By Ise-OluwaIge

Between March 1, 2023 when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the winner of the February 25, 2023 presidential poll and now, the judiciary appears to have been under intense pressure.

In this piece, Vanguard’s Law and Human Rights examines five separate occasions within the period including March 23, July 19, July 20, August 7 when various allegations of malfeasance were levelled against the judiciary and August 15, 2023 when the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON), wielded its big stick to pull down the ‘All eyes on the judiciary’ billboard for reasons presently fuelling unending controversy.

The report surveys stakeholders on the implications of the various unproved allegations against the judiciary and concludes that except the ongoing trend is checked, the legitimacy of the judiciary may not only be threatened, the ongoing Fourth Republic may also terminate.

Background

That five political parties with their presidential candidates approached the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja, in March this year,  challenging the emergence of Mr.  Bola Tinubu as the winner of February 25, 2023, presidential election was not surprising.

This is because several observers of the disputed election including the European Union, had dismissed the poll as lacking in transparency while the main opposition parties had claimed the election results were heavily doctored and manipulated.

But the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, had maintained that contrary to their claims, the presidential poll was actually not only free and fair but also credible and defensible.

Within 21 days of INEC announcing the results, five political parties with their presidential candidates approached the registry of the Presidential Election Petition Court to challenge the election outcome.

Under the electoral law, political parties and their candidates have up to 21 days to file their petitions at the registry of the Appeal Court after INEC announced poll results.

The aggrieved parties who met the deadline included the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, with its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar and the Labour Party, with its candidate, Peter Obi.

The rest were the Action Alliance, AA, with its presidential candidate, Solomon Okangbuan, the Allied Peoples Movement, APM, with its presidential candidate, Chichi Ojei and the Action Alliance with its presidential candidate, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha.

The President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem, who is from Plateau State (North Central), had earlier exercised her constitutional powers to set up a five-member panel of the court to hear all the petitions challenging Tinubu’s victory in the presidential election while the tribunal was inaugurated by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Olukayode Ariwoola on November 7, 2022.

The tribunal members are Justice Haruna Tsammani (Chairman)  Gombe, North-East; Justice Stephen Jonah Adah, Kogi, North-Central; Justice Misitura Bolaji-Yusuf, Oyo, South- West; Justice Boloukuoromo Ugoh, Bayelsa, South- South and Justice Abba Mohammed, Kano, North-West.

However, between the time the political parties filed their petitions in March 2023 and now, the judiciary appears to have been under intense harassment from those aggrieved and favoured by the election outcome.

Vanguard reports that the first occasion was on March 23, 2023, less than 48 hours after the five political parties filed their petitions at the registry of the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja.

Ariwoola accused of travelling to UK to meet Tinubu over poll petitions

On the day, a social commentator, lawyer and former Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, Dr Sam Amadi had tweeted the photograph of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice  Ariwoola, seated in a wheelchair about to board an airplane at an airport.

Although the photograph bore no name of the traveller, the tweeter simply left three short questions as its caption:  What is this? Who is this? Is it true?

Within minutes, the photograph went viral on social media, with all manner of speculations.

Before the controversial photograph surfaced on the social media that day, an online platform had also published a story about Justice Ariwoola explaining the circumstances surrounding his sitting on the purported wheelchair at the airport.

The newspaper claimed that the jurist was pushed in a wheelchair through the terminals to board a British Airways flight.

According to the report, Ariwoola J. (64) was wheeled into a hotel downtown upon getting to London where he had purportedly remained since March 11, 2023, pretending to be physically-challenged in a clandestine preparation for a meeting with Tinubu, even when the jurist was not known with any physical disability.

The story specifically alleged that Justice Ariwoola wanted to meet Tinubu to discuss issues that might arise from the budding legal challenge to his declaration as president-elect, including whether or not he should be worried about the petitions recently filed by opposition parties to challenge his emergence.

The publication claimed the CJN deliberately left the country more than a week ahead of Tinubu to avoid any suspicion about why both of them disappeared at once even as it attributed the source of the story to a staff of the Supreme Court who did not want his name in print to avoid sanction.

