NIGERIA: Supreme court verdicts on 2019 governorship races – a mixed bag

On 20 and 21 January, the supreme court delivered the last batch of verdicts on the legal challenges of the results of gubernatorial elections held in most states in March 2019. Although the judgments suggest a bias towards the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), overall the court’s jurisprudence concerning last year’s electoral cycle is in line with its long-standing pattern in favor of confirming rather than overturning results, regardless of the winner. The court thus appears to have retained a certain degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the executive concerning sub-national elections. However, this is unlikely to extend towards matters of national importance, as was evidenced when the court swiftly dismissed the opposition’s challenge of the 2019 presidential election results. Twenty-one out of 29 gubernatorial elections held on 9 March 2019 subsequently faced legal challenges by defeated parties. As no party accepted the rulings of the respective election tribunals or courts of appeal, all cases eventually ended up at the supreme court as the third and final instance. In 19 cases (90%), the court upheld the results as originally announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) – 11 times in favor of the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and eight times favoring the ruling APC. Only two results were overturned: in the north-western Zamfara State, the court declared the PDP candidate the governor, as the APC had failed to conduct valid primaries. The court’s most controversial decision, though, concerned the governorship race in the south-eastern Imo State, where it declared the originally fourth-placed APC candidate the winner. In doing so, the court added more than 200,000 votes allegedly cast in favor of the APC candidate to the scoring sheet, which meant that the overall number of votes cast ended up exceeding the number of accredited voters. The Imo verdict – as well as the validation of some controversial APC victories, including the important northern Kano State – would suggest a strong bias in favor of the ruling party. However, as per the statistics cited above, the supreme court equally confirmed most PDP victories, some of which were also of questionable nature. If the supreme court was fully controlled by the APC, it would probably have used a more strategic approach rather than stoking up public anger over Imo, a state of little strategic value. Instead, it might have focused on overturning results in states such as north-western Sokoto, where Aminu Tambuwal, a PDP heavyweight and potential presidential candidate for 2023, had secured a narrow victory. Nevertheless, the display of a degree of autonomy by the court regarding the 2019 governorship election cycle should by no means give rise to expectations that the judiciary will be impartial when it comes to a potential legal challenge of the presidential election results in 2023. As analyzed previously, President Muhammadu Buhari replaced the Chief Justice of Nigeria with an APC-leaning judge ahead of the February 2019 election, anticipating a legal challenge to his re-election. This setup will continue to provide an in-built advantage for any APC candidate in a potential legal tussle following the next election.

January 21, 2020

NIGERIA: Supreme court verdicts on 2019 governorship races – a mixed bag

BY Malte Liewerscheidt

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January 21, 2020

NIGERIA: Supreme court verdicts on 2019 governorship races – a mixed bag

BY Malte Liewerscheidt

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