The outgoing Liberian President, George Weah, has been described in flowery languages as an ideal democrat by Nigerians, including President Bola Tinubu. What did he do to deserve such adulation? He conceded election defeat and declared that everybody should respect the outcome of the just concluded presidential election run off in the tiny African country in which he lost to the opposition.
General elections were held on October 10, 2023 to elect the president and members of the House of Representatives and Senate. Weah was eligible for a second term. Among those who threw their hats in the ring for the presidency were: Joseph Boakai, 78, a Liberian politician who previously served as the 29th Vice President of Liberia from 2006 to 2018 under President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf; Milton Nathaniel Barnes, a Liberian diplomat, politician and member of the Liberian Destiny Party; Clarence K. Moniba, a Liberian politician, author and former actor, once served as the country’s youngest Minister of State without Portfolio; and Alexander Benedict Cummings Jr, a Liberian politician, businessman and philanthropist.
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After the first ballot, no candidate won a majority, with Weah narrowly placing first over opposition leader Boakai, which meant both advanced to a runoff held on November 14, 2023. In such a situation, everybody in Liberia knew that it was the standard that the candidate who first grossed beyond 50 percent is the winner. Boakai defeated Weah by just over one percentage point in the closest runoff in Liberia’s history.
When Weah realised that his opponent kissed the threshold first, he did the heroic thing: He conceded defeat and called his first challenger to congratulate him. Of course, we have had such in Nigeria when the former President Goodluck Jonathan did not wait till all the results of the elections were announced before calling the immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari, his opponent in 2015, to congratulate him.
As far as Liberians are concerned, their president has emerged and he emerged through the ballot. Unlike our experience in Nigeria nowadays, being declared the winner of an election is no longer a guarantee that you won the poll. The next turf is the courtroom. It has now become the new normal in Nigeria that the judges must make pronouncements before the winner of any election is determined.
This republic came on stream with the swearing in of the president, governors, legislators in May this year and more than six months on, legal acrobatics are still ongoing in various courts to determine winners. In the last one week, three governors have been sacked by the Court of Appeal: Kano, Plateau and Zamfara States. All of them were sworn in on May 29 this year.
The irony is that all of them won the ballot, defeating all their competitors by popular votes, but several months after and at the stage of the appellate court, they are still being dismissed because either their political parties did not conduct their primaries on time or properly or different factions sponsored them or some electoral officers were discovered not to have signed the ballot papers counted for them. And most of all these are pre-election issues that should have been thrashed even before the first ballot is cast.
When Weah realised that Boakai was coasting home to victory, his mind was not mischievously telling him that his opponent had a defective educational certificate somewhere or had once been involved in a criminal matter in a foreign land about some 30, 35 years back. These were issues that must have been dealt with before their names appeared on the ballot. With the level of development today, judges’ involvement in Nigeria’s elections should be completely eliminated and the Nigerian electorate should be allowed to determine who governs them and not a few judges.
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, said it was wrong for judges to determine the results of elections, calling on the country to learn from what transpired recently during Liberia and Sierra Leone general elections. He said the stakeholders should go back to the drawing table so that the involvement of judges in our elections can be completely eliminated. Falana said Nigeria is the only country in the world today where results of elections are determined by judges. This shouldn’t be so!
He said: “We have just witnessed in Liberia, a country in which Nigeria assisted in restoring political stability, a successful election. Recently, we just witnessed a successful election in Sierra Leone, again another country assisted by Nigeria to have law and order restored. So, if these countries can organise elections, why are we asking judges to determine the results of our elections?”
Falana said the votes of Nigerians should not be nullified by the courts because of any supposed negligence by the electoral umpire that shouldn’t have cleared candidates put forward by parties without primaries conducted. The senior lawyer wondered why Nigerian voters should suffer because the Independent National Electoral Commission failed in its duty to conduct proper elections in the country. According to him, it is very unfair that thousands of votes were invalidated by the court because INEC officials failed to stamp ballot sheets.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, despite his perceived and real mischiefs, was also on point when he made the same assertion. Obasanjo said not only was the western democracy strange to Africa, a situation where three judges decide for the electorate who should be their elected leaders was wrong.
