Makinde has a date with history

FROM the grapevine, a re-run gubernatorial election is in the offing in Oyo State, between GSM and standard-bearer of Peculiar mess dynasty. Maybe if GSM can double-connect heavenly network, Holy Spirit could help him tame the raging Beelzebub, currently ruling the heart of the judiciary, especially on election matters. The governor doesn’t have to believe this, his legal team will likely pooh-pooh it, with the usual legal bravado of “we got this mehn,” but the 51-page jurisprudential heresy from the Court of Appeal, which appeared like a storm in a tea cup, could end up uprooting Iroko, Araba and Ose trees, all lined together. Maybe, I should add this, the re-run is also likely in the entire Ibadanland, two Ogbomosho local government areas and Ibarapa. Eni ba leti ko gbo.

I can’t predict who will win a rerun election between Governor Seyi Makinde and establishment-heartthrob, Adebayo Adelabu, but I know the combination of Strong-Room and Kill-and-Go, will seriously disturb the Oyo network, which is currently dazzling even partisan Nigerians, whose sense of objective perception hasn’t been lost to APC/PDP opium. Maybe, I should also add this, if (please mark it) a rerun is eventually ordered, the interregnum before the fresh poll, when the youthful Speaker would be Acting Governor would require the anointing of the children of Issachar, for alliance vows not to go to the dogs. Within that time frame too, the “probe” of Governor Makinde’s N50 billion assets, will likely take a frenetic pace. May he not suffer for his riches. Eni ba leti ko gbo.

Did Makinde’s rainbow coalition win the election fair and square? Nigerians think so. But the courts don’t have to agree, since most of the judges, high up there, wear gogu (not glasses), so it is likely they usually see the esoteric, just like in Dino Melaye’s case when a mere error of 25 February instead of 23 February in the date column, committed by INEC’s men, was used to take away the mandate Okunland gave him. By the time you are reading this, a part of the N10 billion project refund from the Federal Government to Dino’s state, plus an erratic, blatantly biased military, may have switched the said mandate, though to another Okun son, not wanted by the youth and disdained by the elders of the land. That is the kind of demo-judical we have evolved here.

To properly situate the absurdity in the Oyo guber Appeal judgment, just cast a glance at the two gladiators, celebrating what either of them should ordinarily have. This symbolic bean cake, used in pacifying two feuding adults, should worry all, maybe except the Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa’s vineyard. The Court of Appeal, under her, is sadly becoming what the former and first female CJN, Aloma Mukhtar predicted her headship of the court, would make it; an unconscionable cesspool of financial filth; hence Aloma’s resolve to block her at all cost, until Mohammed Adoke, Goodluck Jonathan’s AGF, got the then president, endorsing the wigged damsel. At the historic FJSC meeting, Aloma broke ranks with other members and asked that it should be documented in black and white that she opposed Bulkachuwa’s ascendancy. Except, someone, somewhere, has now gone to rip the page of the meeting, records don’t lie and Aloma should know her “sister justice” very well, to stand against the desecration she could see ahead. How prophetic! Now that Zainab has become the Princess of the Judiciary that gets away with many a John’s head on a platter, what can the righteous do?

Well, in this matter, let’s take Mr Makinde as the righteous and examine his chances against a system that has always been dark, now made darker by swashbuckling characters, who would have made a better career as either money-lenders or chief tax-collectors of old. Remember Zacchaues?

Team Makinde would have to halt its ululation. The call, the court, appeared to decidedly make in its favour, was in protest. But for the subsisting Supreme Court precedent on non-compliance, GSM’s network would have been badly disabled, if not completely barred. And the five-man gang didn’t hide its displeasure, expansively expressed on Page 50 of the judgment and even did the unthinkable by asking the Apex Court to review its affirmed position on compliance with Electoral Act! You want to say, what impunity! No, the Court of Appeal justices are merely sending signals to their erstwhile colleagues, pals and partners-in-unedifying voyages, now fortunate to be up there through geopolitical quota vacancies and if Team Makinde must also know, the NextGen (who spent decades on the Court of Appeal Bench before their recent elevation) justices of the Supreme Court are now almost in the majority at the Apex Court. Give or take, at least three may be called upon to receive and review the landmine almost lighted by their friends of many years, at the court below. Espirit de corps dey everywhere.

May God save Makinde if majority of the Supreme Court panel that would hear his case are in favour of reviewing the “banger” raised by the Court of Appeal panel, which, in a grudge concession, held thus “It is the provision of the Electoral Act in Section 153 that gave INEC the power to make regulations, guidelines or manual, and so these three instruments if made, should have the same effect with the Act, once they are not contrary to it, otherwise they will be toothless, especially when non-compliance with them is an offence. But until the Supreme Court looks at the issue again, we are bound by its decision and we cannot nullify an election on the basis of non-compliance with INEC Regulations and Guidelines.” Naija wonder!

Issues here are as befuddling as interwoven. The panel even lamented the loss of power of final say to the Court above! Imagine this season to be Salami era! Makinde would have been history itself!

But he still has a date with history. The Supreme Court that will determine if Oyo will continue to enjoy GSM, itself, is oro sun nu kun (better-not-described). Court of Appeal has loaded the gun for it to act as a court of first instance, for which, it is constitutionally-empowered to so do, and rethink its stance on substantial compliance. I have heard stories, but I will stay with facts. Adelabu is in expansive penkelemesi mood, because nothing seems certain with the judiciary anymore. If Supreme Court should accept the condescending challenge of the Court below, on substantial compliance, the chubby-cheeked moneyed-man, may be on his way to Agodi, without even a rerun.

But the joke would eventually be on Bulkachuwa’s men if the Apex Court decided to stick with the sole issue for voiding Makinde’s Tribunal victory: fair hearing. That should not take a court that decided a whole presidential appeal with three sentences, within 30 minutes, at first sitting, more than a minute. That feat, almost competed with Comedian Okey Bakasi’s all-time classic. That joke is about the country with the most efficient electoral system. A disheartened Nigerian guy among boastful Whites was quoted as saying, “My country’s electoral system is the best, we get results before voting”.

Maybe I should also add this, GSM’s original sin, is his “anointing” that turns him to “everywhere you go.” He wasn’t expected to beat their future star-boy, he did and now, he is eclipsing the chosen one, who sits on gold, but keeps pointing at emptiness. Gomina, you are making many investors look bad here.