By Innocent Anaba

Chief Charles Uwensuyi-Edosomwan, SAN.

Chief Charles Uwensuyi-Edosomwan, SAN,Obasuyi of Benin is former Attorney-General of Edo State. In this interview, he spoke on the just concluded general elections, saying that the exercise was better than previous ones in the country but for the killing of National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, members in some Northern states.

Despite the unfortunate incidence, he noted that scrapping the scheme was not in the best interest of the country, rather, that “receiving states must assume the positions of guardians to every single corps member that has been sent to it for primary posting and account for his good health and well being mindful of the fact that her own youngsters are also elsewhere in the country on the same national assignment with expectations of equally good treatment.”

He expressed concern that despite the clamour for the quick resolution of election disputes, same may not be achieved now, in view of the challenges the judiciary is facing.

Excerpt:

What is your rating of the just concluded general elections conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC?

I think this last voting exercise of 2011 is a great improvement on preceding polls. Talking quantum, I believe more folks voted this time around believing that their votes would count and they most probably did. The INEC and its current leadership even in their initial faltering steps showed a sincerity that was calming. Nothing in the affairs of man can be perfect and there is indeed room for improvement on the side of INEC. But by far the ones that need to improve in their attitudes toward contributing to the emergence of an internationally acceptable electoral system are voters themselves.

The negative attitudes and criminality shown by voters in various parts of the country especially in the areas where lethal violence was unleashed on Nigerians has marked these polls with a blotch of ugliness. No matter what anyone would say about how much of an improvement these polls were on previous exercises, the gory pictures of murdered NYSC members whose only crime was answering the national call to duty would always leave a sour taste in the mouth.

Some political parties have accused the ruling parties in the various states of colluding with INEC to systematically rig the just concluded elections. What is your reaction to this?

The evidence would have to be seen for a conclusion one way or the other to be reached. Let me not hold anyone’s brief but Nigerians have become accustomed to conspiracy theories and it is common for those that have not been returned or have done well at the polls to complain. However, INEC like every human institution cannot be free of bad eggs. These matters may soon come to the Tribunals and my counsel to INEC is that it must show its neutrality during the litigations.

Why do you think our politicians do not accept defeat at the polls and how can their do or die attitude towards elections be checked?

Apart from the fact that service delivery is yet to be truly embedded in our public office seekers and every electoral contest is seen from the perspective of a contest for a better life for the aspirant, there has always been lots of insincerity in our electoral process that militates against the “losing party” accepting his loss calmly with the necessary belief that he truly lost to the other party.

I had often said that whenever we as a polity infuse our electoral processes with more sincerity, we would start to see less of acrimony and more of comrade-ship in our electoral contests. Commensurate to this new sincere and just attitudes would be less and less of acrimonious money and time-expensive litigations over election issues. Vanquished contestants would acquire the gentleman’s habit of congratulating the victorious party and either quietly goes home to run another day or pledge him his genuine cooperation and support.

The killings that followed the announcement of the April 16, presidential elections in the country have been blamed on the failure of the Federal Government to prosecute perpetrators of similar crises in some Northern states in the past. Do you agree and what in your opinion is the solution to the circle of violence in the North, which always assume religious coloration?

As I have earlier said, the senseless killings that ensued at the wake of the presidential election of April 16, was quite sad and the gory pictures of corps members in the uniforms of their country, murdered in the line of a sacred duty to the nation have become a sad blot on the modest developments that we as a country have made by this internationally acclaimed voting exercise.

Even more dispiriting are the groaning and lamentations of folks who lost loved ones in the carnage. Thus in spite of the modest but real gains of this general election, the country threatens to splinter along its longitudinal fault lines with palpable threats of retaliation looming large all over the South and places in the North that are the ethnic bases of victims. Sad. Now on prosecutions of past offenders from the North, I don’t have the necessary statistics of past events and past prosecutions to be able to come to a reasonable judgement on whether or not it is past Federal neglect of necessary prosecutions that has failed to provide a needed deterrent to the ogres in the repeating cycle violence.

