“We held elections and have got results. Winners and losers have learnt and relearnt lessons. In the north where it is still largely a haram to educate the girl-child, a lady called Binani took Adamawa State by storm. In Lagos, fathers whose mis-trained children cannot speak and write Yoruba now know that they either reeducate them or they become aliens for life. The Lagos governorship election did not get strongmen panting for nothing. It has dramatically provided a redemptive moment for a culture under the distraining siege of ‘modernity.’ And many of today’s victors will soon be victims. They have children who are too learned to understand the language of their fathers. It is not only in Lagos; they are everywhere in Yoruba land flaunting sagging swags and blowing pidgin Yoruba. It is a tragedy in epidemic proportions. The Labour Party governorship candidate has got mortally singed because of his competence as a Yoruba. But his immolation won’t be a one-off political sacrifice. Judgement day will come very soon tomorrow for magisterial aliens in the shrine of Oduduwa.”

Under the cover of darkness, a dish was placed on a highway in Lagos at the weekend. It was food for the gods but it was a madman that we saw eating it on Saturday morning. The video trended online in competition with the shrieks of electoral madness which thundered through the Nigerian skies on that election day. Were there symbolic and spiritual relationships between that scene, that character and the elections we held at the weekend? Some people have sat on two hundred needles and got up feeling no pain. They are the special ones who would understand that breakfast at the intersection of life.

We held elections and have got results. Winners and losers have learnt and relearnt lessons. In the north where it is still largely a haram to educate the girl-child, a lady called Binani took Adamawa State by storm. In Lagos, fathers whose mis-trained children cannot speak and write Yoruba now know that they either reeducate them or they become aliens for life. The Lagos governorship election did not get strongmen panting for nothing. It has dramatically provided a redemptive moment for a culture under the distraining siege of ‘modernity.’ And many of today’s victors will soon be victims. They have children who are too learned to understand the language of their fathers. It is not only in Lagos; they are everywhere in Yoruba land flaunting sagging swags and blowing pidgin Yoruba. It is a tragedy in epidemic proportions. The Labour Party governorship candidate has got mortally singed because of his competence as a Yoruba. But his immolation won’t be a one-off political sacrifice. Judgement day will come very soon tomorrow for magisterial aliens in the shrine of Oduduwa.

I stumbled on former governor, former minister Rotimi Amaechi on the television on Saturday and froze. After almost eight years of being in government and in power, the former transportation minister opened his eyes and told the world that “There is a total failure of governance in the country, complete failure.” He said even much more. He also told us that Mahmood Yakubu was made INEC chairman not by the president but by someone in “Bola Tinubu’s camp.” Amaechi is a younger friend of Professor Wole Soyinka. The Man Died is the title of Soyinka’s prison notes. Has Amaechi ever used the opportunity of his closeness to the Nobel laureate to ask him the circumstances of his going to jail? If anyone has been too scared to chew Soyinka’s books, at least, they can manage to nib at the quote: “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.”

Soyinka went to jail because he spoke what he believed was the truth when it should be said. He could wait till after the civil war in January 1970 and then say those things that took him to jail in 1967. If he did that, he would not be in jail for 27 months; he would be as safe in Yakubu Gowon’s Nigeria as Amaechi was in Buhari’s government. At what point did Rotimi Amaechi realize that Nigeria under the watch of his boss had failed completely? Why was he telling us on March 18, 2023 that Mahmood Yakubu is a dependant-beneficiary of one of the contestants in the February 25, 2023 presidential election? Amaechi, unlike Soyinka, his idol, kept silent in the face of wrong. The ‘death’ he was afraid of when hurricane APC repeatedly slammed into cities and homes eventually came for his own “camp” in Saturday’s governorship election in Rivers State and he shouted “people are being arrested and nobody has spoken. The Inspector General of Police is doing nothing, nobody is doing anything.” I laughed. Did arrest during elections not happen in 2019? Did Nigerians not “contest against INEC and the police” in 2019? Why should 2023 be different?

These past three weeks have badly divided us along religious, ethnic and sub-ethnic lines – especially in the South. The garment is rent front to back. It is so bad that even friends in the media are struggling to salvage their long-maintained friendship; party men in political parties have stopped partying together. For everyone, it is my ‘tribe’ first, others, maybe, later. It appears to be a burden the black man will carry forever. What we had on Saturday was not an election; it was a war of many theatres. ‘The Foreign Affairs’ is a publication of the United States-based Council on Foreign Relations. In a piece in that magazine in 1997, its then Managing Editor, Fareeq Zakaria, wrote on “the rise of illiberal democracies” with a particular focus on emerging trends in Sub-Saharan Africa. Zakaria quoted some scholars who concluded that democracy “is simply not viable in an environment of intense ethnic preferences.” There is also Andreas Schedler who observed that what was emerging in Africa was “electoral autocracy.” We also meet Richard Joseph (1998) who said Africa’s democratization had mostly proved illusory and the reigning political system a “facade of democracy.” That was about 25 years ago. I do not want to imagine what name those people would give what we have in Nigeria now. If anything has changed since those comments were made decades ago, it is that the floundering ship of democracy has sunk.

