How NBA and Others Arrested Our Intelligence

How NBA and Others Arrested Our Intelligence

Na-Allah Mohammed Zagga

Thanks to a well-funded propaganda campaign, many gullible Nigerians are converted to the view that suspended Court of Appeal President, Ayo Salami is whiter than white over his attempt to rob Governor Aliyu Wamakko of Sokoto State of his overwhelming electoral mandate and hand it over on a platter of gold to a man he defeated decisively twice before, Alhaji Maigari Dingyadi of the Democratic People’s Party (DPP).

In fact, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), which should be politically neutral in matters of justice and fairness for all Nigerians, has been heavily partisan since the days of Akeredolu, the former NBA National President. Even the so-called NGOs are no longer trusted by many discerning Nigerians because they have a price. When the NBA leadership officially embraces one political party at the expense others, where is the so-called neutrality, impartiality and credibility? If Sokoto State were under ACN political control, would the NBA and other pro-Salami propagandists have supported Salami’s attempt to overturn the resounding verdict of Aliyu Wamakko in favour of a loser at the polls? Should the Court of Appeal replace the will of the people with trivial technicality over the substance of justice? My mission today is to expose the hypocrisy of people who should have been our commanding moral figures of truth, sincerity and incredibility.

There is a difference between propaganda and education. While propaganda encourages the intended converts to see only one point of view, education on the other hand, seeks to make him or her to see both sides of the coin. Propaganda and indoctrination are designed to arrest the human intelligence with the primary objective of making the convert (in this case the Nigerian public) embrace and consume its ultimate designs.

Contrary to the arguments of the self-styled rule of law advocates, there was nothing like the “rape of justice” in Sokoto State over the vexatious litigation of Alhaji Maigari Dingyadi against Governor Aliyu Wamakko. The publication of Salami’s affidavit against the retired Chief Justice of Nigeria, Katsina-Alu in the newspapers, was part of the propaganda to divert the attention of Nigerians by the Court of Appeal President to assault and rob the sovereignty of the voters who overwhelmingly voted for Aliyu Wamakko of the PDP in the April 2007 gubernatorial election and the re-run that followed it, after Wamakko’s election was annulled at Dingyadi’s request before the Kaduna division of the Court of Appeal.

When openly partisan members of the NBA use terms like “injustice” and “arrested justice” over the Sokoto State controversial gubernatorial election case, I laugh with disbelief because the words are misnomers, taking into account the fundamental question of the substance of justice, which these propagandists are trying to cover up to fool gullible Nigerians. If Alhaji Maigari Dingyadi, the DPP governorship candidate in the 2007 election, had any popularity to prove or a mandate to claim, the re-run election ordered by the Kaduna division of the Court of Appeal at his request, was his best opportunity to demonstrate that he is more popular or acceptable than Wamakko of the PDP. In the re-run election, however, he was decisively defeated once again by Aliyu Wamakko by a remarkable wider margin of votes.

Rather than respecting the will of the people, Dingyadi started a spirited but desperate struggle to become a Governor at all cost by going back to one court after another, seeking to overturn the judgement of the Kaduna division of the Court of Appeal. Earlier at the Court of Appeal in Kaduna, Dingyadi had Wamakko’s election cancelled outright because of the alleged procedural errors of Wamakko’s nomination by the PDP as its governorship candidate in 2007 after he left the ANPP where he was its original candidate. With the annulment of Wamakko’s election and re-run ordered as a result, both the PDP and its candidate had been punished enough and had to now correct the procedural errors. Nomination and qualification matters, which are the internal affairs of political parties, are not permanent and therefore, are subject to rectification. In law, you cannot punish a man twice for the same offence, what is known as double jeopardy.

When he realized that the DPP had squandered its good will under Bafarawa’s 8-year-rule, Dingyadi abandoned winning the election by the ballot box. He now wanted the Court of Appeal to automatically declare him a Governor on the basis of technical frivolity. After he successfully had Wamakko’s election annulled previously purely on technicality rather than popular votes, Dingyadi should have asked the court to automatically declare him governor instead of participating in the re-run election of May 2008 when he was clobbered once again at the polls, thereby removing any trace of doubts about who was more popular between Wamakko and Dingyadi. The Court cannot grant you what you didn’t ask. Having participated and lost once again in the re-run, he now wanted to exploit legal trivia to rob the people of Sokoto State of their overwhelming mandate for Wamakko.