However, I do know that most incidents relating to violence in election centers or post electoral violence resulting in homicides or assaults, grievous bodily harm, destruction of public property, theft or conversion of electoral materials and so on are in the main states offences and we should really be talking of failure or otherwise of states to provide the necessary deterrence, in terms of precautions of these offenders.

Following the killing of over 50 corps members serving in some Northern states over the results of the presidential election and the call for the amendment of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, do you support the scrapping of the scheme?

If no, how can we ensure that our young school graduates are not cut down in their prime in the name of serving their mother land, which is one of the cardinal objectives of the NYSC?

Straight up, I don’t support the scrapping of the National Youth Service Corps scheme. If we are serious about fusing from Lord Lugard political contraption of convenience into a nation with increased homogeneity, what better tool to use than the NYSC scheme made up of our forward looking adaptable youth who are indeed the future of Nigeria? Receiving states must assume the positions of guardians to every single corps member that has been sent to ir for his primary posting and account to the sending state for his good health and well being mindful of the fact that her own youngsters are also elsewhere in the country on the same national assignment with expectations of equally good treatment.

The Federal Govt should as a matter of policy link state inspectorates directly to the nearest military formations for the protection of these youngsters on national assignment.

Before the general elections, some Nigerians had raised concern over the use of the military for an entirely civil exercise. In view of this, is it right to use the military during elections?

I don’t see why not if the exigencies of a situation demand it, but it must be such that the military’s expected neutrality is not compromised. With the sad benefit of hindsight, given the embarrassing

intelligence lapses of the Internal Affairs, had the military been primed to watch the elections in the flash points in the North, there may not have been the carnage of genocidal proportions that occurred in

the North. And it wouldn’t be new, for Eisenhower as President of the US deployed the 101st Airborne to enforce the bitter pill that was the dictate of the Chief Justice Warren US Supreme Court decision in Brown Vs Topeka, which struck down segregation in Public Schools in the State of Kansas.

It surely wouldn’t be new but the difference is that the military would be deploying to help out in a crucial civil process. On neutrality, it may interest you to know that a consciencious President Eisenhower was indeed enforcing a decision that was a blow to his and his Republican Party’s idea of a racially settled America that left a sour taste in their mouths.

Election disputes took time to be resolved in previous elections. Do you see out tribunals concluding election matters early enough, so that we don’t have a situation where a re-run is ordered after the person in office has spent over two years?

Honestly, I don’t see any guarantees for prompt resolutions of electoral litigations that would obviate the concerns that you’ve expressed in your question because our long expressed anxieties about the lapses in the operating logistics in our adversarial litigation systems are yet to be assuaged by substantial address of the outstanding weaknesses. With the exception of Lagos, the FCT and a smattering of some other states, court rooms are still largely hell holes.

Judges still take down proceedings in wrist destroying long hand, hauling back breaking work that is more physical gruel than cerebral exertion. Add to this the special nature of election petitions where geographies depending on sizes and type of constituencies play important roles. For example, the nature of proof in a gubernatorial petition often necessarily encompasses witnesses from across the whole state.

These witnesses would have to be cross-examined and the whole works before addresses. Aside the guber petitions are senatorials, federal constituencies, state constituencies and the presidential. Meanwhile, all the judges or justices involved in with the various petitions are full time still-serving judges who have to go back and forth to their primary jurisdictions to carry on their normal tasks in those jurisdictions. Now how quick can such a system work? Again, now that the Supreme Court has become involved in gubernatorial petitions, it means that disputes are bound to become even longer to resolve.

Some lawyers have raised concern over the ability of the committee set up by the Nigerian Bar Association to address the issue of corruption in the judiciary. Do you think such a committee can deliver?

I don’t see why not. We, lawyers and judges are all stakeholders in the business of Justice and should be able to complement ourselves in the interest of Justice Administration.