How not to benefit from your crime

From very early in life, attempts were made to inculcate in us, some virtues of life. Our parents maintained that the commission of crime was bad; attempting to benefit from your crime was worse; and ruining others and the rest of society with your crime was worst.

Quite often, my late Uncle J.E. Igbinedion practised his patois Latin on us: at the least prompting, he parroted, “Nullus Commodum Capere Potest De Injuria Sua Propria”, which, according to him, was a Common Law dictum which meant that nobody should benefit from his atrocities.

We soon began to discover by ourselves that the opposite is the case in Nigeria.

This is one country that is truly a throwback to atavism.

Contrary to all the instructions in our formative years at home and the lessons in our catechism classes at school, Nigeria has shown that in the political arena, crime commission has become very attractive and its proceeds have more often been used to drag the entire society down.

We have insisted, perhaps with monotonous regularity, that the nebulous Constituency Project is a constitutional aberration. A situation where, directly or indirectly, money is put in the hands of a legislator for the purpose of providing pepper grinding machines that do not work, refurbished motorcycles, bore holes that hardly work beyond the day of commissioning,  scattered all over the place – all for your political supporters and at billions of Naira to the taxpayer, cannot pass for anything but an open daylight robbery.

Apart from being an open fraud on the taxpayer, it is also a very poor imitation of a criminal encroachment into the functions of the Executive Branch. The Constituency Projects that eat up Trillions of Naira of our annual appropriations simply succeed in making nonsense of the Doctrine of Separation of Powers enshrined in our nation’s Constitution.

Another serious evil plaguing our society today is the theft of elections. We wish to have free, fair and credible elections. But in an Election Year, some politicians work very hard to steal your hard-earned victories.

The latter category employs all the unfair measures to achieve their goal. They shoot, maim and kill opponents and in a bravado style, they snatch the electoral success, and ask you to go to court.

You proceed to the court and face a slow process that drags on almost forever.

If you are lucky, you may be declared the rightful winner toward the end of the tenure and in some cases, after the tenure has ended.

After the decision of the highest court in your particular case and you have been declared the rightful winner, the usurper is asked to go home and steal no more.

Meanwhile, he has enjoyed, free of charge, a substantial part of the tenure, and you, the rightful winner, so-called, would have to just complete the few months and days left in the tenure.

That was the original position until quite recently when some changes were introduced into the equation in the case of governorship elections.

The elections to the Constituent Assembly of the General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida years were conducted at the end of 1987. In the particular case of the election in Yenagoa Federal Constituency of then Rivers State, there were winners – defacto and dejure. The assembly was inaugurated in February 1988. Before then, one contestant dragged the declared winner in the Yenagoa case to court. We concluded proceedings by March 1989, and we were crossing the “t’s” and dotting the “i’s” on the eve of our departure from Abuja, when a man walked into the hall, waiving court papers, and claiming to have won the Yenagoa Case. Apparently, he had driven all night to get to Abuja. He looked weather-beaten and more like a mental case. He looked helpless and stayed there until the Sergeant-At-Arms came to remove him. End of case.

Mr. Peter Obi was one of the contestants for the governorship of Anambra State in 2003. He won but Dr. Chris Ngige was declared winner instead. Obi went to court and the case dragged on for three and a half years, before he could reclaim the mandate. Obi was on his way to go and serve out the remaining six months of that tenure when it occurred to him that his tenure was four years, not six months. He headed back to court to determine that question and he won. That was the beginning of the off-season elections we now have in many states of the country. That’s the situation we now have in Imo, Anambra, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun states, etc.

Our major concern here is that the Governors who falsely occupied those offices were simply asked to go and steal no more.

While their cases lasted, they enjoyed the perquisites of office while the rightful winner borrowed and struggled to stay alive. This is a rip-off on the actual winner and the State. The moral message we leave here is that crime pays. We make crime more attractive by encouraging the criminals and not penalising them.

The rate of recidivism will continue to remain high.

As a deterrence to election thievery, one is impelled to suggest that politicians who falsely occupy such offices must be made to refund all the perquisites they enjoyed in office while the case was in court!

Like other measures, this soon collapses at the door-steps of enforcement.

We must therefore seek radical ways of removing this national shame from ourselves. From the experience of other democratic climes, the time has come to prune down the levels of our electoral adjudications: first, all presidential election cases shall begin and end at the SUPREME COURT. We are no longer excited by all that circus that goes on in the lower courts which add no value whatsoever to the entire process.

Secondly, all the gubernatorial and legislative election cases shall begin and end at the APPEAL COURT. There shall be no elections petitions tribunals, which in essence are mere tax-guzzling parasites.

These courtsof superior records shall have 60 days within which to complete election cases so that actual winners of elections shall be the ones to be sworn in at inaugration.

Admittedly, this puts a big burden on the superior courts. It also means that adequate facilities must be provided for them. They may have to work around the clock; and where necessary, they may run shifts as happens with the criminal courts in high crime areas of some advanced democracies.

Our Legislators must stop being clever by half. They cannot continue to eat their cake and have it. By their acts of omission and commission, they show that they are truly the beneficiaries of our twisted elections. They are the vote buyers and sellers. They are the election riggers. They are the merchants of thuggery and election violence of all sorts.

Who is still searching for any explanation of why throughout the Ninth National Assembly, the Electoral Offences Commision Bill was limping in the Committee mazes without any head way?

For us, those who commit the crime must do the time. It can’t be done otherwise!

Whither, the Tenth National Assembly?