By Kelechi Esogwa-Amadi
Nigeria’s 2023 Presidential Election Tribunal, nay the Nigerian Judiciary, can be likened to a pregnant woman in deep labor right now, and more than two hundred million (200,000,000) Nigerians are waiting for it to be delivered her baby.
The Judiciary is symbolized by the blindfolded woman holding a sword of justice and a scale representing equity and justice – moral values constituting the foundational pillars upon which the judiciary stands, hence its moniker as ‘the last hope of the common man.’
Imagining this heavily pregnant blind-folded woman sweating it out in the labor room struggling to push out a much-awaited baby, under the most intense pressure and, perhaps, stress occasioned by the expectations, anticipations, worries, and anxieties of those waiting for the baby, will suffice a better understanding of the current state of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal cum the Judiciary.
From the first day the Tribunal began its sitting, Nigerians have not made any pretense about what they expect from it: JUSTICE. They’re not hiding it; they’re not joking about it and they’re not taking it lightly. They have demonstrated this in several ways.
Some have carried out protests. Some demanded for live transmission of the Tribunal’s sittings. Some have taken to social media to express their thoughts about the cases. And some have invented a simple slogan meant to keep the Judiciary in check: ‘All Eyes On Judiciary.’ The social media is already awash with this slogan.
Any heavily pregnant woman battling it out in the labor room, conscious of the fact that more than four hundred million eyes in her home country – in addition to, at least, more than a billion other interested eyes in other parts of the world – are fixed on the labor room door to know what will come out of it, will surely feel some pressure.
These Nigerian masses should not be blamed for showing interest in the Presidential Election Tribunal and for closely following its sittings up to this stage that judgment is now awaited. This is because it is their right to do so, especially when many of them feel that their collective will was subverted by the nation’s electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), led by Professor Mahmood Mohammed, in the aftermath of the February 25, 2023, presidential election.
INEC had announced the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, as the winner of the presidential election, despite the latter not getting up to 25% votes in the nation’s Federal Capital Territory. Many Nigerians who voted faulted the result, suggesting that it’s not reflective of their collective will.
However, the Nigerian authorities upheld the INEC-announced result and advised candidates who were not satisfied with it to go to court.
Thus, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, and his Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi, proceeded to the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal to challenge the result of the election as announced by INEC.
The Tribunal has concluded its sittings after presentations and hearings on Atiku and Obi’s cases and defenses by Tinubu and his team as well as INEC, and Nigerians are now anxiously waiting for the Tribunal’s judgment.
But the actual date of this awaited judgment has become a subject of rumors and speculations in recent days, thus keeping Nigerians in suspense like a people keeping vigil around a labor room waiting to hear the cries of their beloved pregnant woman’s baby.
Intriguingly, the Tribunal has done little or nothing to discourage Nigerians from being worried about the blindfolded women’s labour room travails.
On the contrary, its body language, days after concluding hearings/sittings on all the cases presented by the various parties, has given vent to such worries.
For instance, reported fixing, re-fixing, denial of fixing, and delay in official fixing of judgment dates since the conclusion of its sittings, will only naturally heighten such worries.
This is why the Tribunal should come out clean on this issue of judgment date. It should officially announce a date for its judgment and strictly maintain it, to avoid unnecessary social media hype, misinformation, and distractions. It should be understood that All Eyes are now on it.
The Tribunal should also understand that Nigerians will not tolerate a repeat of the INEC-styled announcement – the type that was made when they were deep asleep in the wee hours.
Perhaps it is to avoid a repeat of such ‘INEC Treat’ that the Nigerian masses have decided to open their eyes wide this time around, strictly fixing them on the door of the labour room, hoping and praying for the blind-folded pregnant woman’s safe delivery devoid of glitches of any kind, whether technical, manual, academic, economic, political, ethnic, tribal, religious, cultural or even spiritual.
It, therefore, behooves on the midwives attending to this blind-folded woman in the sacred chambers of the nation’s labour room to ensure she delivers safely so that the hundreds of millions of eyes keeping vigil around the labour room can jubilate and shed tears of joy at the end of the day.
