BY the time you read this, an appeal court may have given its verdict on the two appeals filed by Governor Udom Emmanuel and Umana Okon Umana, of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and All Progressives Congress (APC), respectively, in respect of the outcome of the April 11 governorship election in Akwa Ibom State.

The uniqueness of the work of the appeal court in this particular case lies in the fact that unlike other cases in which one party appeals the verdict of the election tribunal, the appellate court is saddled with the task of deciding on two appeals – one from the man who was declared winner of the governorship election and the other from the one that lost.

Emmanuel, the PDP candidate in the election, asked the appeal court to set aside the ruling of the election tribunal that ordered a re-run in 18 out of the 31 local government areas of the state, and uphold his victory as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), while Umana, candidate of the APC, wanted the appellate court to quash the former’s election and order a fresh election in the entire state.

Umana’s hope of winning the governorship of the state, which is akin to swimming against the tide, is apparently hinged on the possibility of having the mythical federal might on his side. In these days of strange verdicts, when Nigerians are witnessing election rulings that are given to suit current circumstances, it was not totally out of the blues to see the pendulum swing in favour of the APC that seems to be achieving in the courts what it failed to achieve at the polling stations, especially in a battleground state like Akwa Ibom.

Different kettle of fish

Forget the fact that the rulings involving senators Godwsill Akpabio and Bassey Albert should give hope that justice would, indeed, be done in the governorship appeal.

The governorship is an entirely different kettle of fish, with understandably higher stakes, if you consider the life-and-death struggle for the governorship seat in Rivers State and the failed hijack of the Bayelsa governorship by the APC through a bloody capture of crucial votes in the strategic Southern Ijaw Local Government Area, which has taken yet another feather from the cap of the new INEC that is fast acquiring a notoriety for conducting inconclusive elections.

The violent but botched attempt by the ruling party to win the local government area, the second with the highest number of registered voters in the state, is such that has reportedly miffed and embarrassed President Muhammadu Buhari to the extent of refusing to grant audience to Timipre Silva, the party’s candidate in the election. Obviously, the president is not on the same page with his party in the attempt to forcefully annex a state it knows it cannot win, judging by the results from seven out of the eight local government areas released by INEC.

There should be no reason to imagine that the appeal court would not affirm the election of Udom Emmanuel as the governor of Akwa Ibom. This is more so since the election tribunal did not base its ruling on the common grounds of election malpractices like violence, snatching or stuffing of ballot box, etc. The tribunal curiously relied on the testimonies of a few witnesses to whom it gave the tag of ‘witnesses of truth’, on account of their social and political standing, to annul elections in 18 local government areas.

In a rather bizarre ruling, it considered the statement of a witness that election did not hold in his ward, to arrive at the conclusion that election did not hold in an entire local government area.

Having realized that defeating the former governor, Akpabio, in his senatorial district where he is something of a cult figure was an up uphill task, the APC had hoped to capitalize on an honest administrative error to continue in its tradition of securing in the courts what it cannot secure from the people.

Independence of the judiciary

But the learned judges thought otherwise, and decided quite rightly that a mistaken recording of Akpabio in one of the forms as candidate in a senatorial district other than his own did not mean that the people that voted on March 28 did not know who they were voting for.

The appeal court has demonstrated independence of the judiciary in the cases involving the two senators from Akwa Ibom. We have seen, in the two cases, rulings that saw through the deceit and propaganda for which APC has become notorious – a tool that it was able to utilize effectively to win the general elections.

Erhumu Bayagbon