INEC & NIGERIAN DEMOCRACY.

HELP,HELP,A COMPROMISED INEC IS MURDERING NIGERIA'S HARD EARNED DEMOCRACY.

BY CHIEF MIKE OZEKHOME,SAN,OFR,FCIArb,Ph.D
The announcement by INEC,that the Osun state election conducted on Saturday,22nd September2018,was inconclusive and the fixing of 27th of September for a so called rerun,is a dangerous subversion and travesty of the electoral process,a blow to our hard earned constitutional democracy and an ominous sign of the farce to expect in 2019-subversion of the people's will.INEC has earned for itself the inglorious reputation of holding inconclusive elections (Kogi,Bayelsa,et al);and working in cahoot with the ruling APC party,always eager to do its dirty electoral bidding,to commit daylight robbery of votes.This they have just done to Adeleke's votes to defeat the will and legitimate franchise of the good people of Osun state.I wholly condemn this ludicrous mockery of our electoral process and constitutionalism.There is no basis whatsoever,whether in law,constitutionalism,or morality,to have declared the election inconclusive.The Constitution of Nigeria and the Electoral Act ONLY  recognise LAWFUL AND VALID VOTES in declaring a candidate winner of an election.This presupposes that some votes would be unlawful and invalid.Consequently,where votes are cancelled or invalidated for any reason howsoever,including for being invalid and unlawful,such votes are immediately and automatically cancelled,deducted and consigned to the dustbin of history.In any case,it was not wholesale results in the election that were voided and cancelled.Only votes that INEC had adjudged illegitimate due to irregularities were voided and cancelled.This cancellation and voidance of illegitimate votes effected all the political parties,not just APC and PDP,but especially Omisore's SDP,whose two strongest fortes in Ife axis were badly effected.Such voided votes are ignored and unreckoned with,for they are a non sequitur.They are as dead as dodo.Having failed to viciously intimidate and rig the elections as they did in Ekiti State,due to the people's courageous resistance,the APC has now used its electoral arm,INEC,to do the unthinkable,that which is clearly illegal,unconstitutional,immoral and a brazen assault on our sensibilities and constitutional democracy.
Section 179(2)(a)(b) of the 1999 Constitution (the grundnorm and supreme law of the land ),is crystal clear and unambiguous that Adeleke and PDP have won and met the electoral requirements to be formally  declared winners of the Osun state election.It provides:
"A candidate for an election to the office of a governor of a state shall be deemed to have been duly elected where,there being two or more candidates-(a) he has the highest number of votes cast at the election;and
(b) he has not less than one-quarter of all the votes cast in each of least two-thirds of all the local government areas in the state". Adeleke satisfied this provision.
In Osunbor v Oshiomhole (2007) 18 NWLR(part 1065) 32,cancelled votes had been counted and added to PDP/Osunbor's scores.The courts,up to the Supreme Court,held that when votes are cancelled,they are not reckoned with in determining the outcome of such an election.The courts thereafter deducted the invalidated votes and this gave victory to Oshiomhole in the hotly contested election.To avoid disenfranchisement of eligible voters,only votes in areas where election did not hold at all are considered for  the purpose of calculating total votes.Some people may argue,ignorantly,in my humble opinion,that section 69 of the Electoral Act or other guidelines issued by INEC justify this electoral perversion.I will quickly remind such people that those provisions or guidelines are subject to the overriding authority of the provisions of the Nigerian Constitution,which is supreme.The Constitution is the Kabiyesi,Eze and Emir,in the hierarchy of Nigerian laws.All others are like Bales and Chiefs,that must bow before this king.The provisions of the Constitution therefore  clearly override the provisions of the Electoral Act and any guidelines issued by INEC,by virtue of sections 1() and 1(3) of the 1999 Constitution.They are  consequently null and void to the extent of the inconsistency.See the celebrated case of Nyesom Wike v Dakuku Petersude (2016) 7 NWLR (part 1512) 574.It is clear to me that INEC 's decision is more of a political hubris than one anchored on solid laws,whether the Constitution,or Electoral Act.
Collation of all the results in Osun had already been done by INEC in accordance with section 27(1)(a)(v)) and (c) of the Electoral Act, 2010,as altered.The state collation was completed under section 27(d) and the results   ought to have declared Adeleke the winner under section 27(f),having polled 256,219 majority votes to beat APC's candidate who scored 255,309 votes.The provisions of section 69 of the Electoral Act(which in any case,is inferior to section 179(2)) of the Constitution,were thus amply satisfied.The constitutional,legal and moral profanity that INEC has thus engaged by ordering a repeat election is to invalidate the people's valid and legitimate votes,in strange preference for legally voided illegitimate votes that no longer mattered or counted.TheReturning Officer's duty was simply to announce the winner,having declared all the results,and not to usurp the role of the Election Petition Tribunal,by altering the texture and tenor of the outcome,through its order for a rerun.What happens to the legitimate votes of the other candidates who will not participate in the rerun and their electors' will,one may ask?
By the way,why is INEC changing the goal posts and revising history because APC was roundly defeated in the election? Recall that during the Kogi state bye elections of August,2018,over 19 000 votes were cancelled and voidedThis tremendously outstripped the 12,000 votes difference between the two leading candidates.Yet,in Osun state,only 3,498 votes were cancelled in Orolu,Ife South,Ife North and Osogbo LGAs.How can that affect the humongous votes ganered by Adeleke? PDP and Adeleke should immediately head for the courts to seek an order of mandamus,compelling INEC to declare him winner.Alternatively, he can approach the Election Petition Tribunal with all the votes cast,urging it to declare him winner.He has won his people's hearts with his performance in the Senate and mesmerising dance steps of a teenager. INEC,I beg of you,don't kill our hard earned constitutional democracy on the alter of corruption and official comprise of the ruling party.

