Zamfara: A pin prick in the balloon of arrogance

It would be naïve, foolish even, to expect the national chairman of APC, Adams Oshiomhole, to clink champagne flutes over the political disaster his party suffered at the Supreme Court last week. The loss of Zamfara State to PDP is a considerable loss to the party. He has condemned it as injustice. I was surprised […]

It would be naïve, foolish even, to expect the national chairman of APC, Adams Oshiomhole, to clink champagne flutes over the political disaster his party suffered at the Supreme Court last week. The loss of Zamfara State to PDP is a considerable loss to the party. He has condemned it as injustice. I was surprised the man who never lacks words could not find a stronger word with which to lay the cane across the back of their lordships.

But trust Oshiomhole. He was so angry he decided to offer their lordships some advice gratis on justice gleaned from his reading of Lord Denning, the late famous master of the rolls, the British equivalent of our own chief justice of Nigeria. He said: “There is something I have learned from Lord Denning, a famous British Supreme Court Justice, that the law has to be interpreted taking into account the intention of the law makers and try to deliver justice in the purest form. There is no justice when on technicality you imposed on people candidates they didn’t elect.”

I have heard something like this before. The editor of Razor, one of the rag sheets that fouled our journalism in the days of fictional journalism post the annulment of the June 12, 1993,  presidential election, once answered a public complaint against him submitted to the venerable doyen of Nigerian journalists, the late Hadj Allade Odunewu, chairman of the Nigerian Press Council by lecturing him on the responsibilities of the press. The Razor man was not even a journalist.

Their lordships must have been amused by this gratuitous lecture on law and justice by someone whose expertise in law rivals that of present company. I am told few things are as painful as an electoral loss. If so, we must not deny Oshiomhole the right to fume over his party’s loss of a whole state. The party had everything in its bag. Then came the spoiler, the judgement that turned victory into a loss and the sweet dreams of power into a nightmare for the APC in that state.

I wish I could get through this without the smirk on my face. No, I am not rejoicing at the loss of APC. That would not be right. However, given Abdulaziz Yari’s arrogance and the arrogance of the party itself, my take is that they got their comeuppance. I would hate to say it but I still do so in spite of my reluctance: served them right.

Oshiomhole is critical of the judgement because he believes it has not served the ends of justice as he understands it. He is wrong. Had it gone his way, he would have been full of praises for their lordships and readily accepted it as the height of judicial courage and justice. But the judgement is not about PDP; it is about APC. PDP only reaped what APC sowed and APC reaped its own whirlwind.

The judgement has done justice to the APC members who sought judicial intervention in their struggle for justice and fairness in the conduct of the party primaries in the state. Yari ignored his national chairman who repeatedly said it was not the duty of governors and state chairmen of the party to conduct primaries. That responsibility, by the constitution of the party, is thrust upon panels appointed by the national working committee for that purpose. Had Yari abided by the constitution of the party, perhaps this calamity would not have befallen him, his party and his handpicked candidates for the elections. Yari ignored everyone. He ignored his party just as he ignored INEC and went ahead to conduct the sham primaries upheld, not surprisingly, by a state high court.  It is usual for judges on the lower bench to opt for political rather than legal judgements to please those who pay the piper.

The ramifications of the Supreme Court judgement go far beyond Zamfara. I know I am being liberal in my interpretation of this but it should be possible to see it as the court making it clear to the parties and their powerful chieftains that there is, and should indeed be, a limit to the rascality that now defines our national politics. These politicians, these gods with feet of wet clay, must be brought down to earth to observe the elementary rules of the game authored by them. Nothing in our laws gives them the right to treat the constitution and all other laws with serial contempt as befits self-deluded men of cheap political power.

The party primaries, open or closed, are guided by rules made by the parties themselves. It is the height of arrogance and impunity for the people who made those rules not to feel bound by them because they hold high public offices. There is no room in our form of government for politicians, be they presidents or governors, to make their own laws and impose their will on their parties and the electoral commission. This simple fact seems lost on the politicians. They continue to behave as if the electoral umpire does not matter. This is unacceptable.

I hope that other judges would find their missing balls in the Supreme Court decision and refuse henceforth to be complicit with the politicians in standing democracy on its head. A democratic country is a country of laws, not of men. Democracy is a difficult form of government precisely because it is restrictive and thus ensures that your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins. It is the tendency among men of power to seek to break free from the restrictions imposed by the laws that protect our form of government. They must not be allowed.

We have put 20 years of democracy under our belt, warts and all. As the Buhari administration begins its second and final term in office, the politicians would do well to commit fully to the full flowering of our democracy. The shame of Zamfara must be an important learning experience in how not to ignore laws and party rules. Let the politicians purge themselves, look at Zamfara and feel the air let out of the balloon of arrogance of state leaders of APC and commit to being guided by laws and the rules of the game.

Let me spend an ounce of charity by offering my sympathy to Alhaji Shehu Idris, now a former governor-elect and Abdulaziz Yari, now an ex-senator-elect. It is painful to snatch defeat from victory but this is what always happens when justice over takes injustice. It is glorious to snatch victory from defeat. This is what happens when justice finds a firm footing. Dr Bello Mutawallle is the new occupant of government house, Gusau. I offer my droplet in the flood of congratulatory messages.