The elections are over. The youths who thought their voter cards were more than the pieces of plastic they are made of should be wiser now. They thought they could use the cards to change the course of history; they now know what their fathers have always known. If rescue efforts work like that, the Titanic would not have sunk. Probably if they had listened and taken a cue from Bola Tinubu’s hard-stone-on-hard-palm nut anecdote during the campaigns, there would have been a kernel for their effort. Probably the story would not have been as ghastly as it has turned out. Now, the struggle is muddled up. Local ethnic rivalries have most effectively poisoned the pond of patriotism. That is politics; it is dark and dirty. Author of ‘Politics is a Dirty Game’, Afra Schmitz, published a piece in ‘Violence in African Elections: Between Democracy and Big Man Politics’ (2018). His choice of title is instructive: ‘Once they all pick their guns you can have your way’…” It is a quote from a Ghanaian politician’s confession on the good old African trick of setting one ethnic group against another to create a pathway to election victory: “They will feel that they shouldn’t allow anybody from one tribe to be an overlord over all of them,” the man told Schmitz. It is exactly “like Ghana, like Nigeria.”

The war wasn’t just inter-ethnic, inter-religious. Enugu State is Christian with only one ethnic group but sub-ethnic passions ruled its governorship election last Saturday. Friends there told me that the Nsukka people, who constitute the largest voting bloc in the state, voted largely for the Labour Party candidate in the gubernatorial election because he is their son. The outgoing governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, is their son too. The existing principle of rotation of power in that state did not matter at that point. Religion then came into the mix. Across the country, the church and the mosque ‘guided’ voters on whom to vote and how to vote. Some desperate people tried it in Oyo State but it didn’t work. They failed and Seyi Makinde, easily the best of the candidates, won. But politics of religion worked elsewhere in the country. I have Kaduna in mind; I have Benue; I have in mind the South-East in general. In some instances, specimen voting papers were taken to worship houses to teach congregants how to thumbprint. Labour Party in the South-East was quite ‘brilliant’ in its interpretation of its logo of ‘Papa, Mama and Pikin.’ They said the logo represents the spiritual triumvirate of Joseph, Mary and Jesus. The message, therefore, was ‘voting LP is voting for God.’

“If you won’t vote for us, don’t come out to vote.” It wasn’t only in Lagos we heard that stern order. Indeed, it is the greatest legal invention of this election season. In several states across the six zones of Nigeria, this new electoral rule was variously pronounced and the state nodded its approval with conspiratorial silence. The enforcers had a free reign. You don’t have the king on your side and cower in cowardice. Someone said even before Lagos’s MC Oluomo’s godfather is sworn in as the commander-in-chief, the chief enforcer in Lagos is already the law. All laws about hate speech and profiling, inciting and incitement melted days ago when MC stepped out to be counted among the Generals of the new army. The law and its enforcement stood before the man; they became as dumb as an ass. We will soon get used to things, stuffs and matters like that from May 29, 2023. But, there is a limit to which I will blame MC for saying and doing all he has been credited with. I was only disappointed by his attempt at eating his Mama-Chukwudi-if-you-don’t-want-to-vote-for-us-sit-at-home words. He was called to serve just like all those before him. Long before MC Oluomo, there was Adebayo Success (Adebayo omo Ogundare) who pioneered the leadership of the NURTW and its politics, and dutifully served the grand old NPN, the original owners of the northern structure that has given powers to the APC today. Adebayo Success’s ways are the ways of today. Political power in Lagos resides in motor parks and, to some extent, in markets. Those who cultivate the yams of power know this fact and are ever wise enough to put the right guards there. For MC, when history has a mission placed on your shoulders, it will be betrayal of the ancestors of your union to be lily-livered at the battlefield. The history of the transport union he leads has assigned to him a duty and he must perform that duty. And he has satisfactorily done just that this election season. So, let him be. You don’t kill a dog because it barks; you don’t kill a ram for using its horns (enìkan kìí toríi gbígbó kí wón p’ajá; won kìí toríi kíkàn p’àgbò). MC will do more for Nigeria now that his eagle has wider wings and his nest will soon be moved into the Presidential Villa.

