Tribunal Judgement and The Need for Electoral Reforms

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To the few people that are astonished at yesterday's judgement of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, I'd say please do not. The preview for this outcome has already been there: the deficiencies of our electoral laws.

While advanced and developing democracies have realized how important the wishes of the people are in choosing their leaders and how sacrosanct it is to provide them with a free and untrammeled ground to exercise this inalienable right, through adopting policies and framework that would aid in this, the Nigerian system rolls in archaic modulation that stifles true popular expression.

The verdict, yesterday of the five-member panel of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal is just a reflection of how our laws, especially as regards to elections are backward and lacking in contemporary innovation. It would be prepostoreous to accuse the panel members of insensibility as the case may be. They'd based their judgement on the ill-fated ground provided by the electoral act.

With such law that was averse to innovation, especially as it concerns the use of technology in election matters, there was no way we would have expected Atiku Abubakar and the PDP to have won the issue of the transmission of results to server.

Indeed, wholistically, it was very lucid that Muhammadu Buhari and the APC could not have easily lost on the existing basis.

Again, just as was raised in the hallowed chamber of the Senate by Distinguished Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, the stronghold of technicality in our court adjudication processes has clogged the free movement of the merits of the case. The truth of the matter, and as corroborated by both local and international observers, the February 23rd Presidential Election was a fraud that should not have been validated.

But sadly, no matter how genuine and  true are the submissions of Livy Uzoukwu and his team could be, they are as perceived by the existing electoral framework, not sound, not cogent and hence not beautiful in the eyes of the panel judges. Indeed, it's a shame how the beautiful submissions by the learned gentlemen were trounced by inchoate technicalities.


#ElectoralReforms
#ConstitutionalAmendment

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