By Ikeazor ‘Kizor’ Akaraiwe, SAN

1: The rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) is awarded as a mark of excellence to members of the legal profession who have

“qualified to practice as a legal practitioner in Nigeria for not less than ten years and has achieved distinction in the legal profession…” S. 5 (2) Legal Practitioners Act.

Unless you have gone through the process of taking silk or been close to any who went through it, you may not know that it is one of the most rigorous and painstaking processes for all concerned; the candidates, the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee [LPPC], the Supreme Court Justices and Justices at all levels of the justice delivery spectrum. 

2: As one who has gone through the process, permit me to opine that it may be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for one undeserving of the privilege within each geopolitical federating zone, to obtain the rank.

3: However, man being a work in progress, there is always room for improvement. Permit me then to make suggestions for reforming with respect to both categories: Advocate SANs and Academic SANs.

4: SOME RECOMMENDATIONS WITH RESPECT TO ADVOCATE SANs:

Further permit me to take a voyage to 1978, the year I wrote my school certificate at Edo College, Benin City. For the purpose of the West Africa School Certificate Examinations, subjects were classified into groups as follows:

                a.            English Language (or other Languages) – Compulsory group.

                b.            Sciences

                c.             Humanities

                d.            Social Sciences

                e.            Fine Art / Technical Drawing

                f.             Etc.

The languages category was compulsory, while you had to choose between a minimum of six and a maximum of nine subjects from four groups.

You could not write your WAEC in your best six to nine subjects if they all were from, for instance, two or three groups. You had to drop some and add some to meet the prerequisite of six to nine subjects from a maximum of four groups. The raison d’etre for this being the need for candidates to have a broad-based education. 

5: SUGGESTIONS FOR THE ADVOCATE SAN CATEGORY

It is hereby suggested that the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee adopt subject matter classifications in order to produce SANs who would have a broad-based distinction in as wide an array of subject matters as possible, this being a major way to justify the rank. Any SAN can of course decide to specialise thereafter, but s/he will never be found wanting in as broad as possible a spectrum of law practice, thus justifying the silk.

However, if we choose to maintain the current system wherein some SANs come in with subject matter expertise in one or two categories of law practice, it would be expedient to narrow their practice to those fields of expertise.

5: EXAMPLES:

The following examples may explain better what I am trying to say:  

                (a)          It may be desirable but unlikely for a SAN who got the rank purely as a criminal law advocate with only criminal law proceedings and judgments, for example, to refuse a juicy brief for, say, election petitions, or oil and gas which are not his areas of expertise. But this seldom happens. Who is going to bell the cat? Who is going to enforce narrowing their practice to those fields of expertise?

                (b)          Indeed, some Senior Advocates who got the rank as academics were excellent in the specialist terrain of practice and procedure, but some not quite so, thus bruising the distinction expected of the rank. This is because they got the rank premised upon their very good research skills and writings and not necessarily, their practice in court. 

6: RECOMMENDATIONS.

In order to avoid similar weaknesses which tend to undermine the rank, amidst the so many great strides the LPPC has made, the following recommendations are humbly submitted:

That for the advocate category, the following court case classifications, subject to amendment, be adopted for appeals:

(i) General Criminal Causes, 

(ii) Specialist Criminal- [EFCC / ICPC], Capital Offences, Election Criminal,

(iii) Civil – Commercial/Company,

(iv) Specialist Civil – Aviation, Maritime,

Pre-Election and Post-Election,

(v) Arbitration, 

(vi) Special Courts (Medical & Dental Practitioners, LPDC, COREN, ARCON, Military),

(vii) ETCETERA

7: FURTHER RECOMMENDED PURSUANT TO PARAGRAPHS 3 and 6 ABOVE:

That in order to qualify to apply for the rank under the Advocate Category,

(a) at the level of the Supreme Court; you will be required to have a minimum of one judgment each from a minimum of four out of the groups listed. 

(b) at the level of the Court of Appeal; you will be required to have a minimum of two judgments each from a minimum of four out of all the groups listed. 

(c) Courts of First Instance: No classifications. 

8: ACADEMIC SANs.

While the introduction of the rank to academics was good, and the first academic list SAN, foremost constitutional lawyer, Professor Nwabueze, SAN, is a man of incomparable distinction, it is recommended that two routes be created for academic list SANs.