We held the last leg of the 2023 elections across Nigeria at the weekend. Winners have been announced. Congratulations to them all. But while the process was on, videos of the crime and criminality that ruled the process in some states, north and south, littered the internet and shocked those who could still be shocked by Nigeria. “Elections are useless in Africa. We should devise a different way of choosing leaders,” a popular columnist and university teacher based in the United States commented to me on one of the bloody scenes. I did not reply him because I didn’t know what else we should try. Before democracy, we had kings who ruled and ruined their kingdoms and sold their people into slavery in exchange for mirrors and razor blades. Along with the kings later came colonialism with its own leprosy. We had parliamentary democracy which worked briefly but soon burnt out like a candle in the wind. We’ve had several doses of military rule. None worked for us. Today, with us, elections are thoroughly useless but what can we do?

What is there again to do? Leave the madman with the corpse of his mother? Ibrahim Bangura and Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs published a journal article in 2018 on ‘Local gangs and foot soldiers of violence’ in Sierra Leone. They carefully documented the stark truth they saw about the youths of that country: what drives their today and their vision of tomorrow. Bangura and Kovacs wrote that “…many young people are pessimistic about their prospects and see compliance with the wishes of the elites as their only way out.” They noted an emergent patronage system referred to locally as godfatherism which is seeing the “youths turn to the elites and those with perceived economic resources and ask ‘Bra u borbor dae? (Boss, is there anything for your boy?)’.” We have this in greater abundance in Nigeria. The elites of Sierra Leone and their menial youths probably schooled here. The authors are not done with their story of sorrow and surrender. They spoke with a young poor miner who explained how easy it was to lose all hope and submit to the owners of his country: “There is nothing to fight against in the system. In the end you fail; you can never beat them. You can only survive with the help of a patron. When they say jump, you ask how high. When they say throw stones at the other party, you do so. Don’t question them, just do it and when they trust you, they give you some money and even help you to get minor jobs. Our youths have learnt this survival strategy and they are effectively using it.” But, here in Nigeria, there should be an alternative to surrender. And there will be.

This week, the opening salvo will be fired to signal the onset of the final round of voting in Nigeria’s electoral marathon. This is not a reference to the state-level ballots that occurred around the country on Saturday, March 18. I refer instead to something far more consequential.

Democracy may be about choices and decisions by citizens in theory. As practised in Nigeria, however, citizens are mostly spectators. In every election, Nigeria’s judges have the final votes.

Every election cycle in Nigeria has three seasons. The campaign season belongs to the parties, the politicians, and godfathers. This is followed by the voting season, during which the security agencies, thugs, and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) hold sway. Thereafter, matters shift to the courts for the dispute resolution season, which belongs to the lawyers (mostly Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SANs) and judges. All three are separate but interdependent.

Of 1,490 seats contested federally and in the states in 2019 (excluding the CT Area Council ballots), the courts decided 805 (54.02%). This is higher than just over 45% recorded in 2015 and 51% recorded in 2011 but lower than the high of 86.35% from the nadir of 2007. So, by 2019, Mahmood Yakubu’s INEC had bled all the confidence that Attahiru Jega, his predecessor, had built in the electoral process. In 2023, he shamelessly pulverized what was left of it.

With elections to federal offices concluded on 25 February and to state offices on 18 March, election petition season is now formally open. On 22 March, the first landmark will be reached with the expiration of the 21-day deadline for filing petitions arising from the presidential election results announced on 1 March.

Already, every piece of evidence points to the likelihood that this will be no ordinary season. On March 3, 48 hours after the announcement of the results, the Court of Appeal ordered the INEC to grant access to the parties to inspect the materials generated from the presidential elections. Three days later, the order was served on the INEC. Instead of complying, the commission stone-walled.

On March 13, INEC chairman, the execrable Mahmood Yakubu, informed lawyers for the parties who demarched him at the INEC headquarters in Abuja, that he had nothing to hide before quickly reminding them that most of the documents that they wanted were in the states and not at the INEC Headquarters. As with all the acts of infamy to which this INEC chairman has become habituated, he said this with a straight face.

This decentralization of obfuscation is original but unlawful. Under the Constitution and the Electoral Act, Nigeria is one constituency for the presidential election and the INEC Chairman is the only returning officer. The idea that documents used in the election are in the custody of INEC states offices is quite simply nonsensical. It is his place to organize custody in such a manner that the standards of access to them is uniform and predictable. By sending the lawyers on an obstacle course through 36 states and the FCT, Mahmood makes manifest his design to frustrate election dispute resolution.

Livy Uzoukwu, the SAN leading the legal team for Labour Party’s Peter Obi, credits INEC’s stone-walling with forcing them to reduce the scope of their inspection of materials from 36 states to just nine. Even then, by March 16, they had granted the lawyers access to only two states.

