The Scapegoat, The Sacrifice And The Judiciary.
The political climate in Nigeria at best may be considered charged at the moment, this is resulting from allegations of impropriety brought against the ruling APC government by the main opposition PDP. Soon after the elections, the election tribunal has had its hands full with appeals to stop or cancel INEC’s results outright because of perceived election irregularities.
The ruling APC has been faced with myriad of accusations, one of the many allegation brought against the Buhari government is the trumping up of the nation’s electoral body INEC with agents whose un avowed loyalty rests with the ruling APC, to make matters worse for the credibility of the Buhari government, just before the elections, the Buhari government was accused of embarking on a campaign against the third arm of government, the Judiciary, watchers believed that the attack on the Judiciary was intended first to destroy its image as an incorruptible arm of government and secondly to make the Judiciary know that they are not beyond the powers of the executive.
READ ALSO: Facebook Store Millions of Passwords As Texts Without Encryption
However, recent events point to the fact that the Judiciary is independent, just as the law of the land designed it to be.
The humongous task before the Judiciary is the case between Buhari and Atiku, the Judiciary is faced with the need to come clean at the end of the day and so there is the need for it (Judiciary) to establish an identity which is seen to be above board, a personification of purity, upholding a blind justice dependent strictly on evidence before it and not answerable to anyone in it’s pursuit of real unbiased justice.
The Judiciary has shown that it cannot be cowed in Osun state, this is coming in the light of the victory which the PDP “dancing” Senator scored in his appeal against the incumbent APC governor. The election tribunal declared Senator Adeleke the winner of the election, though the end has not been heard yet of this landmark judgment as the incumbent has expressed his desire to take the case to the Supreme Court.
However, there is the belief in some quarters that the Osun victory is just a rouse by the Buhari government to catch the bigger fish. According to this school of thought, the scheme is to sacrifice Osun state to the opposition PDP, thus presenting the tribunal to the world as an unbiased entity and then at the end take the bigger price, the presidential ticket (which means that Atiku looses his case) unchallenged, riding on the laundered image of a Judiciary answerable to it, all in one fell swoop. Talk about killing many birds with one stone.
If there is any truth to this analogy, then the Osun state governor is not going down or playing the Scapegoat/sacrificial lamb without a fight because while Senator Adeleke performs an updated version of his vigorous dancing moves and the opposition PDP celebrates a great win, the Osun state governor is taking his fight to the higher court.
In another equally surprising judgment, the Judiciary made the last elections held in Delta State a wasted time when it declared the Jones Erue led state executive committee an illegality, so by that singular judgment, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege’s re-election as senator representing Delta Central, the election of the Mr. Francis Waiva into the House of Representatives, and that of three other APC members into the Delta State House of Assembly, all became a living nightmare because they all got their mandate through an illegality, the primaries conducted by the Erue-led state executives.
The Judiciary is chugging on, dispensing justice in ways that leave Nigerians proud and satisfied, it has, in recent times, demonstrated its independence by its landmark judgments, what Nigerians are watching out for is to see how long it maintains this profile of incorruptibility, especially with the opposition’s case before it.
Nigerians wait in anticipation for the outcome of the Atiku case against the incumbent Buhari led APC government.
