ABUJA — Special Adviser to the President on Legal and Constitutional Matters, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, said weekend that the blame by the Court of Appeal for rigging in the 2003 election must be shared by all the parties.
Maduekwe, rising in defence of People's Democratic Party (PDP), denounced what he called "the attitude of the opposition group to club in some kind of undeserved sanctimoniousness, undeserved self-righteousness, to now make themselves look like they are clean and only the PDP is unclean."
To him, "nothing could be farther from the truth. Those parties rig a lot and they rigged a lot the last time. There is no doubt about that. There were many places where the PDP candidates were victims of rigging by the other parties, victims of violence; it was not only supporters of the other parties that were killed; many PDP members were also killed by the other side. But that does not make it right, if we in the PDP do the wrong thing."
Speaking with Vanguard in Abuja against the backdrop of the reported "moral burden" that the voiding of the Ogun State (Obasanjo’s home state) presidential polls has imposed on the President, Maduekwe said the Presidency did not see it as such, pointing out that if the President felt inclined to bear any burden, it would be for all Nigeria.
"The President is the president of Nigeria; he is not the president of Ogun State. So, any moral burden, as you describe it that he may have to bear or feel inclined to identify with, would be a moral burden for all of Nigeria and not just Ogun State because his constituency is the whole of Nigeria. And quite frankly, I do not see any treason for the President to lose sleep over Ogun State result any more than any other result."
He, however, confessed that "the cancellation of the Ogun State result is something we feel pained about and it is unfortunate. But, you cannot win it all round all the time. So, again, the courts are a very integral part of the democratic system and I have the highest respect for the Nigerian judiciary.
"I would say, perhaps, Nigerian judiciary has remained one of our most enduring institutions that survived the military regimes. That is the judgement of the court that the result of the presidential election in Ogun State be cancelled. Of course, if Buhari is taking us to the Supreme Court, our counsel, in his wisdom, will have several options.
"If we are taken to the Supreme Court, we can always counter appeal on a number of issues, whether the issue would include the matter of Ogun State or not is left for counsel in control to determine that.
"But the moral burden, as per Ogun State election; if indeed ...well, right now, the court’s position is clear, if we take the court position as given. The President, as someone who deeply cares about true democratic process, clean and fair and honest election, cannot take joy not only in Ogun State, he cannot take joy about any process that raises the question about electoral inadequacies in any part of the country, not only Ogun State.
He said further: "The important thing is that at the end of the day, the court decided that the voiding of the result in Ogun State does not affect the rest of the result. If it did, they could have asked for a fresh election there in Ogun State in order to determine the rest of the result. They did not do that; they did not think that the Presidential candidate of the PDP should be punished for what might have taken place in Ogun State.
"Nothing in evidence and no attempt was made by counsel for the ANPP to suggest that the President knew anything about any such electoral malpractice or that he directed it or that it was done with his connivance.
"If you are candidate for a small election like Federal House or Senate, you cannot be at every point and we must be honest enough to admit that the level of public morality is not as high as we would like to see. In this matter, there is a shared culpability on the part of all the political parties.
"I do not justify rigging. I cannot justify rigging. I have never as a candidate gone out of my way to encourage rigging. But I will tell you quite frankly that as someone who has been in national politics for over two decades, that too often what happens out there in the field is that each group is trying to outdo the others. Those who complain are usually those who lack the capacity to do as much as the others."
Maduekwe, in proffering a way out of this situation, said: "I feel the most important thing we should be looking at as a political class, not as PDP or ANPP or whatever, is a strong commitment to a consensus that any electoral malpractice by anyone of us is an assault on democracy and it rubbishes the process and rubbishes all of us.
"What I find so nauseating and so unhelpful is the attitude of the opposition group to club together in some kind of undeserved sanctimoniousness, undeserved self-righteousness, to now make themselves look that they are clean and only the PDP is unclean. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Those parties rig a lot and they rigged a lot the last time. There is no doubt about that.
"There were many places where the PDP candidates were victims of rigging by the other parties, victims of violence; it was not only supporters of the other parties that were killed; many PDP members were also killed by the other side. That does not make it right, if we in the PDP do the wrong thing.
"So, I think rather than any group engaging in any camp righteousness, self-righteousness and sanctimoniousness, we should as leaders first, not as politicians, come together, join hands and say that democracy must grow and thrive and do well and we must provide the leadership first to our parties that we ensure that even the process of candidates emerging in our parties is right and genuine, legitimate, democratic because a party cannot give what it does not have."
