299), and others where it does not (e.g. Section 147(3)). The matter is not simple.

2. No Fourth Republic legal precedent. The issue is complicated in part because there’s no legal precedent in this Fourth Republic dispensation to provide guidance. No major contesting party – let alone a winning one – had failed to secure 25% of the votes cast in Abuja in any of the previous presidential elections. In 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo’s PDP secured 59.8% of the votes in Abuja while Olu Falae’s joint party platform, the Alliance for Democracy and All People’s Party (AD/APP), scored 49.2%. In 2003, PDP garnered 49.9% while Muhammadu Buhari’s All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) picked up 38%. State by state and Abuja FCT results breakdown were never released by Prof Maurice Iwu’s INEC in 2007, but there’s probably no reason to suspect a deviation from previous norm, especially since we saw the same in subsequent elections. In 2011, Goodluck Jonathan’s PDP captured a commanding 63.7% while Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) scooped up 33.05%. In 2015 the scores were 51.2% for Jonathan’s PDP and 47.7% for Buhari’s APC. And in 2019, APC scored 35.9% while Atiku Abubakar’s PDP secured 61.3%.

So, as the data shows, all major parties surpassed the mark in Abuja in all preceding elections. It was only in the 2023 election, with Labor and Peter Obi mounting a credible third-party challenge, that the pattern was broken. In this year’s election, Labor picked up a whopping 61.2% of the Abuja ballot, leaving the other parties to scramble over the rump. As it turned out, neither of the two parties, APC and PDP, which scored the highest votes in the overall election as officially declared, was able to obtain 25% in Abuja. APC got somewhat close with 19.8% while PDP, long a command performer in the FCT, managed only 16.1% this time.

The results from Abuja present a serious challenge to the courts. There will be major uproar if the tribunal agrees with APC and INEC which had argued that Abuja should simply be construed as another state. On the other hand, the election will be upended if the tribunal rules, and the Supreme Court later agrees, that Abuja is indeed unique and imposes a separate 25% threshold.

3. Disputed infractions. A construction of unique status for Abuja would of course favor the Labor Party. But then, the party did not come much close to winning the required 25% in two-thirds of the 36 states (24 states), meeting the mark only in 15 states, versus APC’s 29 and PDP’s 21 – going by official results.

Labor of course contends (as does the PDP) that it had won the election, and that it was only widespread infractions in the collation, tabulation, transmission and announcement of results that scuttled its victory. That may well be. The question, however, is whether Labor (and the PDP) presented sufficient proof of substantial non-compliance at the election tribunal, as required by Section 135(1) of the Electoral Act, for the election to be annulled. It is also unclear how successfully the opposition parties had argued their other points: INEC’s failure to faithfully implement the electronic transmission of results from the polling units to its viewing portal (IReV); the double nomination of Kashim Shettima as APC’s vice-presidential candidate and senatorial candidate for Borno Central; and whether an old US drug case involving Bola Tinubu, along with questions about his educational qualification, nullified his candidature. Previous ruling on some of these matters raise concerns about their probative value. For instance, three different courts, including the apex court, had ruled that relevant laws allow INEC to transmit results using any mode it prefers. Similarly, a Supreme Court ruling on May 26 absolved Shettima of the charge of double nomination.

Ruling and Likely Consequences
Given the rack of issues sketched out above, opinions will likely be sharply divided among the five-member election tribunal, and eventually the Supreme Court panel appointed to hear any appeal. What matters, though, is where the majority opinion lies on the bench. There are three possible scenarios, of course, on how the matter might be dispositioned:

(a) The courts could maintain the status quo after parsing the evidence, affirming Tinubu’s election and ruling to dismiss the petitions for lack of merit;

(b) They could cancel the February election and, in line with Section 134(3) of the constitution, order a run-off between the two highest scoring parties and their candidates, APC and PDP; or

(c) They could nullify the February election and mandate a new one, open to all the registered political parties willing yet again to field candidates.

I am aware of the theoretical possibility of the courts awarding the election to either PDP’s Atiku Abubakar or Labor’s Peter Obi, as both indeed prayed the tribunal. But I am discounting this option. It would require a determination (a) that either candidate somehow scored the highest share of votes in the election; (b) that they met the 25% mark in more states than currently declared; and, additionally for Atiku, (c) that Abuja has no special status (since he did not get near the 25% mark there). These would all be heavy lifting in the judicial decision, though (c) is not improbable. So I consider the above three options as the more realistic.

There will certainly be an uproar if the courts choose Option (a), upholding the status quo. Widespread despondency would set in. There would be flashpoints of protests, some likely violent, especially if non-state actors like IPOB, ISWAP, Boko Haram and their various factions (likely incited by politicians) decide to exploit the situation.

The issue of Abuja could prove particularly vexing, especially if settled with a judicial fudge as had been the case in the 1979 presidential election. The issue in that election, of course, wasn’t about votes in the federal capital territory. Rather it was about calibrating two-thirds of the then 19 states, mathematically given as 12.66. The National Party of Nigeria (NPN), with its presidential candidate Alhaji Shehu Shagari, had attained the 25% threshold in 12 states, but (uncannily similar to Tinubu’s 19.8% in Abuja in 2023) had secured only 19.9% in the 13th state, Kano. The runner-up in that election, Chief Obafemi Awolowo of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), had filed a suit arguing that Shagari had not met the constitutional requirement. However, Shagari’s lawyers rebutted the argument with the famous formulation that the 19.9% in Kano State exceeded two-thirds of the required 25%, and as such that Shagari met the required threshold! It was a clever argument, which the Supreme Court accepted, invoking a so-called Doctrine of Substantial Compliance. The ruling was a marriage of law and political expediency which could well play out again in the 2023, as it appears now to be an accepted precedent in Nigerian jurisprudence.