ROUTE No. 1: Become SAN on your papers and books only and be expressly constrained from courtroom practice.

ROUTE No. 2: To be able to practice as a courtroom advocate become SAN on your papers, books, and added courtroom qualifications as admirably suggested by Ebun-Oluwa Adegboruwa, SAN thus – “Frontload at least five trials in contested cases in the High Court, three contested cases in the Court of Appeal and two contested cases in the Supreme Court” all obtained in the ten years preceding the application.

Although Route 2 requirement above is a far cry from the stringent requirements for Advocate list SANs, suggested academic Route 2 should have a salutary effect in ensuring that those professors who practice in court as SAN are advocates in the courtroom sense of it.

The academic SAN who chooses route No. 2 may even emerge as the best Senior Advocate given his humongous output in books and legal research papers in addition to the 5 – 3 – 2 case requirement suggested above.

I did give the following example in my initially circulated piece before I took the rank in 2021 that, I did witness an elderly SAN / former state attorney-general during election petitions turn around to the utter bar, asking in exasperation, “who made this man a Senior Advocate?” The focus of his angst was a Senior Advocate (academic) plodding his way through the clearly unfamiliar territory of election petitions. When the elderly SAN was told that his brother silk got the rank premised upon his academic work in corporate law and governance, he asked in further exasperation, “so, why is he here?” It was very embarrassing, to say the least.

9: AMENDMENT OF INITIAL SUGGESTION:

My initial suggestion, as hereunder restated, is therefore amended as above states.

Here is what I wrote earlier: “it  is recommended that academic list SANs be expressly restricted from practice as courtroom advocates, subject only to the following:

If academic list SANs elect to practice in the courts, they should apply to the LPPC for a special dispensation to practice, in which case, the following parameters are recommended to be established for them: 

(a) Collaboration with an advocate category Senior Advocate for a minimum of four years with certified true copies of proceedings and judgments in 

(i) five cases at court of 1st instance and 

(ii) two each at the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, in which the academic category SAN was led by the advocate SAN, including briefs and pleadings with names appearing. 

(b) After four years, the academic SAN may then receive, upon application, a special dispensation to appear alone in courts.”

Those views stand amended aforesaid.

10: CONCLUSION

A. By way of concluding remarks, at 60 years of age, and 37 years at the bar, I have reached the legacy stage of my professional career. I am not interested in self-aggrandisement or popularity, but in leaving the profession better than I met it.

B. In this regard, in my various writings, I have made many recommendations for the improvement of the justice delivery sector. As the good Lord gives me strength, I shall neither stop nor be intimidated.

C. The article as first circulated online has generated a robust discussion among the legal luminaries which I appreciate greatly. Everyone is interested in the profession and it is not meant to attack anyone or any set of persons.

D. These suggestions, which by the way, affect both the Advocate list SANs and Academic list SANs, are made to strengthen one of the few remaining quality institutions in Nigeria, the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria. They are made to save the rank and the profession from denigration and demystification, and not to diminish anybody. The rank is greater than all of us. Let us protect it. 

Ikeazor ‘Kizor’ Akaraiwe, SAN

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

For all the talk of judicial independence, the reality of colonial and post-colonial Nigeria has been one long story of judicial subordination into subservience. Seven years into his presidency, Muhammadu Buhari is on his fourth Chief Justice of Nigeria, with the last two having departed office in rapid succession under a cloud. The story of how judicial independence in post-colonial Nigeria got to its present pass goes back to the very idea of colonialism.

Students and graduates of law faculties and law schools all over the Commonwealth, including Nigeria, sooner or later learn to swear by the rule of law and doctrine of the independence of the judiciary. These principles, they are told, anchor the law in rationality, shielding it from descent into arbitrariness; ensuring that it applies equally to everyone and that judges are blind in dispensing it fairly to all manner of persons irrespective of station, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.

One Rule for the White, Another for the “Natives”

Anyone who thinks closely about this would realize quickly that it is in fact founded on fable. In a decision in 1918, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council laid it down that African “natives” were “so low in the scale of social organization that their usages and conceptions of rights and duties are not to be reconciled with the institutions or legal ideas of civilized society… Such a gulf cannot be bridged.”

Thus, colonial rule, which dispersed the Common Law traditions of the Commonwealth – including independence of the judiciary – across the British Empire and beyond, was a system of one rule for the white colonialists and another for the black and brown “natives”. This idea of inherent inequality of the “natives” was itself central to the conception of law and its administration. Far from a system of rule of law, colonial rule was a system of “rule by law” in which judges were anything but independent.

