A lot of dust is still raging concerning the decisions of the Presidential Election Petition Court, ostensibly from interested persons who have felt shortchanged by the turn of events, rightly or wrongly.
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Legally speaking, the process of the Court is totally different from public perception, as every court case depends largely on the state of the facts, the capacity of the legal team, the state of the law and the integrity of the judicial officer.

The case presented through an election petition is particularly peculiar because it is very technical, sui generis and time bound. Beyond this, a presidential election petition is worse given the large population, the terrain to cover, the incumbency factor and the role of the electoral umpire.

The role of lawyers
The role of lawyers is critical to the success or failure of cases generally. It is a question of morality and law, for counsel to decide as a matter of principle on where to stand on crucial issues. Now it is very common in Nigeria for lawyers to indulge in legal prostitution purely for commercial advantage.

Thus, it is not unusual that you would find in our law reports cases in which the same counsel has appeared and argued different, conflicting and inconsistent legal issues, in respect of the same or similar set of facts. Lawyers do this a lot, especially in political cases, pre-election matters and election petitions.

Without doubt, a person who stands for nothing will fall for any and everything. So you see a situation wherein a counsel had appeared for the candidate of one political party at a given time in the past and had taken a very strong position on a legal issue, defending it even up to the Supreme Court. If that candidate succeeds in the election or the court case, then the stand of counsel in that case is right and proper and he would hold on to it tenanciously. The problem is always when the candidate fails.

In Nigeria, politics is not based on principles at all, as politicians regard themselves as harlots, in a way, with liberty to cross from one political party to the other even for no reason at all other than to seek political power. And this is because the politician in Nigeria considers himself to be of no relevance once he is not holding any political office; there is no more free funds, no dependence on public patronage, huge estacodes and perpetuation of impunity and oppression.

What this means is that the politicians end up corrupting and polluting the lawyers. Let me explain. Mr A ran in the election for the post of governor of All Progressive Congress and he lost. He rushed to retain lawyer B to help him upturn the declaration of results. Lawyer B would do everything to ensure that the petition succeeds and in doing this, he has marshalled some legal points, but at the end of the day, Mr. A lost the petition.

Desperate for power at all costs, Mr. A runs to the Peoples Democratic Party and he begins to lobby and galvanise support to emerge as the candidate of PDP for the next governorship election after four years. Mr. A eventually emerged as the governorship candidate of the PDP and by hook or crook, he was declared as the winner of the governorship election. Mr. C who lost the election is bent on upturing it at the election petitions tribunal. Meanwhile, Mr. A has retained the legal services of the same counsel that represented him four years ago when he lost the election.

In the last case that Mr. A lost, his lawyer (B) had canvassed most passionately that the election was marred with violence, thuggery, corrupt practices, manipulation, falsification of results and compromise by the electoral umpire, all in a bid to discredit the election. Now as counsel to Mr. A four years later, the same lawyer B is set to defend the electoral umpire, he is set to present the election as the best and most credible contest witnessed in the whole world.

To do this, lawyer B would have to discard the legal positions that he held in the past, he has to polish the ambiguities and lacunas in the Electoral Act that he identified four years ago, now canvassing different and inconsistent arguments.

In some other cases, lawyers who have represented INEC as the electoral umpire for many years and who had laboured so much to defend all INEC guidelines, all INEC lapses and shortcomings, still find themselves representing politicians to discredit the same INEC that they had celebrated. Whereas nothing has changed at all, it is the same INEC, the same chairman, the same adhoc staff, the same iREV, the same BVAS and the same balloting system.

This was possible in the past, when lawyers bounced up and down in court with contradictory legal views. It would take years after the judgment to discover that the lawyer took a totally opposing view in a previous case. Technology has changed all that as it is now possible to click on a principle of law and straightaway discover the cases that a particular lawyer has handled and the positions he canvassed in those cases.
To be continued tomorrow
Adegboruwa is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN).
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