Many Lessons from Buharis Presidency

THE MANY LESSONS OF THE BUHARI PRESIDENCY.

By Charles Ogbu

There is a sense in which it can be argued that the Buhari govt has indeed recorded what can be rightly termed paradoxical achievements. Not only has it helped set some of our history straight (like the twisted history of Muhammadu Buhari fighting corruption between 1984-85), it has opened our eyes to the fact that most of those we call Patriots are in fact morally treasonous Shylocks who are of a very distant relation with the words Patriotism, integrity and of course, common sense.

For instance,

We now know that the Buhari myth is what it has always been - a myth; one that has since been completely shattered beyond recognition. The Daura lifeless one has been fully and conclusively exposed as a generational human tragedy.

We now know that the #OneNigeria slogan is a poorly crafted fraud built and sustained over the years with that black liquid substance called oil. Every single lie we've been using to sustain the #OneNigeria slogan, Buhari has simply destroyed them all and magnified the lie to such a level where even the blind can now see it for the lie that it is. The inability of the intellectually unfortunate lanky ex soldier (Buhari) to diplomatize his ethno-religious irredentism is one thing I should consider an honest evil here.

 We now know that the #OneNorth slogan is another lie. The North has never been one. The #ScionsOfDanfodio only treats the whole North as one when they want to use Northern Christians and other Minorities to achieve some dark aim. Well, this little lie just got bursted by the emergence of Buhari as President. The govt-sponsored Fulani herdsmen murderous indiscretions just solved that confusion.

By opposing a dictator (Abacha) only to turn around to almost single-handedly foist an even more deadly dictator (Buhari) on Nigerians, we now know that Bola Ahmed Tinubu is neither a Patriot nor a Democrat but a common political merchant who would waste no time in seeing Nigeria burn if only the ashes could gift him with more coins and gold.

We now know that in the 21st century 2018, some Igbo, Yoruba and Niger Delta politicians from the APC stock could still be mentally kwashiokored enough to be promised the 2023 Presidency ALL AT THE SAME TIME by one man who has proven his deep seated hatred for their respective peoples.

We now know that some very senior Nigerian lawyers didn't chose to be lawyers because they want to GENUINELY serve in the temple of justice. Quite the contrary, very reasonable percent of them went to law school just so they could acquire the skills to make money even if it means subverting the course of justice. Most importantly, the Buhari presidency has proven that being a lawyer DOESN'T NECESSARILY make one a learned person. Most Nigerian lawyers are over-rated. Some of them got into law school with forged WAEC result, even. Chief Okoi Obono-obla is a good example. In a saner clime where merit has meaning, some Nigerian so called SANs would be doing agboro work somewhere in Ochanja market. Look Prof. Itsa Sagay for instance: he is such an authority in contract law that most Nigerian lawyers today had to read his books in their journey to lawyerhood but the same Prof Sagay publicly told us that it didn't matter that Kemi Adeosun forged her NYSC exemption certificate. A SAN who doesn't understand that forgery is a crime anywhere in the world, is that one a SAN??

We now know that our Constitution is nothing but an apartheid document which can be abused and trashed by the President with absolutely no consequences. President Buhari has not only repeatedly violated the damn book, he has equally treated both the judiciary and the parliament with crude disdain and gone scot-free.

We now know that both the Nigerian Bar Association, the Nigerian Labour Congress, the Civil Society Groups and the opposition PDP are just an assemblage of lifeless bodies more useless than a flaccid penis.

The NBA sat back and allowed a democratically elected President destroy the grund norm of their profession without any challenge. The NLC and Civil Society groups were even more shameless in their complicity. On its part, the PDP has proven its uselessness beyond doubt unlike the then opposition APC which used the ChibokGirls saga and corruption to successfully paint the then ruling PDP as an ear sour. Now, we've had the herdsmen ethnic cleansing with clear evidence of APC govt complicity. We've had the DapchiGirls abduction with the APC govt proving it has a working political intercourse with the Boko boys. We've had brain rebooting cases of industrial-scaled massive corruption, yet, the PDP has woefully failed to maximize any of the aforementioned opportunities, to their eternal shame.

Most importantly, the Buhari presidency has proven that Nigeria was fundamentally structured NEVER to work and will sooner than later collapse under the weight of her internal contradictions and numberless injustices unless we restructure to enthrone merit, justice, equity and fairness or we peacefully break up to allow each of the peopleS live the way they were living before the white men came with their pernicious enterprise called Colonization.

In the end, no one can fool us anymore with some trashy talk of Buhari's integrity, how he could have fought and eliminated corruption or how he would have been a no nonsense leader. We have all seen that the man is not even fit to preside over his own life.

Please don't forget to follow me on Twitter @OgbuCharlesSun2