But most of the issues affecting our politics and which the courts adjudicate on can be summed up under lack of internal democracy in political parties. It is very ironic that in a democratic setting like Nigeria, all political parties lack internal democracy. Similarly, they all lack discipline. That is why it is always extremely difficult for them to organise common primaries among members to produce credible candidates for elections.
Parties find it very difficult to organise conventions where their officers are elected. Most of the time, many of those vying for post deploy cash power to sway delegates and once they succeed in clinching offices, the tradition continues and till elections time, there will be high turnover of appointments, suspensions and the like, just at the pleasure of the power brokers in the party.
Membership of political parties in Nigeria is very loose and vague. In fact, the only time some people take their membership of political parties seriously is when there is a prospect of being sponsored or anointed for elective posts or as delegates at conventions. That is why it is possible to be a member of Party A in the morning and at the drop of the hat, become a member of Party B in the evening. And it does not matter if such a switch is for a presidential or governorship post, they surely get the post they want. Any wonder why one may not be able to differentiate between one party or the other in terms of ideology.
Of course, INEC has come a long way to up its game, but more efforts should be made deliberately to strengthen the body to truly be independent and efficient to conduct elections. The National Assembly should carry out reforms that will strengthen INEC to face its duty squarely. And going forward, such reforms should make sure that any name that makes it to the INEC ballot should have been free of all pre-election and litigation matters. Following this, any candidate or party that approaches the court should be heavily sanctioned for contempt and abuse of court process.
And, ultimately, we must dust up the Justice Muhammadu Uwais panel report, which recommended that all election matters should be concluded before the inauguration of any administration. It amounts to mockery when a governor that was sworn in more than seven months ago is now asked to vacate the post. What becomes of the disruption such will bring about? This was the major issue that led to off-cycle elections in the first place, a development former President Goodluck Jonathan has described as inimical to the country’s democracy.
Let’s look at the early days of the Kano State Governor, Abba Yusuf, in the saddle. Immediately he was sworn in, he embarked on indiscriminate demolition of buildings, sweeping changes of what his predecessor left in place. So if peradventure such a governor loses at the Supreme Court, what becomes of the massive demolition and “sweeping reforms” he has carried out so far?
A few days ago, the Zamfara State Governor, Dauda Lawal, said notwithstanding the Court of Appeal judgement, he would continue to provide dividends of democracy to his people.
That is nothing but mere braggadocio. Unless one is high on something, there is nothing as unsettling as being told the hour of one’s execution. It is difficult to be able to think straight in such circumstances. However strong such an individual is, nothing will make much sense to him.
That is the state of any political office holder in Nigeria whose case is being argued in court, especially Governor of the three states who have been dismissed at two levels of adjudication, remaining in the Supreme Court, with little or no hope. How can such a governor be productive in office when he does not know whether he would be thrown out the next minute?
So, there is a need for major reforms to eliminate needless distractions for public office holders to perform duties they are elected to do. Even President Bola Tinubu, who promised to hit the ground running as soon as he was sworn in, started taking some wobbling steps when his adversaries, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party dragged him to court until he was let off the hook recently.
In all, for the Nigerian political class, INEC, legislature and judiciary, there are many lessons to learn from the just concluded Liberian presidential election, specifically with respect to checking reckless desperation to occupy political offices; having in place and implementing standard and working Electoral Act; and having disciplined members of the bench sitting on valid electoral disputes, from whom quality judgement is delivered.
Notwithstanding its small size compared to Nigeria and to have been supported politically and economically at one time or the other, the recent Liberian presidential poll passed the tests of: quality, discipline, standard, maturity and, ultimately, patriotism. Therefore, it is adequate and good enough as a model for the country. We here recommend to all key actors in Nigeria’s election business to embrace and adopt it!