This system of inequality relied for its enforcement in the colonies not on the independence of judges but on their subservience to the colonial will. To ensure this, colonial judges could be removed at will.

On 19 June 1953, the Queen’s Bench Division of Her Majesty’s High Court in London decided a very interesting case. In 1930, Mr. Terrell was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court of (Colonial) Malaya, in the Straits Settlements. Prior to his appointment, he had exchanged correspondence with the Colonial Office, which informed him that he would be liable to retire compulsorily on the attainment of the age of 62.

In 1942, Japan overran and occupied the Straits Settlements and the Secretary of State for the Colonies informed Mr. Terrell that they could find no suitable post for him elsewhere in the colonial service. When Mr. Terrell declined leave to retire, the Secretary of State terminated his appointment forthwith on 7 July 1942. That was 17 months before he was due to retire in February 1944.

Mr. Terrell took the case to an arbitrator and lost. So, he appealed to the High Court, arguing that under section 12 of the Supreme Court of Judicature (Consolidation) Act, 1925, which superceded the Act of Settlement (1701), judges in England held office during good behaviour and could only be removed on an address by both Houses of Parliament, none of which conditions had been fulfilled in this case.

Upholding the award of the arbitrator, Lord Chief Justice Rayner Goddard decided that the enactment relied on was “wholly inapplicable to a colonial judge” and that Mr. Terrell held office at the pleasure of the Crown. Reminded that Mr. Terrell’s contract appended the undertaking by the Colonial Office that he would not be required to retire before the age of 62, Lord Goddard decided that the undertakings did not constitute an agreement and, in any case, that even if they were, they could not take away the prerogative of the Crown to dismiss him at will or pleasure.

When they appointed Africans as judges, the colonialists did it as an act of patronage conferred on natives about whose subservience they had no doubts. Kitoyi Ajasa, one of the earliest Nigerian judges, achieved that preferment largely because of his closeness to Frederick Lugard, his support for colonial subjugation of natives, and his role as the leading Freemason in the territory as seven-time Worshipful Master of Lagos Lodge No. 1171 between 1901 and 1928.

Judicial Subservience as Virtue

The politicians who led Nigeria to Independence clearly did their pupillage well in the intricacies of retrenching judicial independence. They did not have to wait long after Independence in 1960 before showing their mastery of the subject.

In 1961 two unrelated things happened: Muhammadu Buhari was commissioned as an officer into the Nigerian Army and the then ruling political coalition in Nigeria tried Joseph Tarka unsuccessfully for treasonable felony. That was largely the last time a ruling government failed to get in substance what it wanted from the courts.

1n 1962, they would show in the treasonable felony trial of Obafemi Awolowo how well they had learnt their lessons. First, they denied him legal defence of his own choice as the constitution then allowed him. Then, they side-stepped the fiercely independent Daddy Onyeama to whom the case was to be assigned because they could not trust him to bring home a pre-determined outcome, instead ensuring that the case was assigned to Sodeinde Sowemimo, who wrote his own judicial epitaph with the words: “my hands a tied”.

With Chief Awolowo out of the way, they moved to topple his Action Group from power in the then Western Region. However, his party fought the case to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, as the then highest court in the country was called, and won. In response, the ruling coalition amended the constitution to legislate the British Crown and the Privy Council out of existence in Nigeria, converting Nigeria into a Republic.

In January 1966, the military overthrew the lot of the squabbling politicians. In 1969, the Supreme Court decided that what the military did in 1966 was not necessarily a coup for all seasons but rather a time-limited effort to save the country from collapse. The logic was that their hold on power was at the sufferance of the civilians to whom they were liable to hand back power once the emergency necessitating the change of guards was over. So, the military legislated the judiciary into subservience with the Federal Military Government (Supremacy and Enforcement of Powers) Decree, No. 28 of 1970 of 9 May 1970.

Two years later, in 1972, they summarily pensioned off then Chief Justice, Adetokunbo Ademola, replacing him with Taslim Elias, who had served as a comely Attorney-General to both civilian and military rulers of the country for a cumulative period of over one decade. Elias himself would last for barely three years in the seat, before being similarly fired by another military government after a coup in July 1975.

