Adamawa: Massive ruling, no celebration
On the other hand many of the Hausa-Fulani, genuinely worried about this unwarranted label, were also hoping to get rid of Murtala Nyako, whose regime had portrayed itself as working for them, while in actual fact, fostered only family interest, and that of a few cronies, servants and hangers on. To Murtala Nyako, anything short […]
On the other hand many of the Hausa-Fulani, genuinely worried about this unwarranted label, were also hoping to get rid of Murtala Nyako, whose regime had portrayed itself as working for them, while in actual fact, fostered only family interest, and that of a few cronies, servants and hangers on. To Murtala Nyako, anything short of victory portends grave danger to members of his regime and the various interests it to represents.
In fact he was alleged to have stayed away from the state, while the trial lasted, desperately craving the intervention of some powerful leaders around the country and whipping up ethnic and moral sentiments to the effect that losing the governorship was tantamount to losing the Fombina Empire to infidels.
Since its creation in 1976, Adamawa State has never been polarized along ethnic and religious lines as they are seen under Murtala Nyako, an over seventy year old man who should have been a father figure to all diverse groups in the state, rather than the dangerously divisive politics he has planted in the state. Perhaps it is because of insalubrious environment that the late Asaph Zadok hypothetically described the state as ‘the last bus stop before hell’.
During the trial, the ACN candidate Engineer Markus Gundiri and his party believed they had presented a water tight and impregnable case of massive rigging against the PDP and its candidate. The ACN legal team had earlier extracted a major concession from the tribunal, for a forensic recount of the entire votes cast during the elections.
INEC was ordered to make all ballot papers available to the ACN legal team for the recount, but INEC soon sabotaged the effort after the votes in respect of three local government areas were re-counted. The INEC staff locked up their offices and disappeared, leaving eight local government areas ballot papers uncounted, even after ACN got the nod from the tribunal to re-count the remaining eight. INEC allowed it to re-count those of five local government areas only refusing to allow the re-count those of of Yola-South, Yola-North and Girei. Even with this major setback, it was established from the re-count that the ACN led PDP by over twenty-three thousand votes. Imagine the severity of stealing from twenty-three thousand people.
For instance, it was established that the certified true copies of registers of voters produced by INEC as used in the conduct of the February 4th2012, governorship election, revealed that in 31 polling units, across 21 wards, in 7 Local government areas, while results were posted on the respective forms, no voter was ticked to have voted.
Also, in 101 polling units across 50 wards in 9 Local government areas, no voter was on queue at the time of voting and yet votes were still recorded as having been cast in those polling units. In another challenge by the petitioners in 127 polling units across 54 wards of the 11 Local government areas, the total number of votes cast in each of these polling units, was more than the total number of people on the queues.
During the inspection exercise, INEC failed to produce ballot papers used for 113 polling units across 25 wards in 6 local government areas, while in 13 polling units across 25 wards in 4 Local government areas, INEC produced at inspection, ballot papers whose counter-foils were not detached and were shown to have been used to vote. Furthermore, during the scanning, it was discovered that in 44 polling units, ballot papers pre-stamped and pre-signed, were not shown to have been used to vote. The shameful behavior of INEC in locking their offices against a court order did not only expose the complicity in rigging but also a strong indication that most of the election results announced by it in the past were contrived.
Also during the trial, the ACN legal team produced 65 witnesses while PDP could produce only one as their witnesses withdrew at the point of oath taking because they were not ready to stake their lives to swearing oath based on falsehoods. With these and many other incontrovertible evidences presented before the tribunal, ACN’s victory was a fait accompli. In fact, that was the dominant assumption throughout the state.
Unfortunately, that was not the outcome. The hope of the plaintiffs and their supporters was not only misplaced but unjustifiable, given the fact that judgments in many Nigerian courts, especially election tribunals, rarely depend on the evidences presented before them. Apart from the well-known problem of corruption, judgments especially from election tribunals are negotiated at the top level of government, senior judiciary officers and powerful traditional rulers, as it appeared in the Adamawa tribunal case.
Therefore, it was no surprise that, while he delivered his controversial ruling, the tribunal chairman Justice Bitrus Sanga, appeared fidgety, discomfitted and distressed as he delivered a grueling and dizzying four-hour judgment in which he claimed not to have found “sufficient” grounds to dismiss the election despite the avalanche of evidence before him. The tribunal also blamed ACN for not insisting on sanctioning INEC for disrespecting its order to make available election materials for forensic scrutiny. This is bizarre.
Somebody slapped you on the face and you blame another person for not raising an alarm over it. The tribunal was desperately looking for a pillar to hang on, so as not be swept away in the tidal wave of condemnation for a shoddy job. It was like searching for a grain of evidence in one hundred bags of chaff.
INEC’s brazen disobedience of the tribunal’s order was a clear evidence of culpability and it was enough to dismiss the election as discredited. In the vortex of this drama, it is very important to point out that Justice Sanga’s trajectory as a humble and God fearing man gives a to those of lie this contraption and fuels the fire of imagination that he may have been intimidated, harangued and bought to deliver the illegitimate ruling. After all, he comes from Toro Local government area of Bauchi State, where he himself has tasted the bitter pill of oppressive and discriminative politics.
The biggest surprise however was, while the ACN supporters left the tribunal venue, agrieved and disappointed, there was no whimper of celebration from the PDP throughout the state including the Nyako quarters in Mayo Belwa local government area. And Murtala Nyako? He sneaked back into Yola without the noisy crowd which usually received him at the airport. It was like winning a boxing contest and ending upon in crutches and heavy bandages across the face. This indeed, was a real breathless and chocking experience.
Artimas sent this piece from Jalingo, Taraba State