If the courts peg on this precedent a decision to affirm Tinubu’s ‘victory’, it would rock the realms for a while, under one scenario possibly triggering a crisis of legitimacy similar to that which led eventually to military intervention and the collapse of the Second Republic.

But that’s only one scenario, in the event that the courts rule for the status quo. It is also quite possible that even if there are initial flashpoints following a status quo ruling, these may never bubble up to a level of protracted concern for the security forces. This being Nigeria, such upheavals, however fervent initially, could quickly become attenuate, only rumbling on as low intensity discontent. Nigerians are a famously ebullient people, particularly so in the social spheres; but whilst easily politically mobilized, we aren’t too easily given to political extremism. A combination of factors – false consciousness through a persistent ethnic prism, ignorance, love of life, an incredible facility for adaptation, sheer exhaustion, apathy, etc. – conspire to make Nigerians, despite all appearances, a politically conservative people. So the political cost of Option (a) might not be considered unbearable by affected stakeholders.

Options (b) and (c) might seem, to some stakeholders, to be far more politically costly. One aspect of the ‘cost’ would be financial. It will be recalled that INEC had initially projected a cost of about ₦305 billion to conduct the 2023 general election, which eventually rose to a budget of ₦355 billion. It is doubtful if Nigeria can afford such a cost so soon after the recent election, especially in the current fiscal environment.

But there may also be a different kind of ‘cost’ consideration, leading to a level of resistance across the polity to the logistical demands of a new election. Consider the stakeholders already invested in the status quo, and even those not particularly invested but opposed to system destabilization. A ruling for Option (b), mandating a run-off between APC and PDP, could lead to a resounding victory for the ruling party, it being more cohesive than the thoroughly vitiated PDP. This option would leave the army of disaffected Obi supporters even more disenchanted. On the other hand, were the tribunal to rule for Option (c), few, if any, of the minority parties that contested the February presidential election could mobilize sufficient resources to contest effectively in a new election. Only the four parties that commanded the polls the last time around – the ruling APC and the opposition PDP, Labor, and Rabiu Kwankwaso’s New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) – would be in a position to launch a meaningful bid. Even so, although the opposition parties could gain steam with such a ruling, they are all experiencing varying levels of internal rupture, in part as a fallout of the recent elections, and thus may lack a viable machine to command a new election.

There are also some constitutional issues that could arise with either Option (b) or (c). What would be the legal status of Tinubu’s short-lived incumbency, were his election nullified? Do we consider it a legal apparition? If so, how do we begin to unwind an administration that’s fast entrenching itself, creating facts on the ground, including ministerial appointments and a slew of executive decisions? What happens to the decisions already taken by the administration, for instance the withdrawal of petrol subsidy and the harmonization of the Naira exchange rate? Would those decisions then be considered illegitimate, and would we then revert to the status quo ante on these policies?

There’s still more potential for chaos with Options (b) and (c).

Who would run Nigeria if the courts mandate a re-run of the election? The Senate president would of course hold sway if both the president and the VP were removed, according to Section 146(2) of the constitution. But, pray, can anyone imagine a traumatized Nigeria under the (temporary) presidency of Godswill Akpabio, a figure of frequent EFCC interest? I know: with Tinubu, we’re already at a low point. But Akpabio at the helms would be a different order of absurdity. We can be certain that under his interim presidency, during which a new election must be held, APC would somehow emerge with a share of votes way higher than the 36.6% the party eked out, supposedly, to win the February election. Akpabio is not a man renowned for his continence.

What would happen if we came to such a pass, an overwhelming APC victory, with the public suspecting a cynical manipulation of the new ballot? Why, there would follow far louder howls of electoral malpractice, likely further destabilizing the country. This could result in far too tempting a scenario for military intervention, surely a concern given the current dynamic in Africa.

We might do well to recall here what happened at a different time in Nigeria’s history when a Senate president had been hoisted to the helms as the country’s president. In the tumult of First Republic politics, Prince Nwafor Orizu, then Senate president, had been thrust into power as acting Nigerian president after the incumbent, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, departed the country in late 1965. The cascade of events following that culminated in the January 1966 coup, which in turn plunged the country deeper into political crisis. Amid the turmoil, a wearied Orizu was forced to make a nationwide broadcast announcing that the cabinet had ‘voluntarily’ decided to hand power over to the armed forces. This paved the way for the emergence of Nigeria’s first military head of state, Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi.

This is our history. A very troubling history.

The 2023 presidential election dispute presents no palatable options for the judiciary. All options would seem to incarnate an unedifying past we would sooner forget. The best we can hope for in the circumstance, I suppose, is that the courts would be wise enough to rule for the least bad option.

*UPDATE: On Moday September 4th, a statement was issued by the Chief Registrar, Court of Appeal Headquarters, announcing that the presidential election tribunal will deliver its judgment on September 6, 2023. The statement said the judgment will be rendered in a live broadcast.