This game of judicial musical chairs orchestrated by the military and the politicians left the judiciary bereft of confidence, all but institutionally lobotomizing it and rendering claims of judicial independence in post-colonial Nigeria rather ostentatious. Military rule more-or-less institutionalized this in three ways.

First, following Decree No. 28 of 1970, they created a military culture of ousting the jurisdiction of the courts from all matters excluding essentially private disputes over land and inheritance. Ibrahim Babangida took this step one notch higher when in 1992, he enacted a decree that criminalized litigation.

Second, by the time Ibrahim Babangida became military ruler, the military began a practice of appointing judges mostly from the civil service. They needed people on the bench whose habit of obedience to instructions they could trust.

Third, they unitarized appointments to and benefits in the judiciary, creating the monstrosity that has now become known as the National Judicial Council (NJC).

At page 174 of his 2006 autobiography Just as I am, pioneering estate management practitioner, Chief Simon Okeke recounts his membership of the Island Club in Lagos, saying: “stories had it that the verdicts of most court cases were decided upon within the club. At that time, all Ministers and Magistrates, High Court to Supreme Court judges and famous lawyers and other top government officials were members of the club.”

SANs Are No Longer Enough

As the work of judges has become overtaken by political disputes, politicians have decided that there is no virtue in judicial independence and made a virtue of judicial subservience. Like most other things in the country, judicial appointments now are for the most part allocated to system insiders.

Around the country, therefore, politicians with any ambitions to high office are more likely than not to be armed with a judge in their back pocket or in their bedroom. It is no longer enough to have an army of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) on your side.

The last President of the Court of Appeal had her husband awarded the senatorial ticket of the ruling party in Bauchi North just as she was about to begin presiding over the administration of disputes over the 2019 election. Once her tenure was over, and her husband had served the purpose, the ruling party quickly awarded the same ticket to a scion of the then-serving Chief Justice.

62 years after Independence, Nigeria’s law students are still wondering what judicial independence was supposed to mean to begin with. The lawyers appear to have given up on it. The politicians have taken care of it. And as for what most of the judges think, it’s best left unsaid.

• A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]

By Martins Oloja

Our politicians and political leaders (some of them offspring of our First Republic politicians) are on the march again. They know the story of how the First Republic fell to the Federal Republic of the Nigerian Army in 1966. They are ignoring the warnings of legends such as Bernard Shaw about the implications of ignoring classic lessons of history. They have seen the implications of the Republic of the ‘Soldiers of Fortune.’ They saw how the Second Republic came to harm through their godfathers. They have read Adewale Ademoyega’s ‘Why We Struck,’ yet they have ignored the lessons and impacts of political corruption. They knew that the Third Republic was imperiled by crass opportunism nurtured by rampaging corruption, yet they have ignored the expediency of transparency and accountability in governance system in their Fourth Republic, which began 23 years ago. They have since demonised democracy and redefined it as government of the few rich who can buy votes for the benefit of only the family of the few powerful ones. Within 23 years, they have destroyed the economy of the most populous black nation on earth.

In the last 23 years, Nigeria’s politicians have destroyed the power of the law, which can no longer rule. They are the law. They alone rule. They are above the law. They have ruined the majesty of both the law and democracy in Africa’s most populous nation. They have destroyed the notion that judiciary is the last hope of the common man. Even the judiciary is struggling to tell the people that justice is indeed blind. Yeah, our new political leaders have built their electoral justice system that can give them the democratic mandate that the people deny them. The legislators in the house our founding fathers built are being freely called ‘legis-looters’ and they cannot deny the cognomen. Those who have exercised executive powers in the last 23 years have been tagged ‘execu-thieves’: they can’t remove the emblem of shame from Google and the people’s hearts. The currency they have given us has destroyed everybody’s purchasing power. They have no answer. They are clueless and cruelly so about the strong room of governance called the civil service. They have tagged that ‘evil service.’ The current Chief Executive of the Federation and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces was our Petroleum Resources Minister 46 years ago.

