By Willy Bozimo

When jurists of the calibre and  status of a former Chief Justice of Nigeria , like  Justice  Mohammadu Uwais , also a  former Chairman of the  Electoral Reform Committee , took time off  the jurisprudential sphere   and tried to move into the murky waters of politics in Nigeria , one knew he was bathing in troubled waters.

The bone of contention in the present legal mumbo jumbo between  the presidency and  Justice Uwais stems from the renown jurist’s perception of what his panel recommended and what is the present law  which empowered  Mr. President to  nominate the chairman of  the Independent National Electoral Commission – INEC.

According to the Uwais recommendations , the chief umpire of the INEC ought to be nominated  by the National Judicial Council – NJC and not by the president. Justice Uwais decried the fact that what he saw as the key recommendations were not taken in the eventual constitution and appointments of the of the new INEC  body. Not only that. Justice Uwais was reported to have expressed frustration that the nomination  of the new INEC  Chairman was not done strictly  in accordance with the recommendations of the Electoral Reform Committee.

In a swift reaction by the presidency,   the presidential spokesman, Mr. Ima Niboro, said that the appointment of Professor Attahiru Jega was within the law. Accrding to the media adviser to the president, “No matter how we feel about the  reforms, ‘ The law is the law., and justice Uwais , probably knows this more than the rest of us. For now the law in place   mandates the president to nominate the chairman and members of the Electoral Commission along  with the state chairmen of INEC, present them to the National Council of State , which is advisory,  and send to the Senate for screening . This is exactly what the President had done.’

‘The recommendations of the Uwais panel, no matter how well meaning , remain recommendations until they are passed into law by the National Assembly. We wish to note that with the acting chairman of INEC complaining   that time is too  short  to prepare for the next elections , and all manner of ridiculous tenure elongation scenarios being played in the media, it would have been foolhardy to put off a decision on reconstituting the electoral body until the National Assembly passes the  Uwais’s panel’s  recommendations into law.’

With all due respect to the legal standing of Uwais in matters of jurisprudence, one is slightly worried that he ought to have known the difference between mere recommendations  in matters so  weighty and fundamental to the polity , to be left solely in the hands of judges and lawyers, no matter their status.

We know for a fact that the intervention of  too many lawyers, long after elections are won and lost in the various election tribunals  had led to some laughable distortions in the delivery of judgments,  which had tended to make a mockery of the sanctity of some of the judicial pronouncements. In some cases, similar cases had ended up with different judgments across the country, where lawyers and  even very senior  SANS and Judges had tended to see cases as avenues for ostensible retirement benefits with accusations of  under  the table judgments.

Since Uwais knows that he cannot be a judge in his case or recommendations which will be taken or  not  taken  his   frustrations and attack on the presidency, seems to me,  to be taking his jurisprudential airs too far. He must have grossly overrated his electoral reforms recommendations  as being too fool proof or too sacrosanct  with no eyes and ears for the political exigencies of the times.

In a daily changing scenario where Nigerians are talking about one man , one vote, and transparency in the conduct of the forth coming elections in 2011, and with some 60 political parties in the country, where some former military leaders are  jockeying to partake in the democratic elections , no incumbent president would allow  an uncharted and uncontrolled electoral process to be hijacked by  fifth columnists under the guise of reforms still in an incubating stage.

The Uwais interjection and mild grumblings in the legal backyard also shows the extent to which legal luminaries assertion that their views must finally be binding on the polity to the exclusion of the imperatives of  the government in power, on whose desk the buck ought to stop.

I think, it is  an unnecessary distraction from the fertile legal mind of Uwais , to perhaps , hoodwink an unsuspecting   president , whom he has mistaken, could be pushed over. For as long as he remains president and commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Federal Republic of  Nigeria , he could not be intimidated by the needless posturing  of a thousand  people in spite of their  seeming cerebral pretensions, to throw several spanners into the polity.