Locating CJN in presidential election disputes

The CJN who is at the centre of the controversy wields enormous influence in presidential election cases.

By virtue of section 233 (1) (e) of the 1999 Constitution, the CJN can choose to appoint himself to head the seven-member panel of the Supreme Court that will give the final verdict on the cases.

Indeed, whether he chooses to be on the panel or not, he has the prerogative to choose the members of the Supreme Court panel that will settle the matter one way or the other.

As the head of the Supreme Court, the CJN is also the head of the entire Nigerian judiciary, who also oversees the NJC, the body that is responsible for the appointment and disciplining of judges across the country.

That was the account of the online platform on March 23, 2023.

But soon after the online platform published the story, both the Supreme Court and the President-elect,  Tinubu, dismissed it as one of the many lies calculated to tarnish their image.

For instance, the Supreme Court through its Director of Information, Dr Akande said the entire story by the online platform was false.

According to him, contrary to the claims by the report that Mr. Ariwoola travelled out of Nigeria on March 11, 2023 to the UK to meet with the President-elect, the CJN was actually in Nigeria and that he even presided over a meeting of the NJC which held on March 16 and 17, 2023.

Indeed, Vanguard reports that on March 17, the NJC at the end of its meeting chaired by Mr. Ariwoola issued a statement suspending the Chief Judge of Taraba State from office on account of misconduct.

Besides, Akande said that on March 23, 2023, when the newspaper published the allegation that the CJN was in London waiting to hold a purported clandestine meeting with Tinubu, he said that Justice Ariwoola was actually in his Chambers in Abuja and did not close until 8pm that day.

He said the following day, the CJN whom the online platform  claimed was in UK on wheelchair, attended Friday Jumaat service in Abuja.

The spokesperson for Tinubu’s media team, Bayo Onanuga, in a statement on March 24, 2023, also said that Tinubu was still in Paris, France and was yet to move to London.

As mixed reactions greeted the emergence of the controversial CJN’s photograph on social media, Dr Amadi deleted it on his Tweeter handle, describing his action as unnecessary.

In a new tweet by him to explain the new development, Amadi stated that he did not post the photograph to embarrass the CJN or anyone else, but was simply responding to a report on the issue by an online platform.

The media feasted on the allegation for months while stakeholders thoroughly examined the facts, logic and implication of same on various platforms.

Hardly had the dusts raised by the allegation against the CJN settled than another sprang up.

Again, another Nigerian accuses Tinubu of maintaining exparte communication with CJN

This time around, it was one Mr Jackson Ude, a Nigerian-American journalist and Director of Strategy and Communication to former President Goodluck Jonathan who raised the fresh alarm on July 19, 2023, that President Ahmed Tinubu was having exparte communication with the CJN, Justice Ariwoola to influence the decision of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in the petitions maintained against his electoral victory.

Ude who made the allegation via tweet specifically alleged that during one of the conversations, the CJN was believed to have advised Bola Tinubu and the APC to get ready for a repeat election given the facts available on the election disputes and the laws relating to the matter.

Ude added: “This is true despite the fact that the U.S authorities learned about three private phone conversations he held with Tinubu, the DG, DSS, Yusuf Bichi and two other justices of the Supreme Court.”

He said that the two justices of the Supreme Court had been added to the list of six Supreme Court justices who are prohibited from entering the US , bringing the number to eight. But he did not mention the names of the two new justices that the CJN spoke with on the election disputes.

APC denies Ude’s allegation of Tinubu’sexparte communication with CJN

But soon after Ude’s allegation hit the social media space, the All Progressive Congress, APC, promptly denied it. The APC National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, in a statement said Nigerians are “smarter and more discerning,” adding that President Tinubu and the party won the last presidential election without a doubt, and did not have any need to engage in side conversations with the CJN regarding pending petitions before the PEPC.

“The PEPC should be afforded the time and space to perform its important constitutional and statutory duty of adjudicating and delivering a verdict in the matter without needlessly calling the integrity of our judges into question.

“Falsehood and conjecture by the likes of Mr. Ude only aim to inflame political passions, create doubt and panic, and pre-emptively undermine the verdict of the courts in this important matter,” Morka added.