Incredibly as it may sound, 46 years on, he is still the Petroleum Resources Minister and President. Yet the oil sector on his watch has become the world’s most curious cesspool of corruption. The country that in January 1976 mounted a rostrum on behalf of Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and declared to the powerful G-7 leaders to ‘leave M.P.LA, Angola alone’ because ‘Africa has come of age, is no longer a strong voice even in its West African region. The military firepower that even the United Nations used to rely on to defend the flash points in Africa has lost its classic mojo. Our soldiers and police operatives and officers are being killed and humiliated by rag-tag non-state actors we call ‘terrorists.’ Tertiary education quality that once attracted students from even the United States, has become a symbol of ridicule and our political leaders ask  academic leaders and their scholars to die of hunger for crying out against rot in the system. Never in the history of governance system have a people become so helpless to change the principalities and powers that have held and let them down!

That is why as they want to begin the campaign this week, there is a responsibility to remind the political leaders that they are on the march again and the foundation of the democracy they seek to deepen is already rickety and people no longer have confidence in it. We need to remind them that the older people are beginning to notice some striking similarities between the corrupt politics that led to the fall of the First Republic and the ‘politricks’ they have entrenched. The politicians who have been abusing their opponents instead of reading and researching history books of what led us to this sorry pass should note what the spirit of good journalism and civil society is telling them, lest they will crash this Republic and there will be jubilation all over.    

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The politicians who are seeking to lead us from May 29, 2023 should note this contextual reporting of history of the fall of the First Republic as chronicled by credible scholars who posit that:  there are always many levels at which a complex social phenomenon can be explained and understood. To begin at the surface, the First Republic was overthrown because the people lost faith in it — not because some disaffected colonels were worried about their careers, not even because a disaffected ethnic group was worried about its position in the Federation. The former worry may have existed, and certainly the latter did. But they explain neither the success of the coup attempt nor the outpouring of joy and relief that greeted it across the country. The First Republic’s loss of popular legitimacy was a remarkably deep and broadly based — and, by the end of 1965, thorough — phenomenon. 

‘In short, the rulers used power that they held constitutionally to do unconstitutional things. In the process they destroyed themselves. Nigeria had censuses that were not censuses, elections that were not elections, and finally governments that were not governments.’ This was a Nigerian opinion in February, 1966. There are lessons here for our ‘politiricians.’

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, a columnist, sounded a similar warning in 2015 in an article on election lessons in which he drew copious lessons from the same First Republic. He quoted a credible authority, Larry Diamond whose thought also triggered today’s intervention – the fire today’s politicians are trifling with. According to Prof. Ibrahim then: ‘The 2015 Nigerian election is turning out to be as acrimonious, bitter and a hateful play of brinkmanship that could derail our democracy as that of 1964. It has the potential of threatening the survival of our country…’ 

As the 2023 election is barely five months away, we need to reflect on what we did wrong that led to the collapse of the First Republic and subsequently the emergence of the civil war. Doubtless, a useful guide on this as Ibrahim pointed out in 2015 is Larry Diamond’s book, ‘Class, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria: The Failure of the First Republic.’ It’s a good resource on the failure of the First Republic. The classic reveals layers of the dynamic interplay of class, ethnicity and regionalism that was bound to lead into only one outcome, system collapse. The print edition is available in Nigeria and the digital copy is available online. Reproduced below are excerpts and summary from the chapter on the 1964 historic election.

The author draws our attention to the fact that Nigerian politicians have a history of v and fecklessness. In fact, ‘The Daily Express’ editorial of December 28, 1964 had argued that the crisis in the country was the result of inordinate ambition of some politicians. Debating the crisis in a formal colloquium in London the same week, Nigerian students also concluded that politicians rather than the constitution had failed. Diamond argues that the failure was too easily attributed to the ethnic question. The reality, however, was that ethnicity was the construction of politicians and not the eruption of popular sentiments. He draws attention to a survey carried out in 1963-64, which demonstrated “surprising levels of inter-ethnic tolerance and acceptance among the ethnically heterogeneous work forces sampled.”

The core argument of Diamond is that the First Republic collapsed because there was no respect for the core principle of liberal democracy – free and fair competition for power through elections. For many years, regional governments were violating the spirit and increasingly the letter of this basic principle, until each region had become a virtual one-party state. He points out that the degree of overt repression, especially in the North, and the subjugation of the Action Group through a manifestly fraudulent and partisan use of Federal emergency power were fundamentally inconsistent with liberal democracy. The 1964 Federal Election erased most of what remained of the democratic character of the system. And that set the tone for the collapse of democracy and federalism two years later (in 1966).  

