As Yet Another Case Against Tinubu/Shettima Collapses

I’ve lost count but President-elect Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has apparently become the most sued Nigerian, at least in recent times.

With the recently filed petitions at the Court of Appeal against his victory in the presidential election by Alhaji Atiku Abubarkar of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, his Labour Party underling, Peter Obi and three or so other parties, I reckon probably up to, if not more than twenty cases have been instituted against him this election cycle, alone!

While that is remarkable enough, what is truly astonishing is the fact that he keeps winning case after case with costs awarded him against his opponents by courts which clearly deem their petitions to be frivolous or in any case, without basis in law!

Tinubu’s court victories are not just limited to a particular class of courts: you take him to the trial court, he defeats you; you go on appeal, he defeats you once again.

It is clear the judiciary is determined that no one should succeed in sneaking into public office through the backdoor of that most repulsive species of opportunism whereby losers of elections or, indeed those merely afraid of the strengths of their political opponents, place reliance on legalisms, technicalities, forum shopping and the like to basically steal the mandates of others for themselves.

In the latest case, the Court of Appeal basically told off Atiku and PDP as busybodies shamelessly poking their greedy noses into other people’s business, whereupon it slammed on them costs of 5million Naira payable to Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima!

Ironically, the case turned on the validity of Vice President-elect Kashim Shettima’s nomination as running mate to Tinubu, the very same issue that is a major plank of Atiku’s and Obi’s present petitions against the results of the presidential election!

I rather very much doubt that any measure of honour or honesty frames either Obi’s or Atiku’s decisions to go to court, given that they are both seasoned and typical Nigerian politicians even though Obi succeeded in brainwashing a few million people that he is the one and only Mr Clean in Nigerian politics, while Atiku touted himself as a unifier of Nigeria when the country would have, in all probability, irreversibly disintegrated if he had won.

As the well schooled politicians they both are, they must realize they actually lost the election and can only therefore be up to mischief with what can only amount to an attempt to waste the time of the courts.

In Obi’s case, he really doesn’t have a choice other than to head to court lest the uncouth, uncultured and delusional fanatics he has for fans tear him to shreds for selling them the infernal lie that he could win an election he must have realized he could never win and knows for a fact he actually lost given that there were simply not enough Hausa-Fulanis or Yorubas who ended up voting for him.

Obi, at the end of the day, is really only a victim of his own dishonesty and the hoard of clueless followers it enticed unto his unworkable bid to be President.

In Atiku’s case, his ambition to be President is so intrinsically interwoven with his very soul, and, thus so irretrievably settled in him, that he finds absolutely no absurdity too shameful to deploy in furtherance of his unhinged quest to be President of a country that studiously does not want anything to do with him.

What we are therefore presently faced with in the immediate aftermath of the election is a tragicomedy with all manner of opportunists and desperados trying their luck by dragging Bola Tinubu to court in the hope that they might just succeed in stealing his victory from him, basically by simply hoodwinking the judiciary!

It is, of course, pretty difficult to fool a court or dupe a judge into handing you an undeserved victory, but it is not impossible.

Unfortunately, for the gamblers arrayed against the Asiwaju, he has a very long history of proving his case and winning in court.

Onokpasa, a lawyer and member, All Progressives Congress, APC Presidential Campaign Council, writes from Abuja.

JESUTEGA ONOKPASA