Zamfara And The Price Of Impunity By Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, Esq

On Friday, May 24, 2019, the Supreme Court put a final death
kernel on the fate of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in all the
National Assembly, Gubernatorial and State House of Assembly
elections in Zamfara State. In one fell swoop, the APC lost all
elections in the State, to the main opposition People’s Democratic
Party (PDP), no thanks to the internal wrangling within the
APC.

The same thing happened in Rivers State and some other States,
where the Courts annulled the electoral successes of the APC, due
mainly to the primaries of imposition, violence and bloodshed
conducted by the ruling party. At the last count, there are not
less than six hundred cases in court relating to elections, mostly
arising from dissatisfaction with the primary elections of the
political parties. It was thus a windfall for the opposition in a
State that should ordinarily have been swept clean by the ruling
party. All because of impunity.

Impunity reigns in any situation where rules are broken with
reckless abandon, where an individual is exempted from the
consequences of the breach of law or due process, and where a
person holds out himself as above the law and is thus immune from
punishment that should ordinarily have been the consequence of his
action. It is actually the bane of leadership in Nigeria, where
some of those who hold power in trust for the rest of society take
it upon themselves to impose upon the people, without giving a hoot
as to the effect of such, on the general psyche of the people or
even corporate governance. If people give due regard to the
processes established by law for general human conduct, then there
will be less crisis, less conflicts and indeed less court cases,
although some of my colleagues have corrected me that this should
not be the wish of any serious lawyer, since conflict in itself is
part and parcel of human development and progress. Now how did it
all start, in Zamfara State?

It was a fall out of the usual contest for power between the
incumbent governor and the senator, as it happened in other States,
where factions emerged from within the Executive Committees of the
political parties. In this case, it was between the governor of
Zamfara State, Alhaji Abdul’aziz Yari and the Chairman of Senate
Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), Senator Kabir Marafa, as to
who should have control of the party in the State. In the course of
the dispute, the National Working Committee of the APC, led by its
Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomole, claimed to have dissolved the
party executive in the State, which is perceived as being loyal to
the incumbent governor. Not long thereafter, the Deputy National
Chairman (North) of the party, Lawal Shuaibu, who is also from
Zamfara State, faulted and rejected the decision on dissolution,
thus effectively creating a crisis within the party in the State.
Then court cases were flying here and there. In no time, the APC
NWC had constituted a committee to conduct primary elections in
Zamfara State, but that Committee could not conclude its
assignment, due to pockets of violence and the primary election was
aborted and cancelled. The governor reacted angrily and even
threatened Comrade Oshiomole to dare send anyone to the State to
conduct any primary, as he would not guaranty the safety of such
election panel.

It was in the light of all the above that the NWC sent a list of
names of candidates to the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC), for the elections to be held in the State.
Meanwhile, Governor Yari held on to his own faction of the party
and also forwarded his own list of candidates to INEC. Upon
reviewing the situation of Zamfara State, INEC declared that APC
had no candidate for the elections in that State. The courts did
not help matters also. As the Federal High Court in Abuja was
restraining Governor Yari and his team, the Sokoto Division of the
same court was affirming the primary election conducted by the Yari
faction. Without effectively resolving this crisis, APC bulldozed
its way into the elections and was declared winner by INEC, whereas
appeals and counter-appeals were ongoing. What could have led a
ruling party to waste so much time, energy and resources on a
process that was evidently lis pendens and subject to judicial
review? It was the same scenario that played out in Rivers State,
where rival APC factions dragged themselves to court to stop the
party primaries.