In other words, the ‘soldiers of fortune’ did not jump into the political arena in January 1966: they were dragged in. In 1964, southern university students, concerned that the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) was manipulating the electoral process called for a three-month Army takeover to organise the elections. Immediately, after the elections, United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA) opposition leaders began talking of secession and vowed, in the aftermath of the election, not to accept the authority of any government based on its outcome. Indeed, UPGA militants felt betrayed when President Azikiwe finally conceded to Sir Abubakar’s authority. From then on, political leaders throughout the Eastern Region, and unarguably the bulk of their followers, would not recognise any NPC federal government as legitimate in its authority, though they would, for utterly pragmatic reasons, grudgingly accept it. Such alienation and cynicism were also growing in the Western Region, where ‘the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) by a mixture of persuasion, force and fraud, secured a larger number of seats but in doing so intensified popular support for the AG.

Perhaps most ominously, the election crisis drew the Army into political conflict more fully than ever before. Though the army sided with the Constitution and attempted to remain as far above the conflict as possible, it had been forced to take sides. And increasingly, the Army was being called upon to quell and contain the unrest that the politicians had generated, which meant using its coercive power and authority in support of the NPC Federal Government. More and more, the Army was coming to be seen as the only force capable of refereeing political conflict. If many politicians and opinion leaders were maintaining that only the Army could fairly and efficiently administer the elections, what were the officers themselves to think? In fact, it appears that a number of middle-ranking officers, including perhaps three Lieutenant Colonels ‘seriously discussed whether the military should intervene to resolve the crisis’ Diamond, argued in this seminal piece. 

Following the election, crisis broke out on January 1, 1965, when the contents of a speech to be delivered by President Azikiwe were revealed. The core issue was that Azikiwe vowed to prevent the Prime Minister from forming a new Government on the basis of the election results. Reviewing the repeated frustration of attempts to ensure a free and fair election, and Sir Abubakar’s rebuff of his request for postponement and UN supervision, he said they had finally agreed to allow the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC) to take ‘appropriate action.’ But when the FEC failed to postpone the election and three of its members resigned, he felt morally compelled to reject the election result (and by extension, Sir Abubakar’s entitlement to form a new government). The Prime Minister’s response was that postponement of the election had never been discussed between them; that only the FEC could call off the election and only the courts could remedy irregularities…

Before we round off the details in this history next week, let our politicians reflect on the words of a Spanish philosopher George Santayana that, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ 

By Sonnie Ekwowusi

Last week the INEC Chairman Prof Mammod Yakubu publicly promised that notwithstanding the gargantuan challenges facing the commission it would conduct free and fair elections or would deliver electoral justice in 2023. “Only the votes cast by Nigerians will determine who wins and this is our commitment to the nation,” said Prof Yakubu.

Beyond mere verbal undertaking, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu led-INEC must truly and really conduct an impartial, free, fair and credible 2023 elections especially the Presidential election. Of all the elections the Presidential election is the crucial election which outcome will make or mar Nigeria. In fact guaranteeing peace, unity and stability in Nigeria in 2023 depends so much on the outcome of the 2023 Presidential election. The truth of the matter is that the people want a breakaway from the pre-existing ruinous legal order. They want total breakaway from the two political parties-APC and PDP-which are hanging on the same leprous hand. There is a time for everything under the sun. This is the time for breakaway or severance from the yolk of slavery and oppression. That is why the teeming population of young people that constitutes the bulk of the population of Nigeria has trodden the streets and alley ways across Nigeria, in reminiscent of the storming of the Bastille, to demand for a new political order where commutative justice, equity, character, competence shall flourish. Armed with their respective Permanent Voting Cards (PVCs) most young people across the geo-political zones of the country are poised to cast their votes for the Presidential candidate of their choice in the forth-coming Presidential election.

In the past, the country’s youths had displayed a somewhat nonchalant attitude towards elections and electoral processes. But today this attitude has changed for good. In fact, as we speak, the Nigerian youths are out in the streets, expressways and alleyways dancing, singing and demanding for electoral justice in the 2023 Presidential election. Apart from the Nigerian youths, other Nigerian voters from variegated bloodstream of Nigerian society are casting so much hope in the 2023 Presidential election. They perceive the election as the election which will bring positive change in Nigeria. Therefore INEC has no option but to conduct a free and fair Presidential election in February 2023. INEC must ensure that the will of the Nigerian people is reflected in the 2023 Presidential election. A very credible American election monitoring team which is based in Washington D.C that came to Nigeria in 2019 to monitor the 2019 Presidential election in Nigeria stated that candidate Atiku Abubarkar clearly won that election not candidate Muhammadu Buhari. Therefore INEC must not rig the forth-coming Presidential election in favour of the APC. The other day an APC chieftain was boasting that the APC would rule Nigeria for the next three decades. And President Buhari has said that he is eagerly looking forward to handing over power to another APC man in 2023.

