By Eze Nwamadi, Ogbonna Asadu and Ezema Igwenunu
We read with vicarious shame a piece of emotional thrash on Gist9ja blog credited to one Mallam Umar Farouk, the national secretary of the Labour Party, who, in a statement he reportedly signed, claimed that four dangerous things would happen if the Supreme Court failed to upturn the judgment of the Appeal Court on Enugu governorship election and declare Chijioke Edeoga the winner. It is a shameful thing that the Labour Party has yet to divest itself of emotional blackmail, seeing it had never helped its jaundiced cause in any way. How come it that Labour Party does not understand the implication of sub judice? Why would the national secretary of the party issue public statement on a matter before the Supreme Court with the intention to browbeat the Supreme Court into pandering to his emotional narratives and unfounded alarm? Did he consider the implication of his subtle threatening of the Supreme Court, the highest citadel of justice in the land? Was he in his right senses, or were his senses pulled off his skull he was left with an empty cranium?
In the said statement, the said national secretary of the party listed four dangerous things that would happen if the Supreme Court failed to declare Chijioke Edeoga the winner of the March 18 governorship elections in Enugu State. We were taken aback, but then held on to find out these dangerous things that would happen, only to find a puerile list of hobbled insipid humdrum, a potpourri of empty threats and unfounded alarm. Let us see the dangerous things as listed by Mallam Farouk:
1. That the will and desire of Enugu people as demonstrated in their voting pattern on March 8 ( sic) will be undermined;
2. That forgery of NYSC certificate and indeed other certificates will be legalized;
3. That NYSC, a credible national institution in the country, will be destroyed;
4. That the military who oversees (sic) the NYSC as a paramilitary body will be dented.
These are the four dangerous things that would happen if the Supreme Court failed to declared Edeoga the winner of the Enugu governorship election. It sounds unbelievable a human being with head on his neck would advance these dead old wives’ fables as the reason why someone who lost at the governorship polls should rather be declared the winner. Shakespeare would quake and rise from his grave to declare these reasons, if reasons they are, a “tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Let us even take the four so-called dangerous reasons one after the other.
Number one is that the will and desire of the people of Enugu as demonstrated on March 8 (sic) will be undermined. How will the will and desire of Enugu people be undermined when Mbah clearly won at the March 18 governorship polls, and was rightly declared the winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the national institution vested with the authority to conduct the election and declare the winner? The voting pattern clearly reflected the will of the people as Mbah won the majority of votes cast, which was announced by INEC, upheld by the Enugu Election Petition Tribunal and the Appeal Court. During the presidential and national assembly elections, the people of South East voted Labour Party because of Peter Obi. It was a bandwagon of sorts as the people blindly voted Labour without consideration to the personalities of the candidates. Persons who had no political capital were curiously elected into the national assembly. The lame, blind and deaf were elected, something that the people realized after the presidential and national assembly elections, and then made amends in the March 18 governorship election. It is, therefore, preposterous of Farouk and Labour Party to claim that because Labour won more seats in the national assembly elections in Enugu State, then the voting pattern of Enugu people favoured Labour in the governorship. Peter Mbah sold his candidacy to the people of Enugu State with his manifesto which clearly expressed his governance objectives, blueprints to their realization and the financial models. The Labour Party candidate had no manifesto, and had solely hoped to ride on Obi’s back to victory. The people of Enugu shunned him at the polls and voted Peter Mbah.
Another reason ridiculously adduced by Farouk as to the danger of not declaring Edeoga the winner is the dismissed allegation of certificate forgery mischieviously levelled against Mbah, something that a Federal High Court dismissed and awarded charges against NYSC. It is ridiculous that the Labour Party would urge the Supreme Court to deliberately stand on obvious lies and uphold the misrepresentation of facts against the innocent at the pretext of legalizing forgery by not doing so. It has been proven beyond reasonable doubt that Mbah did the one-year national youths service, and was duly discharged and certified. The Department of State Services (DSS) investigated the allegation of certificate forgery against Mbah, testified before the tribunal, and gave Mbah a clean bill of health, while berating NYSC for poor record-keeping and institutional malfeasance. Would it have been better to do Mbah injustice of upholding false allegation of forgery against him lest forgery be legalized? Injustice to one is injustice to all. How would justice to the innocent serve the cause of legalizing forgery?
Furthermore, number three of the Labour Party’s dangerous reasons is in itself hopeless and stupid as the other two. NYSC as a national institution utterly disgraced itself and made an open show of it in the Mbah case. Its case is the shame of institutional corruption. NYSC has no image to protect when its handlers clearly ruined it in pursuit of pecuniary interests. DSS did not spare NYSC and its leadership, neither did the tribunal and the Appeal Court. NYSC was stripped naked in public. The image of NYSC was not dented, for it has no image at all. So, the reason why Edeoga should be declared the winner is to save the image of discredited public institution wreaking in miasmatic sleaze, certificate racketeering, corruption, ineptitude, mischief, gratification, lack of integrity and all manner of vices. Such an institution peopled by corrupt knaves is a disgrace to the honour of the nation. NYSC is a dent on the image of Nigeria, and should be scrapped good riddance to bad rubbish.
The fourth dangerous reason in the reckoning of the Labour Party is as silly as the rest. Nigerian military, though, to some extent, oversee the NYSC, as a paramilitary institution, have no share in the dent NYSC brought upon itself. What did the proverbial monkey say of its baby strapped on its back? That it cannot vouch for the baby monkey whether or not it plucked fruit from the bush, since it could not see from the back. The military did not send the NYSC to deny a certificate it evidently issued. Meanwhile, apart from the Director General of the NYSC, its other officials and staff are bloody civilians, and these are the elements who reportedly do corrupt sharp practices such as was done against Mbah.
We have taken time to demolish and dismantle the phantom danger Farouk cooked up in his emotional narratives meant to frighten the Supreme Court to declare the Labour Party candidate the winner of the Enugu governorship election. The so-called dangerous reasons are puerile and nothing more than a childish attempt to blackmail the Supreme Court. Farouk’s statement sounded like a threat to the Supreme Court. This has been the stock in trade of the Labour Party. Labour did that to President Tinubu, but it failed. Labour threatened and blackmailed the tribunals and the Appeal Court, but it failed. Now the same party has begun to blackmail the Supreme Court. Like the other shenanigans, this one shall also fail woefully.
Nonetheless, the rate at which the misguided elements in Labour Party impugn the judiciary calls for concern. The bench has suffered much denigrating excoriation in the hands of Labour Party. Any judgment which does not favour them is compromised. The ones that favour them are true and pure justice dispensed. Quite another is the rate at which Labour discuss matters before the court, subtly putting pressure on the judges to miscarry justice in their favour. The good thing is that the Supreme Court is impervious to such emotional masturbation, empty threats and unfounded alarm they raise. The judges do not know anyone, as symbolized by the image of justice. They weigh the evidence before them on the scale of justice and deliver judgment forthright. So, Labour loses labour toeing this path of infamy on a culdesac.