The APC had enough precedents to guide it in the choice of
actions to be taken in relation to party primaries and internal
wrangling. In the wake up to the 2015 elections, the PDP, then
relegated to the status of drowning opposition, found itself in a
self-inflicted war that threatened to consume the party completely.
Senator Ali Modu Sheriff was laying claim to the leadership of the
party and was holding tenaciously to his office, against the
general wish of most stakeholders of the party, who all seemed to
prefer Senator Ahmed Makarfi. The PDP paid dearly for this, in the
ensuing elections in Edo and Ondo States. And by the time the
crisis was finally resolved by the Supreme Court, a lot of goodwill
and political capital had been lost by the party. Not a few then
were of the view that Ali Modu Sheriff’s incursion into the party
was the proverbial hand of Esau and the voice of Jacob, believing
that the ruling party cleverly planted him as a mole in the PDP to
weaken its political strength. But this was exactly what happened
in Rivers State, where Senator Magnus Abe successfully challenged
the Rotimi Amaechi led faction of the APC and in that wise,
delivered the State to the PDP, without a real contest.

The Constitution in its section 221 has accorded the political
parties the pride of place in the determination of candidates for
any election. However, section 87 of the Electoral Act prescribes
that “a political party seeking to nominate candidates for
elections under this Act shall hold primaries for aspirants to all
elective positions” and that “the procedure for the nomination of
candidates by a political party for the various elective positions
shall be by direct or indirect primaries.” So, the APC was well
aware that it had to conduct primaries, in order to produce
candidates for nomination for various elections. That being the
case, how come the party was not able to rein in the hawks, how
come the party suffered the same fate as its main rival the PDP,
how come that no one within the party could proffer legal counsel
to await the outcome of several cases filed and pending in various
courts and how come it became possible for a sitting governor, to
contest senatorial election on the platform of the APC and then at
the same time sponsor and campaign for his own adopted governorship
candidate, on the platform of Action Alliance in the case of Imo
State and Allied Peoples Movement in the case of Ogun State?

The various examples of impunity that permeate the APC is only a
symbol of its true character as the ruling party, as in several
other examples, names of candidates were cancelled, removed or
withdrawn at the very last minute, whereas in some more distasteful
cases, death certificates were forged for some candidates in order
to substitute them. In the end, the APC had more pre-election cases
in court than in the election petition tribunals. Where does this
lead us? Whatever affects the head will surely flow to the other
parts of the body. And if what we have witnessed within the APC is
anything to go by, Nigerians should very well brace up for greater
impunities from the ruling party, in more critical and fundamental
areas of our national life.

But in all of these, President Buhari, who is by status the
official leader of the APC, is the overall winner and loser. In
Rivers State, the matter went up to the Supreme Court and he never
interfered in the process at all, at least openly and to our
knowledge. Similarly in Zamfara State, he didn’t show any sign of
much personal concern, in the judicial process that eventually
buried the fate of his own party, other than to cancel his campaign
rally in the State. It should be possible for leaders to respect
and abide by the decisions of the courts, as a commitment to
eradicating all forms of lawlessness in our national life. Thus, it
is gratifying to note that the APC has publicly accepted the
verdict of the Supreme Court in this case, even though it had no
choice in the matter. But there is a little snag. How can the
President be parading credentials that his own party does not
possess? How come that he has not been able to influence his own
party to respect the rule of law and due process?

The point has been made loud and clear by the judiciary, in the
Zamfara State example, that the courts cannot and should not be
taken for granted at all. This should continue across the party
divide and then be extended to all manner of recklessness by
politicians across the major political parties. This will help
institute the much-coveted culture of respect for due process of
law, in order to help preserve and protect the integrity of the
judiciary. This should not stop with party primaries or even
political cases, but should roll over to all condemnable examples
of lawlessness that seek to bye pass the due process of law and we
can then beat our chests that we are gradually returning Nigeria to
the place of sanity

BY-LINE

A big congratulations to the matriarch of human rights struggles
in Nigeria, Mrs. Ganiat Fawehinmi, who last week celebrated her
70th birthday and also eminent lawyer, revolutionary and revered
activist, Mr. Femi Falana, SAN, who himself turned 61. They both
brought back sweet memories of Gani. I urge the government to
accord them the honour that is due to them during the June 12
Democracy Day celebrations.

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