If President Buhari was/is the nominator and appointer/re-appointer of INEC chair Prof. Yakubu coupled to the fact Prof.Yakubu is not financially independent of the Presidency, it is not illogical to believe that Prof Yakubu would dance to Buhari’s tune. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Isn’t it ? Think carefully about what I am saying. Mind you, this is the first time the chair of our electoral body is coming from the same ethnic group as the President of Nigeria. For example, in 1979 Chief Michael Ani who was the chair of the then Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) did not come from the same ethnic group as the late President Shehu Shagari. Other successive electoral body bosses such as Prof. Eme Awa, Prof. Humphrey Nwosu, Abel Guobadia, Maurice Iwu, Attahiru Jega did not come from the same ethnic group as the heads of government who appointed them. But today we have the chairman of INEC who does not only come from the same ethnic enclave as President Buhari but who was singularly handpicked and appointed the INEC Chairman by the same President Buhari. This is why the people are entertaining the fear that Prof Yakubu might manipulate the results of the Presidential election in favour of the APC. I tell people that Presidential Buhari would not want to commit a political suicide: he would not want to hand over power to a Peter Obi who, wittingly or unwittingly, would dismantle the Fulani oligarchical structures and corruption structures which he (Buhari) has been labouring to put in place in the last seven and half years.

Granted that by virtue of the Electoral Act 2022, votes cast by voters can now be electronically transmitted. The new Electoral Act has given legal backing to INEC to deploy technology to enhance the credibility of the electoral process. This has given birth to the deployment of INEC Voter Enrollment Device (IVED), Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal. But the aforesaid are not bulwark against election gerrymandering or manipulation. A technology operated by a fraudster can become a fraudster. So, notwithstanding the deployment of technology in the electoral process, INEC staffers can still rig the election in favour of any political party if they want.

Of all the INEC officials, the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) are the most powerful and influential. The RECs are the representatives of INEC at the State level. The role of RECs is critical for the success of any election. The duties of the RECs include monitoring the activities of all INEC ad-hoc staff/RECs as well as providing for proper verification of election results. In fact, the INEC relies heavily on RECs verifications in authenticating the election results on the presupposition that RECs are people of unquestionable integrity.

The pertinent question is: what are the names of the current RECs officiating in the 2023 elections? The coalition of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) complain that some of the 19 RECs newly appointed for INEC by President Muhammadu Buhari are either card-carrying members of the ruling party or people who have been previously indicted for corruption. On their own part, the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) also complain that the current national voters’ register has been adulterated with fake and foreign names. In response to the allegation, INEC says it is presently conducting a comprehensive Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) clean-up of the registration data by scrutinizing every record after which it would, in line with section 19(1) of the Electoral Act 2022, appoint a period of seven days during which the register will be published for scrutiny by the public for objections and complaints”. While awaiting the publication of the register, INEC should also publish the names and designations of all the INEC’s RECs, INEC returning officers and staffers officiating in the 2023 elections to enable the public ascertain their background and antecedents. The allegation that some INEC’s RECs officiating in the 2023 elections are card-carrying members of the ruling party is a serious allegation which INEC should not just dismiss with a wave of the hand. Rather than dismiss the allegation, the onus is on INEC to rebut or counter the allegation with credible evidence, if any. INEC could even vouch for the character of the current RECs.

It is not enough for INEC to say that it is capable of organizing free, fair and credible elections in 2023”: INEC must be seen from the outside by fair-minded and informed members by the public to be manifestly organizing, through its actions, utterances and behaviour, free, fair and credible elections. The rule against bias or likelihood of bias is predicated on the perception of the fair-minded and informed members of the public. The basis for the rule is to maintain public confidence in a public institution such as INEC. Therefore INEC cannot claim to be conducting a free and fair 2023 general election if the members of the public have lost confidence in INEC or are going about beating their chests and regretting that INEC is not impartial or “independent” as its name suggests