One point that has been consistently hammered on by philosophers is the insistence that falsehood can never stand the test of time. Tony A. Gaskin brings it closer home when he averred that “when the entire foundation is built on lies, the structure is doomed to crumble like a pack of cards”
The APC primaries election in Adamawa typified this assertion. A house built on a faulty foundation will crumble. This can not be overemphasized and like it has been foretold, the end will always come for conduct like those of the APC in the last primary election that were clearly dubious as daylight.
Long before the federal High Court, Yola division presided by the honourable Justice Abdulaziz Anka nullified the APC governorship primary election that produced Senator Aisha Binani as it’s standard bearer, many people except of course the beneficiary of that wholesale illegality, knew that the courts won’t need too long to discover the widespread irregularities perpetrated by APC in the conduct of the (s)election.
It will appear that in her desperation to land the APC ticket, Mrs. Binani threw caution to the wind while dollarising the process. And since where there’s money to be had, there will be willing recipients, much of the morally bankrupt APC members in Adamawa joined the queue of palms to be greased like ants after sugar, forgetting that there’ll be a delegates list. In the end, the total votes overshot the total number of valid delegates.
And while other contestants were cowered by hunger or Abuja party muscles to settle for more dollars or wild promises, Nuhu Ribadu will not have an illegality stand under his watch. The outcome of justice Anka’s judgement was sealed the day Ribadu approached the courts to seek clarification on the position of the law with regards to the blatant disregard of both the electoral act and the APC constitution in the conduct of the APC primaries that produced Binani.
Delivering judgement, justice Anka averred that “My findings are that there’s non-compliance to the Electoral Act, as well as party guidelines and the constitution because there was manifest overvoting, which has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt”
Speaking further, the judge added that “The first defendant (APC) cannot field a candidate for the 2023 general elections; the primary election is invalid, and the court, therefore, sees the return of Aishatu Ahmed Binani as unlawful. The plea for fresh elections is hereby refused.
The latter part of the judgement is perhaps what Nuhu Ribadu may not have anticipated. In truth, the man deserves to be given another crack at reclaiming what could easily have been his mandate had the ticket not been pawned to the highest bidder by his party. But, I’m sure the honourable Justice knows that allowing APC another chance to deodorize an illegality with another sham primary election, especially when the players knowingly decided to indulge in illegality, will not be deterrence enough.
The APC and Binani have leave to appeal the judgement of course, but even by their standards, one will expect them to know when they are beaten. The judgement is unambiguous, crystal clear and to the point. Any attempt to muddy the waters of law further through an appeal amounts to abuse of privileges. The honourable thing left for APC to do now is to come out boldly and apologize to it’s party members while focusing their strength in other elections and hope that the judgement has not tainted and smeared every strand of the broom.
Not that it will mean much, but it will be in the best interest of the party and other APC aspirants with valid tickets, including it’s presidential standard bearer to dissociate themselves from Binani and her co-travellers. This should be instructive because the people of Adamawa are very sensitive and could easily be swayed into believing that the entire APC aspirants are beneficiaries of an illegality.
Binani should be grateful to the courts really. They just may have saved her the embarrassment awaiting her in the polls. Now at least, she can disappear into the shadows with her valid political winning streak intact. This may prove useful in the future should she find enough oxygen to resurrect this stillbirth governorship ambition. Until then, it will do APC good to eschew this repeated gaffes that cost them Bayelsa and Zamfara in 2019.
Sunday writes from Abuja