At every stage, the courts declined jurisdiction to hear Dingyadi’s fresh move to reverse the judgement of the Court of Appeal, which was widely considered as an abuse of court process and needlessly vexatious. Strangely, however, with the appointment of Ayo Salami (now suspended) as President of the Court of Appeal, Dingyadi found a sympathetic partisan legal ally. Ayo Salami constituted a panel to reverse the judgement of the Kaduna division of the same court. This is judicial aberration and an attempt to provoke the people of Sokoto State into violent reaction, thereby undermining peace and order. This largely influenced the recent constitutional amendment by the Senate, which says the court can only cancel an election and order a re-run instead of robbing a mandate and giving it to someone who lost the overwhelming popular votes.

Is the substance of justice better served by taking away victory from a candidate that had more popular votes and giving his mandate to someone he had defeated twice before in a re-run ordered by the same court? Salami is close to ACN Chief, Bola Tinubu and the alliance between Tinubu and Bafarawa of DPP largely influenced the reckless attempt by the Court of Appeal under Salami to incite the people of Sokoto State.

There is so much hypocrisy and insincerity on the side of those riding Salami’s propaganda train. In the famous June 12 Presidential election of 1993, which was believed to have been won by the late Chief Abiola, there was an allegation by NRC rivals that Abiola was wearing a gown, bearing SDP emblem on an election day, thereby technically campaigning in breach of the law.

It is highly unlikely if any sensitive and reasonable Judge would have ignored the overwhelming pan-Nigerian mandate for Abiola and annulled his election on that technical basis at the expense of the larger issue of popular mandate. Bashir Tofa of the NRC couldn’t have defeated Abiola by any stretch of the imagination. When I made this argument to a pro-June 12 and pro-Salami columnist in one of Nigeria’s newspapers, he never responded. Wamakko’s case is not different. You cannot serve the purpose of justice by throwing away the larger issue of popular mandate as Salami had wanted to do with his so-called panel of “trusted” Court of Appeal Judges, who he appointed to reverse the judgement of the Kaduna division of the same court.

In the words of General Douglas McArthur, the commander of the U.S. forces in the Korean War (1951-1953), “the fundamental purpose of justice is to rectify wrong, to protect right and to produce order, safety and well-being. No sophistry can confine justice to a form. It is a quality; its purity lies in its purpose, not in its details.” Therefore, was Dingyadi wronged or was his right harmed by rigging or other fraud at the election which he lost twice before? Could Salami’s attempt to hijack Wamakko’s mandate have promoted order, safety and well-being?

Shouldn’t these thought-provoking arguments by General Arthur make Salami and others who have no regard for the popular mandate of the people hold their breath and reflect? Maigari Dingyadi didn’t have any mandate to claim and therefore, he couldn’t have been fighting against any “injustice” or “arrested justice” as these manipulators of gullible public opinion wanted to impress on Nigerians. In the April 2007 governorship election, Aliyu Wamakko of PDP won 392, 258 to defeat Dingyadi of DPP who came a distant second with 296, 419 votes.

However, in the election re-run of May 2008, the people of Sokoto State re-asserted their resounding mandate for Wamakko by giving him a bigger margin of support when he won 562, 393 votes against his DPP challenger, Dingyadi who came down to 124, 000 votes. The shrinkage of votes for Dingyadi in the re-run election should have made any humble politician to accept the will of God and that of the people. But Dingyadi thought Salami could give him what he couldn’t get through the ballot box. Why are pro-Salami propagandists silent on this fundamental point of justice? Playing to the gallery and attempting to smear the name of former Chief Justice Katsina-Alu cannot change this fact. Walter Mondale, a former U.S. Democratic Presidential contender, argued that “the will of the people and not legal technicality should determine the winner of an election.” We shouldn’t let sophisticated propaganda that diverts attention from the substance of justice to arrest our reason, judgement and intelligence. You don’t have to be a lawyer to appreciate the truth. Wamakko couldn’t have been the candidate of two parties in April 2007 because Alhaji Abubakar Chika ran as the governorship candidate of the ANPP after Wamakko defected to the PDP. Facts speak for themselves because they are verifiable. Dingyadi had attempted to reverse the will of the people through the abuse of court process or “forum shopping and forum prostitution” as his vexatious struggle was famously and aptly described by the Supreme Court. Does the independence of the Court of Appeal President give him the right to replace the will of the people by hijacking their mandate and giving it to a loser? This is a food for thought for those Nigerians who have allowed the propagandists to throw dust in their eyes.