Atiku Vs Buhari: Atiku’s Team Simply Ingenious.

Atiku Vs Buhari: Atiku’s Team Simply Ingenious.

By Tai Emeka Obasi

When I said this Presidential Election Petition was the mother of all election petitions, I wasn’t saying that to mimic the demised Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Rather, I saw how tightly all five grounds were sown before coming up with that assertion.

However, even when I was quite optimistic, I wasn’t optimally confident that the hearing proceedings would pan out the way they did.

Petitioners forever faced uphill tasks attempting to prove the case of mandate denial once INEC is involved. The electoral body, rather than the electorate, decide who wins what and who to deny. And when it involves a president who pays the piper, the tune has always been as dictated.

That onus of proof, which lies with the petitioner, is hardly ever overcome.

Everybody, including my eight year-old daughter, know that INEC has and used a server during the election in contest but proving it at the Tribunal is a different kettle of fish.

Everybody, including the five judges of the tribunal panel and those not involved, know that INEC falsified figures, most glaringly in Borno State, but the problem was how to prove it at the tribunal with technicalities hindering every discernible route to the task.

All the professors that acted as RECs and those not involved know that the figures the RECs announced were as arbitrary as they were manufactured but proving it in court was quite herculean.

Most people witnessed a lot of election malpractice and were even willing to testify in court but cross-examination ever does everything to render their testimonies as hearsay or unreliable.

All these and many more man-made difficulties had the Petitioners works cut out from the onset. And when INEC started their defense early with the blatant denial of their own server, the Petitioners were truly sweating. They tried to counter by putting up a preliminary injunction, demanding for an access to the server to examine the contents in court. But because of technicalities involved, they couldn’t be granted access when it hadn’t been ruled in same court that INEC actually had a server. This made one of the strongest grounds of the petition hanging in the balance.

READ ALSO: Atiku Vs Buhari: The Moment Is Here!

And solely because of fear of being nailed during cross-examination, the electoral body abandoned their defense, without providing a single witness. Smart.

But outsmarting a legal team led by Dr. Livy Uzoukwu in all other grounds wasn’t going to be any tea party.

When Major General Paul Tarfa walked into the witness box as Buhari’s first witness, the moment came. And when Yunus Ustaz Usman, SAN, the INEC lead counsel asked what Dr. Uzoukwu termed the mother of all questions, the obviously conscientious retired military man responded in what the Petitioners’ lead counsel equally complimented as mother of all answers.

The INEC lead counsel while leading the witness marked as RW1 with friendly questions asked, “and surely the military took your certificates on admission?”

RW1 responded, “nothing like that ever happened.”

And it was Karma of some sort that the same INEC team that ‘smartly’ refused to call any witness asked the one question which answer to damaged their case irreparably.

From that very moment, all the three Respondents knew that the president they were united in defending was on a pressure cooker.

Six other subsequent witnesses added more nails to the president’s dangling coffin that Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, on whose shoulders the direct task of defending the man in Aso Rock lay, hurriedly called off further defense and closed his case. But believe me, it was too late. The damages were very glaring, even to naked amateur eyes.

So how did it happen? Those that know in matters of election petitions understand the long-standing trick of not providing any witness when you are defending a bad case. INEC is always there to save whoever it intends to. In this particular case, INEC is going overdrive to protect the incumbent.

So how come a veteran like Olanipekun, assisted by about other 59 Senior Advocates of Nigeria within the defending team of the ‘Allied Forces’, didn’t toe INEC’s line of not presenting any witness.

SIMPLE!

The Petitioners’ team boxed them into a steel wall and there was no safety net. Olanipekun must present witnesses to prove President Buhari didn’t lie under oath. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for democracy, his first witness confirmed his client lied under oath.

The question is how did the hunter become the hunted? How did the onus of proof suddenly turn to Buhari?

Buharists and the APC who didn’t get anywhere near the octagon-shaped Appeal Court in Abuja were busy shouting that Atiku was wasting his money by pursuing a case he couldn’t prove in court while Olanipekun and Co were rather sweating profusely before the Tribunal to prove that the president not only has certificates but also didn’t lie about them.

While those who didn’t near Abuja Central Area location of the Appeal Court were busy saying this Presidential Election Petition case would be business as usual, Olanipekun and the Allied team were forcing Buhari to send Abba Kyari to obtain a “certificate” from Cambridge, an exercise Dr. Uzoukwu rendered a wild geese chase in court.

While desparados in the ruling government were busy urging the Bursen burner-sitting President to appoint and swear in his cabinet members, Olanipekun and Co were busy briefing and debriefing the WAEC deputy registrar on how to convince the court that the ‘Mohamed’ in his attestation is the same name, even though spelt differently, with ‘Muhammadu’. Again another task Dr. Uzoukwu made the WAEC executive regret ever undertaking.

It’s all to the craft of the Petitioners team, who wrapped up the certificate controversy, masterfully turned it around that it became mandatory for Buhari to provide proof of his acclaimed qualifications as filled in INEC’s form CF 001.

And believe me again, Buhari went ahead with the task of proving this the same manner he has ruled Nigeria for over four years – abysmally!

Olanipekun and Co are great lawyers no doubt but turning mere claims of Buhari into certificates is akin to turning water into wine. But such remains a miracle exclusive to our Lord Jesus Christ.

No surprise then when the embattled veteran made an appeal to the judges to stop the Petitioners’ counsels from talking to the press. No one, whoever experienced, wishes his/her failures announced in public.

Like Dr. Uzoukwu summed up, there are no and never were original certificates and hence no photocopy of any kind existing, neither photographs nor electronic form of Buhari’s certificates he claimed under oath that he had.

How the Tribunal judges save this president from this huge mess will be interesting to the watching world.

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