TRIBUNAL: Law Is Law, Not Sentiments

By Kassim Afegbua

Law is Law, not sentiments. It doesn’t pander to sentiments or emotions but evidence before the court. Those evidences must follow the laid down procedures when presenting them before the court. Your evidence is expected to be decorated with facts and not fiction or concoction. When you speak to facts, you present them in very lucid prose to the understanding of all, and ensure that your ground of disputation is well captured in your submissions. You must not dump so-called evidence on the court without helping the court to understand the relevance of same, else they become refuse dump. You must make meaning with the evidence in a manner that simplifies the job of the court, not complicate same. So, when the PDP dumped BIVAS machines in the court, without letting the court understand what they were meant for, one is bound to ponder what the ultimate purpose was meant to achieve.

After the end of every sitting, PDP’s electoral goons and propagandists would rush to town to narrate another scenario acted and scripted by their ingenuous actors, to pacify their followers that hope was in the horizon. But their hopeless hope is another tinder box that would explode on their sensibilities when the bubble will finally burst. Asue Ighodalo, the man that represents the hopeless hope of the PDP drama factory, has suddenly abandoned his “blue chip” boardrooms to embrace the hassles of electoral litigation. I thought Asue will play the role of good sportmanship by conceding defeat and waiting to fight another day to test his popularity again. But using the Tribunal to mess up himself and his followers with false hope is another red-herring that doesn’t speak to his political strategy.

Last week Tuesday, some PDP backroom operators converged on Abuja to masturbate further on this whole idea of the tribunal. They met in the office of one Senior Advocate of Nigeria who had worked as INEC Commissioner before now. The whole motive behind the orchestrated meeting was how to penetrate the tribunal Judges to give Asue Ighodalo victory. They examined all the submissions of their 14 SANs and came to the conclusion that they have a very bad case. They later ended that meeting with a solemn charge to raise three billion naira. An insider who was part of the meeting spoke to me on condition of anonymity that efforts are being put together to raise the said amount but how to penetrate the Judges has become another pain in the ass. They all agreed that they have not done well legalistically to argue the case convincingly. They also agreed that they didn’t do due diligence, and they blamed part of the problem on Asue Ighodalo who was unable to present 92 witnesses he initially agreed to present. They argued that the error in their presentation and depositions at the tribunal was occasioned by the frustrations they got from the APC. So, in their own reasoning, the use of money to bribe the Judges would be their surest bet. They are yet to reconvene that meeting, but efforts are ongoing to raise the said fund.

But the point must be made very lucidly that the PDP shot itself in the foot, and now trying to look for ways to bribe the Judges, which has become a disturbing trend to them. On point of law, the PDP are unable to prove their case because the evidences before the tribunal cannot hold water. Their witnesses messed them up big time, only five witnesses out of 19 presented were polling agents, yet they are challenging results in 750 polling units. You cannot build something on nothing. They waited for APC to present more witnesses but got jolted when APC closed its case. Stranded within the middle of the road, they waited for INEC to present witnesses, but the electoral body simply told the tribunal there was nothing different from the results it declared on September 22. And there was no need for witnesses. Since then, PDP lost its adrenaline, and its electoral vertebrae got crumbled.