_By Tony Akeni Le Moin, Global Coordinator Nigeria Cannot Continue Like This (NCC-LIT), September 8, 2023_
_*"It is not the law that is an ass; it is the law entrepreneur - the truth dissembling lawyer and corruption benighted judge - that are an ass."* ~ Tony Akeni Le Moin._
The Head of National Publicity, Contact and Mobilization Team of Labour Party Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Council (LP-PCC) during the 2023 general elections, Comrade Tony Akeni, has weighed in on the much talked about judgment of the Appeal Court Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
The tribunal on September 6, penultimate Wednesday, virtually struck out all points of objection by the opposition parties, the PDP and Labour Party, to INEC's declaration of Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu as winner of the February 25 presidential election.
The court then confirmed Tinubu as the legitimate winner of the election, paving the way for the last judicial pitstop, the Supreme Court, for a final judgment within 60 days to examine, uphold, reject or modify the Appeal Court's decision.
In the wake of the judgment, stormy dissensions and debates thrown up by members and supporters of opposing political parties, have stamped the label "controversial" on the Appeal Court verdict. This is accentuated by fiery commentaries from outside Nigeria and international media outlets across the globe. Recently in the UK, a British journalist lashed back at Tinubu's supporters telling them: "Your principal is a crook!" That is an example among myriads of how emotive, controversial and globalized the dissensions trailing the September 6 judgment delivered by the Appeal Court on the Nigerian presidential election have become.
While the judgment has drawn mostly muffled applause of supporters of President Tinubu and his APC ruling party back home, the followers of especially the Labour Party and its emblematic presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, have been particularly strident and vociferous in their rejection and condemnation of the judgment.
In his perspective, Comrade Tony Akeni describes the Nigerian judiciary as an "advance enemy army for Deep State capture and ultimate destruction of Nigeria." He writes: "Somehow, something would give to reverse the path of peril which the third arm of government has chosen to lead our country."
Below is his foreboding analysis of the judgment while accusing the institution of posing "dangers to democracy and corporate existence of the Nigerian state."
*His Insight*
The Constitution gave birth to INEC and its Electoral Act with which INEC operates. The Electoral Act is the First Child of the Constitution in all matters pertaining to elections throughout Nigeria.
Consider this simple analogy for crystal clarification. The kitchen is not a different house from the mansion but an integral component of the mansion. From it the meals of the household are prepared and served to all. As the kitchen is to the mansion, so the Electoral Act is to the Constitution. Being an umbilical extension of the Constitution, ALL matters - rules, regulations, guidelines, discretionary actions and practices of INEC - pertaining to elections are served the nation. The Constitution is therefore to confer on all INEC's rules, regulations, guidelines, discretionary actions and practices the same as pronouncements arising from and equal to the binding power of the constitution.
Before Nigeria's February 25 and March 18 General Elections of 2023, INEC signed a constitutionally guaranteed social-political contract with the Electorates of Nigeria, a contract having the binding force pronouncements of the Constitution. That undenied and undeniable contract was what INEC relied on to pledge to Nigerians MANDATORY & COMPREHENSIVE use of BIVAS, knowing that their pledge was anchored directly on the powers of the Constitution.
We insist that the use of BIVAS being a product of the provisions of the Electoral Act, whose umbilical source and force of validity derive from the Constitution, INEC's oft repeated avowal to the nation of using the BIVAS in the 2023 general elections is a total, self-complete, non-depletable binding contract between the Constitution, INEC and Nigeria voters.
We insist that contrary to the execrable Appeal Court judgment of September 6, like every law of contract, especially written contracts as intensely published and broadcast by INEC in innumerable occasions before the 2023 elections, the BIVAS assurances by INEC demonstrated in dozens of video evidences in multi-channel circulation all over Nigeria and countless foreign societies, is tantamount to a social contract that cannot be broken.
