S’Court stopped attempt to snatch Kano through backdoor– NNPP National Secretary

The National Secretary of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, Oladipupo Olayokun, bares his mind to ABDULRAHMAN ZAKARIYAU, on the Supreme Court judgment on the Kano State governorship election petition, the crisis in the party, among other issues

The Kano State governorship legal tussle was settled last week when the apex court ruled in favour of your party, the New Nigeria Peoples Party. What is your perspective about it?

Yes, as regards the issue of Kano State, we thank the judiciary; we thank God, and we thank Nigerians. We thank the people from the international community for what eventually played out at the Supreme Court. The trauma was uncalled for, and it was unnecessary; the trauma in the sense that you went out into the field, selling your party and your candidates to the electorate. The electorate, in their wisdom, accepted your party. The results were announced, and the loser of the election accepted the result and congratulated the winner. Only for people surrounding the loser to go to court, and then given all the evidence provided, you see the court derailing, so to speak. And as if it was a mistake at the first layer, the second layer of the court also derailed.

We felt threatened that what God gave to us, some people somewhere wanted to snatch it through the back door. But thank God, the Supreme Court rose to the occasion and came to the rescue of the Nigerian judiciary and the Nigerian democracy. Without mincing words, it was very glaring that some people wanted to snatch Kano by all means. In the 2023 general elections, there were five polls in all the states, including Abuja, except eight states where we had what they call off-season elections. The five polls are the presidential election, the senatorial election, and the House of Representatives, making three on the same day, February 25th. Then you have the governorship election, and the House of Assembly election on the 18th of March.

Now, let us take Kano State for example. In all the elections, the NNPP roundly defeated the APC. The presidential candidate of the NNPP, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso defeated the current President of Nigeria, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu by a wide margin. I am talking of Kano’s State. On the same day, in the senatorial election, there were three senatorial seats. The NNPP took two; the APC took one in very shady circumstances. Everybody knows it in Kano. For the House of Representatives election, out of 24, the NNPP got 18, the APC had six. Then you fast-forward to March 18th when we had the governorship election and the House of Assembly election. In the governorship election, the NNPP defeated the APC candidate.

Immediately after the election, the governorship candidate of the APC, Dr. Nasiru Gawuna, congratulated the candidate of the NNPP, Abba Yusuf, for a well-deserved victory, only for the APC, about one month later, to go to court, and in the matter before the tribunal, the candidate of the APC was not joined. Then all the matters went normal. However, on the day when the tribunal would give their ruling, they said they would not go to Kano State. They gave the judgment through what they call Zoom.

Was your party against the delivery of judgment through Zoom?

Nobody is against that because we are now in the era of technology, but people became suspicious because there were insinuations that ‘this is where they sat down to deliver the judgment’, and nobody could fault whoever had any feelings because nobody knew exactly where they delivered the judgment.

We took the judgment and said, ‘Okay, there’s another level of an appeal’, which was the Appeal Court. Don’t forget that the APC hinged its problem on the election or attacked the election on two fronts. One is that there were ballot papers that were not stamped or carry the signature of an INEC official. Two, that Abba Kabir Yusuf, the Governor of Kano State today, was not a member of the NNPP at the time he contested the election. Those were the two fronts.

The tribunal agreed with them. We don’t have any problem; we decided to go to appeal. I remember that on the day the lawyers were in the court, that is the Court of Appeal to adopt their written submission which they submitted earlier to the justices of the Appeal Court, the chairman of the Court of Appeal said they were under pressure, and the senior members of the bar in court on that day should pray for them so that they will be able to withstand the pressure.

They prayed for them, and they left, only for them to say they were going to do their judgment on a Friday. We went there. In the judgment, they said they agreed with the lower court, tribunal, no problem. We accepted the judgment. It was given on a Friday. And we told them we were going to appeal this judgment. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, five days gone, and we had only 14 days to appeal the judgment and you know, to appeal, you have a lot of documents you will have to assemble based on the judgment of the Court of Appeal. We became agitated when the judgment Certified True Copy was not forthcoming. We went into the field; and started talking; shouting, calling on Nigerians to please, help us to beg the Court of Appeal to release the CTC to us.

How did your party eventually get a copy of the CTC?

They were stampeded into giving the CTC on Tuesday. Lo and behold, the copy of the Certified True Copy they gave to us, on the final page, which is the concluding part of any judgment, which carries the real judgment, says they have given the judgment in favour of our party. They even set aside the judgment of the lower court and awarded a cost of N1m in our favour against the APC. Everybody was aghast; what happened? You know the outrage that followed it. They now say it was a clerical error. That was a very serious dent in the image of the judiciary. If you could call a whole page of a judgment; not a sentence, not one word, a clerical error, Nigerians said definitely, something was fishy. It was not out of place for anybody to conclude that there was a judgment already prepared before another judgment was brought to them.

Unfortunately, in the process of cleanup, you know God is a God of justice. It would be assumed that they didn’t clean up properly. They said, ‘Oh, it was a mistake’. We said, ‘Okay, no problem’. There’s another window for us to get to redress. So, that was how we now decided to go to the Supreme Court. And the judgment of the Supreme Court was very clear. It vindicated the stand of those people who believed that something went wrong at the two layers of the judiciary, either at the tribunal or at the Court of Appeal, because the person who read the lead judgment at the Court of Appeal, Justice Enyang Okoro, JSC, made it very clear that the lower court bungled the integrity of the judiciary. It shows the incompetence or let me use the finesse of those two people, either the chairman of the panel at the Court of Appeal or the registrar for them to have released a CTC which ran contrary to what they read to the court and the world.

Of what significance is this victory to your party because you have just Kano State, two senators in the National Assembly, and some elected members in the House of Representatives?

This victory is very significant to our party because the election in Nigeria is a struggle. When you struggle to get a victory in an election, it will count. Just like the INEC counsel told the Supreme Court that they should avoid a very dangerous precedent when people will lose elections in the field and come to court to grab it, snatch it, and run with it, using the language of the APC. That is a very dangerous trend, and the Supreme Court should not be an accomplice. So, the significance is that for Nigerian voters, for Nigerian politicians, you know that you can struggle to get an election result, and then the thing will stand.

Then, this is a morale booster for our party. Also, what the APC and the judiciary did to our party at the lower level made the NNPP to be more popular. People are now focusing on Kano State. I make bold to say that in the next three years, Kano State will be a reference point for any governor. So, the secret is that in the next three years, we are going to use Kano State to spread our tentacle across Nigeria.

You have seen the good, bad, and ugly side of the Nigerian judiciary. Do you still have confidence in that arm of government?

We do. That’s why any time we lost in court, what we told our people was to remain calm. We believe that the shenanigan will not pass through the Supreme Court. We are so sure because we know that by the time you get to the Supreme Court, what else do they want? What can they threaten them with?

We knew that there was no pressure they could mount on the Supreme Court, and we told our members to stay calm and that this matter would not pass the Supreme Court. That was why on the day of the judgment, our governor was there because we knew that the Supreme Court would not play into these shenanigans.

Some say some of these loopholes were created by INEC considering how the 2023 election went. In your view, what do you think INEC needs to do to perfect future elections?

I have always said it because I have taken part in elections maybe at the level of an association and then at the level of a party. It would be uncharitable if we lay all the blame for the election on INEC. I think INEC carries less than 20 percent of the blame. I think the blame should rather go to the politicians and indeed Nigerians. So, it is not INEC. I am not saying INEC is not culpable. I am not absorbing INEC. What I am saying is that INEC carries less than 20 percent of the blame.