Section 77(3) of the Electoral Act stipulates that political parties must submit their comprehensive register of members to the Independent National Electoral Commission 30 days before their presidential primaries. According to the evidence tendered by the lawyers of Tinubu and Shettima last week and accepted by the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, Obi’s name was not in the LP members’ register for Anambra State or anywhere, which was submitted to INEC along with a letter dated April 25, 2022 addressed to the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission. Evidence was also provided that Obi left the PDP on May 26, 2022, and became the LP candidate two days later on May 27, 2023.
True, the court has not ruled either way on these matters, but the evidence is very clear. Similar evidence was used in the recent ruling by the Asaba National Assembly Election Tribunal to nullify the election of an LP candidate, Ngozi Okoli, on the grounds that she was not duly sponsored by the LP as she was not a member of the party as at May 28, 2022, when the primary was conducted.
Now that the PEPT has admitted the evidence that Obi was indeed not a member of the Labour Party within the stipulated registration deadline before the party’s presidential primary, it would appear that, like Okoli’s nullified candidacy, Obi’s 2023 presidential run was based on manipulation and deceit, which, in turn, permeated his entire campaign.
For Obi, deception and manipulation easily became reality. For example, during the presidential campaign, Obi went to Egypt to attend a Bankers Conference. He came back to tell Nigerians that he had gone there to study Egypt’s successful transmission of electricity throughout the country. It was this alternate reality that Obi sold to the Obidiots, who saw Obi as a soothing balm on their frustration. He would change consumption to production and create jobs for millions of Nigerians, he told them, without any indication as to how he would do it.
Obidiots, in turn, took deception to another level by creating alternate realities and conspiracy theories. In the process, they attacked and demonised political opponents and anyone who disagreed with them. Using various social media platforms, they engaged in disinformation, misinformation, fake news, and trolls. What is worse, they distorted and falsified evidence presented to the Tribunal in order to justify Obi’s conjured victory.
During the campaign, Obi expanded his world of deception to the transactional use of ethnicity and religion. He capitalised on the Igbo chronic feeling of maginalisation and the Christians’ anger at the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the All Progressives Party candidate and running mate. He presented his election to Igbo leaders as their project and to Christian leaders as a “religious war”. He even promised to compensate them if the war was won.
To complicate matters for Obi and Obidiots was a sleuth of unrealistic and misleading opinion polls by Atedo N. A. Peterside (ANAP) Foundation, which consistently projected Obi in the lead.
It is against these backgrounds that Obi and Obidiots’ statements and actions regarding the proceedings of the PEPT must be understood. It all started when once it became apparent from the tallies of presidential election results submitted by the LP polling agents that Obi was going to lose the election, he and his supporters pointed to INEC’s failure to transmit the election results in some polling stations to the INEC Results Viewing (IReV) portal as a conspiracy against them. Nigerian newspapers and media houses chorused the noise and a number of foreign observers, including the European Union, foreign newspapers, and media houses bought the noise.
Without a doubt, INEC dug its own grave by failing to keep its promise to transmit election results live. However, various Election Tribunals, including the Osun Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, have ruled that INEC is free to choose its own administrative procedure for transmitting election results and that the IReV is neither a requirement of the Electoral Act nor of the Constitution.
After the election and the declaration of the All Progressive Congress candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as the winner, Obidiots and their sympathisers engaged in various protests, including plans to disrupt the inauguration on May 29. Their attack on the judiciary in advance of Obi’s petition was championed by the LP Vice-Presidential candidate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, who warned former President Muhammadu Buhari and the Chief Justice of the Federation not to allow, or participate in, the inauguration of then President-elect Tinubu on May 29, 2023 on the grounds that they would be aborting democracy, because (in his own alternate reality) Tinubu did not meet the constitutional requirement to be declared President. Fare enough, Baba-Ahmed was widely condemned for his vituperations.
Once they submitted their petition to the PEPT, they championed the call for live transmission of the proceedings. Their aim was to use it a vehicle to further throw dirt in public view on President Tinubu as defendant. The court, of course, declined their request.
Further conspiracy theories were unleashed after the close of hearings by the PEPT. The LP Chairman falsely claimed that the APC was already preparing for a possible re-run presidential election, because the ruling party knew that the tide was tilted against it in the ongoing legal challenge to the presidential election results. He called on millions of Obidiots to get ready. This must be understood by security agencies as a call to Obidiots to prepare for protests or worse, if the judgement went against them.
Then came various attempts to discredit the judiciary. They included a widely circulated fake story that President Tinubu had a conversation with some Justices of the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Olukayode Ariwoola. This spurious allegation was amplified by the PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar, who claimed that that President Tinubu was planning to influence the judges. Obidiots and their supporters further claimed that the Chief Justice and some other Justices of the Supreme Court had appointed their close relatives as judges.
Not done, another fake story was circulated widely on Twitter indicating that Justice Boloukuoromo Ugo, a Judge on the PEPT, had allegedly resigned, because siding with President Tinubu against Obi “would mean the death of Nigeria’s democracy”, recalling Baba-Ahmed’s condemned statement. Another far-fetched story claimed that former Rivers State Governor, Nyesome Wike, met with some judges in Malaga, Spain, persuading them to tilt the judgement in Tinubu’s favour. All the fake stories were denied by the relevant court.
What is worrisome about these fake stories and conspiracy theories is their circulation by mainstream media and major newspapers as if they were to be believed. Yet, they have serious negative implications for our democracy, for the judiciary, for the rule of law, and for national security. They must be condemned in very strong terms.