Bearing the above in mind, absorb again those videos whose protagonists are the INEC chairman Mr. Mamhood Yakubu himself and Mr. Festus Okoye. Then ask yourselves: how can the PEPT judges look at Nigerians in the eyes, kneel in their prayer altars at home, in their churches or mosques and tell the God they each serve that the BVAS' functions, from accreditation to electronic uploading of results, were not constitutionally mandatory, and that INEC could sit in Abuja and announce results at 4am witchcraft hour while votes were still being counted and more than a third of the country's results were still being uploaded weeks after?
The PEPT judges should ask themselves: Why should that be in spite of billions of naira, exorbitant cost variations, variety of professional expertise and swathes of human resources put into the BIVAS scheme which Nigeria's almighty Constitution bestows on the Electoral Act and INEC's BIVAS contract pledge to 200million Nigerians?
The law is inanimate and so are the judgment sheets judges read from. Neither the law books of lawyers nor judgment sheets and gavels of judges have souls. But the lawyers and judges whose stock in trade they are have, and their souls shall be judged some day by a dreadful, far higher God in the life beyond this one.
The law does not interpret itself and the judgment does not write itself. Therefore, it is not the law that is an ass; it is the law entrepreneur - the truth dissembling lawyer and corruption benighted judge - that are an ass.
The dangers which Nigeria's judiciary poses to democracy and corporate existence of the Nigerian state are huge, appalling, incendiary and innumerable. The Nigerian judiciary has before the eyes of African countries and the globe at large become an advance enemy army for slit-throat genocidal capture and ultimate destruction of Nigeria. Who then can assure us that somehow, something would give to reverse the path of peril which the third arm of government has chosen to lead our country?
By the ignominious PEPT judgment of September 6, Nigeria's Judges have resorted to carry on their heads with one hand splashing pails of petrol while brandishing fire with the other hand in Nigeria's House of tinder and dry leaves.
By the judgment these traditionally exalted servants of nation building ethos have declared that the Nigeria Constitution no longer recognizes and is no more responsible for the features and construct of its own Child, the Electoral Act and the Act's umbilical cord with the Nigeria Constitution.
By the judgment of September 6, the Judges have declared that they prefer not to be aware of the undismissable DNA of the Electoral Act in the Constitution and that INEC signed a social-political contract with Nigeria's Electorates when the commission stridently and repeatedly pledged mandatory comprehensive use of BIVAS in the 2023 elections as graphically demonstrated in Mamhood Yakubu's and Festus Okoye's videos of oath to comprehensively engage the BIVAS in the conduct of the 2023 elections.
As a direct consequence of the above, the Nigerian Judiciary must be served the notice by Nigerians all over the Earth that it is they, not INEC or Bola Tinubu or the National Assembly, that are setting ablaze the Federal Republic of Nigeria from the last window supplying oxygen to 200million asphyxiated Nigerians.
The Nigeria Judiciary, the proverbial last hope of the common man, if it is still understood that they are not a cult of themselves for themselves but a court of justice for the people, should religiously watch the videos of INEC's public affairs baron, Mr. Festus Okoye, and chairman of treachery Mamhoud Yakubu again & tell the world 2 things:
1. How they can explain to history & posterity that they fully understand the numerous public pledges of INEC on sacrosanct comprehensive use of BIVAS before the 2023 Elections yet opted to turn their backs on the truth and justice for an alternative interpretation that best serves filthy unpatriotic personal interest or profit and lucre, the nature of which destroy nations.
2. That Nigeria judiciary's whoredom in sophistry and technicalities, which the Justice Simon Tsammani panel earlier pledged to the world, would have no place in the 2023 electoral petition proceedings, shall build for them and their families a canopy big enough to hide themselves, their children and misbegotten benefits when the ashes of the nation they have agreed to burn down from greed rain down the country. Shall their benefits build a canopy big enough for them when 200million Nigerians shall break down their prison walls of asphyxiating Sobibor and come for their slave masters.
Good luck, if they so believe.