The sight of Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie in court yesterday drew attention away from HE Peter Obi and Senator Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, who alongside Labour Party Chairman, Comrade Julius Abure, LP Campaign DG, Chief Akin Osuntokun, His Honour Oseloka Henry Obaze and other LP bigwigs, were in court to observe the last process of adoption of final addresses.

The multiple award-winning author and globally celebrated personality deservedly got all the attention having not minced words in detailing the process of the February 25 election and the subsequent shortfalls leading to declaring HE Bola Ahmed Tinubu as president-elect. That her analysis in her letter to President Joe Biden of the United States, attracted a very wide read like all her works. Not even the swearing in of Tinubu as president could deter her stance that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC fell far very short of expectations after promising so much in area of transparency and credible election.

Before her very eyes, the shenanigans from the Respondents’ lead counsels, while presenting and defending their final written addresses, did not abate. The Respondents’ arguments in defence of an election, which the European Union Observers defined as falling below par in compliance and general conduct, were centred on the ridiculous….

In respect to Tinubu’s narcotics-related forfeiture indictment, the Respondents submitted that it was committed over 10 years ago and hence cleared by The Constitution to contest for any political position in Nigeria, including the presidency.

In defending the ‘technical glitch’, they argued that there has never been electronic transmission of election results in Nigeria and INEC had the rights to have adopted any collation method of their choice… thereby jettisoning the contents of the 2022 Electoral Act and the guidelines of the Electoral body prior to February 25. They claimed there was a technical glitch, thereby disregarding the evidence of the Amazon Web Services, AWS cloud engineer and architect witness, who affirmatively proved there was nothing like technical glitch at any region of AWS global services on February 25, 2023.

On certifying over 18000 blurred copies of form EC8As, INEC defence was that the original copies they collated and based their declaration from were not blurred… thereby disregarding the elementary definition of Certified True Copies, CTC…which means that any CTC must be exactly same with the original. Why should INEC’s CTCs be different from the original copies?

On certificate forgeries, their argument was that no staff of Chicago State University was invited in court to give oral evidence, disregarding the fact that certificates are public documents that can be obtained from any institution via subpoena.

On event of rerun, they argued that PO came third and should not be involved in the event of any runoff or even rerun… thereby disregarding The Constitution which states that the second candidate to be involved in a runoff should be the one that scored MAJORITY of the votes in HIGHEST number of states. PO scored majority in seven states while the candidate that came second scored majority in five states – and this is even according to INEC’s allocated figures.

On HE Kashim Shettima’s double nomination, they argued that the Supreme Court had already ruled on the case in favour of the APC vice presidential candidate…thereby conveniently disregarding the fact that the verdict was clearly anchored on lack of locus standi and not on lack of merit. The fact that the Petitioners had the locus standi after election did not matter to Tinubu’s team.

On 25% in FCT, Wole Olanipekun, SAN shifted from threats of chaos and anarchy to plead on ‘bended knees’ that the FCT should be treated as a state and not to elevate them into super human status…thereby disregarding the intents of the makers of The Constitution, who inserted the word, AND while clearly outlining the conditions to be met by any intending president of Nigeria regarding the 25% spread. The fact that the president lives in the FCT ‘as its governor’, which is a territory comprising the indigenous people of all states of the Federation, and who clearly deserve to be accepted in his area of residence, did not matter to the Respondents.

Chimamanda must have seen and heard enough to land her with another award-winning bestseller should she decide to put together the shenanigans of her country’s members of the old order in her usual unputdownable flowery of words. Who knows?

Nonetheless, there were clear indications from the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-man panel that this is one Presidential Election Petition that will not be business as usual. There might never have been any presidential election annulled in Nigeria since independence, but the signs of breaking that tradition are all over the place.

May justice prevail!

This is POEM.