In Nigeria, every election petition is heard by a panel of three, five or seven judges. Where they all don’t agree, the judges will decide by majority vote. To win, a party must have the votes of two judges out of three (first instance); three justices out of five (appeal) or four justices out of seven (Supreme Court). Where there is such disagreement, there will be dissents.

The heightened role of judges in elections is essentially a feature of the presidential system of government. In Nigeria, Kayode Eso handed down the first notable dissent in this field in the Supreme Court decision in Obafemi Awolowo’s challenge to the victory of Shehu Shagari in the 1979 presidential election. Six of the seven Justices, led by Chief Justice Atanda Fatayi-Williams, ruled that the elections were in “substantial compliance” with the law, but Eso, the junior Justice on the panel, filed a memorable dissent.

Sometimes, the decisions of the courts inexplicably diverge. Following elections in September 1983, Nigeria’s Supreme Court heard two cases arising respectively from the governorship elections in Anambra and Ondo States. The issues were broadly the same: the then ruling party, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), was credibly accused of rigging the elections in both states, enabling the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) to announce NPN candidates as winners when they lost. In Anambra, the citizens mostly went back to their businesses.

In Ondo State, the citizens decided to make the state ungovernable by burning everything in sight. On December 30, 1983, the Supreme Court upheld the Anambra governorship election by a majority of six to one but invalidated the Ondo Governorship result by the same margin. Hours later, on the night of the same day, soldiers sacked the government. By the time the court issued its reasons on January 6, 1984, Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari was already one week old as a military ruler.

It is not only in Nigeria that election courts can announce incomprehensible outcomes. In 2006, Uganda’s Supreme Court considered a petition by the opposition candidate, Kizza Besigye, against incumbent President, Yoweri Museveni. In its decision, the Court concluded that “there was non-compliance with the provisions of the Constitution, Presidential Elections Act and the Electoral Commission Act, in the conduct of the 2006 Presidential Elections”; that there was “disenfranchisement of voters by deleting their names from the voters register or denying them the right to vote” and that “the principle of free and fair elections was compromised by bribery and intimidation or violence in some areas of the country.” Nevertheless, Chief Justice Benjamin Odoki led three other judges in a majority of four to uphold the outcome in favour of Museveni.

Sometimes, the decisions in election petitions are dodgy. When it decided the election petition against the outcome of the December 2012 presidential election filed by then-opposition candidate, Nana Akuffo-Addo, on August 29, 2013, Ghana’s Supreme Court announced a majority of six against three in favour of upholding the declaration of President Mahama as the winner. Economist, George Ayittey, wrote that the announced decision was “bungled. There was an inexplicable 4-hour delay in announcing the verdict, fueling speculation that something fishy was going on behind the scenes. Then Justice Atuguba announced a six–three verdict dismissing the petition. A day later, the verdict was changed to 5-4.” In a study of the judgment published in 2014 under the title ‘The Burdens of Democracy in Africa: How Courts Sustain Presidential Elections’, late Nigerian lawyer, Bamidele Aturu, showed that five of the nine justices who sat on that election petition in fact ordered a partial or total rerun of the election. In effect, rather than the announced majority of six–three in favour of President Mahama, the verdict was in fact five-four against him.

More recently, miracles have occurred. In August 2017, Kenya’s Chief Justice, David Maraga, led the Supreme Court to strike down a presidential election in Africa for the first time. In May 2020, Malawi’s Supreme Court did the same. In Nigeria four months earlier, the Supreme Court on January 13, 2020, declared Hope Uzodinma governor of Imo state despite his having been returned fourth in the election.

What Nigeria’s Supreme Court does in 2023 will matter. Like the major parties, all actors in Nigeria’s election petition process have learnt to build “structures”. For the parties, their structures are in the infrastructure of election rigging, or what former governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, once famously called the criminal network of “five gods and the godfather”, including the highest levels of INEC, the security services, thugs, and the judiciary. For INEC, it is in the ruling party and the power network of incumbency at the federal and state levels. For the judiciary, it is in the same mutual benefit network of incumbency in the various branches of government at various levels.

Election petitions have become a preoccupation of judges in Nigeria and around Africa and a defining process in public perception of the courts. In the past, they provided moments of high forensic and judicial drama. Increasingly, however, they have become performative rituals for sanctifying electoral burglary and celebrating judicial capture. The beneficiaries are the burglars and the judges. The best the victims can often expect to receive is a timorous Pontius Pilate mistaken as a valiant judge. In 2023, Nigeria’s judges can sculpt a different narrative.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.