POLITICS, LITIGATIONS AND VENDETTA

He who seeks equity must do equity, argues Dayo Sobowale

It was fiery Pastor Tunde Bakare who released what he called the ‘state of the nation’ address recently in which he accused newly elected President Bola Tinubu of carrying out a vendetta against former CBN governor Godwin Emefiele and former EFCC boss Abdulrashid Bawa. Most importantly Bakare admonished Tinubu who is also the new ECOWAS president to wage war against corruption and not Nigerians, noting that his impulsive removal of fuel subsidy without a plan in place to cushion its effect was a tendency towards authoritarianism. This he insisted has caused Nigerians untold hardship and misery. It is notable that this cleric lawyer and prayer warrior is a member of the same party and was the running mate of the immediate past Nigerian president when he ran earlier for a presidential election and lost. Bakare even contested in the last presidential primaries of the APC together with the former CBN governor who did the unbelievable in running for political office while still in office as CBN governor and returning to that office unrestrained and effortlessly thereafter. Bakare was rightly telling the Nigerian president that he was violating the rule of law in not charging to court both Emefiele and Bawa because the law says that a suspect is presumed innocent until he is found guilty in court

Meanwhile as Tinubu provides leadership to Ecowas to quell the coup in Niger, he has cases in court challenging his election’s integrity and the legitimacy of his election and his opponents are waiting on the sidelines like vultures hovering a wounded lion to see him fail both on his ECOWAS mission of salvation of democracy and deterrence against military coups. Evidently then Tinubu too should know that even as he is charged for vendetta, he too has been clearly marked out by  his opponents for vengeance  and  vendetta,  no  matter what he does and  regardless of the  many dubious  patriotic advice he listens to willy nilly on both his government’s domestic or foreign policies agenda. So, really the die is cast in Nigeria on both the results of the fuel subsidy removal and the resolution of the coup in Niger by ECOWAS led by Nigeria’s President Tinubu, the Nigerian champion of democracy.

Since the theme of my write ups is ‘comparative government’ I look at developments on the political scene in the US,  the ideological  mentor of Nigeria’s presidential system of government with its system of checks and balances and Nigeria. Right now in the US former President Donald Trump has been indicted four times in 2023 and yet he is still the leading candidate of his party, the Republican Party to win the party’s ticket for the 2024 US presidential election. The charges against Trump are mainly on 2020 election which he lost but said was rigged and the keeping of classified documents at his Mar Alago residence in Florida. There are also post -election issues like the Jan 6 2020 assault at the US capitol on the day that the US Vice President was constitutionally expected to ratify the electoral votes of the states in the presidential election and declare the victor in the election duly elected as the president of the USA. Since Donald Trump thought the election was rigged he asked his Vice President Mike Pence not to ratify the election but Pence refused because as he said recently his duty was to the constitution and not to the president. Obviously Pence did not buy Trump’s belief that the election was rigged. But if he had ,  would  he have obliged and stopped the election? An  answer can be found in the observation of a  late  US Supreme Court  judge  who  observed  ingeniously that Jan 6  was the most important day in the American US Presidential elections because of its importance in ratifying the election.’ That   ostensibly was what Trump  seized on and was capitalizing on before he asked his VP to do the needful but Pence did not see the constitutional impact of this, he only saw Trump’s inordinate ambition  and  a  constitutional  deficit  in  his  boss’  request .

Since then the Biden Administration has dealt with Trump through the Department of Justice and the FBI in what the opposition Republicans have called the weaponisation  of justice and the subversion of the rule of law. It is interesting to know that as the indictments and charges mount against Trump , his supporters see him as a victim of political and election persecution  by the Biden  government more so as Biden is the leading presidential candidate for the same 2024 presidential  election in which  he is seeking reelection as the oldest presidential candidate in US  history.

This is where the equivalence of Bakare’s charge of vendetta against the Tinubu government comes into play. A lost laptop of the US President’s son Hunter Biden was found during covid  and on the eve of the 2020 US  presidential  elections. However  revelations from it that Hunter was using his father’s position as US president to get foreign contracts in both China and Ukraine were suppressed in the powerful US media and super tech corporations as Russian misinformation. This was done successfully till Biden had won. In addition charges of tax evasion and procuring arms while under drugs against Hunter Biden were hushed by FBI and Department of Justice until whistleblowers came out in Congress to give information that the president’s son case  was being slow walked . A plea bargain to have him plead guilty to walk away free was nipped in the bud by a keen and observant judge and he had to plead guilty. The impact of this in terms of indignation and  injustice of Trump’s  supporters on the weaponisation of litigations on elections and injustice is captured by the lamentation of a Republican senator  Ted Cruz  on hearing of Trump’s fourth indictment. He  said ‘This is  disgraceful . Our country is over 200 years old. We  have never once indicted  a former president or a candidate for president and this is Joe Biden,this is  the Democrats weaponising the justice system because they are afraid of the voters. This is disgraceful. It is wrong and it is an abuse of power by angry Democrats who have decided the rule of law doesn’t matter to them any more. ‘

It is then necessary to compare the issues of rigging, vendetta , and litigation in historical perspectives in both Nigeria and  the US. In Nigeria post election litigation is both fast and furious by losers regardless of the vast difference in votes cast between winner and losers. Even in safe constituencies voters stuff ballot boxes to make assurance of victory doubly sure. This was the scenario till the arrival of Bivas and the cases in court after the 2023 elections. Bivas minimized and contained rigging and Nigerian politicians are so mindful of the rule of law that they are used to getting post- election justice at the courts. That explains the calmness and patience with which they await the verdicts of the courts on the 2023 presidential elections.

One can easily say that until Trump used the word rigging it was an anathema in the lexicon of American politics. He even said such rigging happened only in banana republics although he never mentioned Nigeria. His opponents branded Trump’s  usage of rigging in US  politics  the ‘big lie’ while  Trump insisted it was a  ‘stolen  election ‘. In Nigeria politicians go to court to seek electoral redress and the media cover this even handedly. In the US it is the government in power that criminalises the normal activities of the opposition leaders and members while the press is partisan and can close a case like Hunter Biden lost laptop till his father has won. Or tie an albatross of Russian interference on a president for four years and weigh him   down with massive indictments as a presidential candidate on the eve of an election. Surely the law is right that says – he who comes to equity must come with clean hands. That to me is the real panacea to deter rigging, and vendetta or litigations in any    just political system including both Nigeria and the US.

Sobowale is of Arise News