Indeed, All Eyes Are On The Judiciary.


Recently, some noxious billboards propped up instrategic locations at the nation's capital Abuja. Screaming, "All Eyes On The Judiciary", the billboards were a topping to a frantic, extensive  campaign to blackmail ambush and arm twist the third tier of government to cave in to the whims and desires of the erectors of the billboards which is the declaration of their preferred  candidate as President of Nigeria.


Let's be clear. The erectors of the billboard are supporters of Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of Labour Party, who came a distant third in the February 25, 2023 presidential election. They have been frantic in claiming he was rigged out, his 'mandate' stolen and they are bent on seeing him-by fire by force (in the popular Nigerian lingo)- to the presidency. They don't care whether their claim is logical and sustainable. They don't care whether their claim is credible. They are not interested in the fine points of credence to their demand. They just want their candidate to be declared president by the judiciary and that remains the only condition that will rest their agitation. With that lone demand met, they would remove all their eyes from the judiciary and only by doing this would the judiciary be seen by them as doing the right thing and nothing more.


A nation that has been made to tolerate the aggressive blackmail of Obi's proxies and hirelings, both prior to and after the election, roused to a rude awakening that the judiciary had been placed under a direct threat and asinine blackmail by those obnoxious billboards and this sparked an inquest as to who authorized such erections. These billboards were quickly dismantled and shredded. There were reports that the authorizing agencies of  government responsible for issuance of permit for such outdoor advertising  facilities was queried and some of their heads slammed with suspension.


But let's return to the meat of the issue. Why should a group resort to such extreme attempt to hold a gun to the heads of the judiciary on an issue that is as clear enough as election adjudication? If we attempt to answer the poser, we would return to the holistic campaign approach of Obi and his supporters which reeked of acute desperation and an impatient desire to walk away with the presidency at all costs. This peculiar fastidiousness was sowed into the 2023 electioneering campaign to make it brash, intemperate and intolerant. The resort to uncultured and ill-bred threats, abuses, insults and boasts discoloured the Obi challenge such that it spawned a reprehensible and intolerant vista that put many Nigerians off as the campaign lasted. So odious was this morbid predilection that the legendary Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka condescendingly dismissed Obi's supporters as 'naterring  nitwits' while   Obi's governor, Prof. Charles Soludo dismissed them as a 'headless mob'. 


Going into the election, expansive efforts were made to blackmail the Independent National Electoral Commission into manufacturing victory for Obi by all means or else, the election would be discredited. Even when there was no credible pathway for Obi to become president, his supporters sustained a blackmail that tailored towards either having Obi (miraculously) announced as winner or risk having the election tainted with a heavy black tar. That was what played out when Obi failed after his supporters  exhausted


all efforts to blackmail him to the presidency. INEC became the ready fall guy and boasts of 'reclaiming our stolen mandate' became the new fad in Nigeria.


Almost immediately, a huge project to blackmail, bully and threaten the judiciary into granting Obi a presidency he knows, as of truth, he stood no chance of winning, was launched. Nothing was spared in anticipatively making the judiciary to award Obi the presidency at all costs. The pastors, the GOs, the priests, the bishops that led Obi's sectarian quest for Nigerian presidency started the full bombardment of the judiciary with all manners of threats and blackmails. With their bevy of actors, they invaded every space with brazen boasts of retrieving Obi's 'stolen mandate' in the courts. Nothing was spared in this bizarre act of queer group-think meant to force the judiciary to accede to their selfish rootless idiosyncracy. It was in this odd coven that the horrid idea was birthed that an elected president shouldn't be sworn in till the courts had disposed of cases contesting his election. Once this odd reasoning was fangled, they ran to town with it; both young and old, seemingly educated and the illiterate and many otherwise respected people undid their reputation hawking this inanity with utter shamelessness; all in the burning desire to con illicit political rip-off for their candidate.


But still, all these resort to embarrassing tendentiousness targeted the judiciary for unrelenting blackmail. These frantic efforts to bully and cow the judiciary to gift Peter Obi a presidency he knows he didn't win took no regard to the merit or otherwise of the case he took to the judiciary. These desperate schemes to blackmail the Judiciary by all means took no regard of whether or not Peter Obi and his lawyers presented immutable  evidences to convince the judges that indeed there was a mandate that was stolen. But to them, the lone tactics was to pile enough threats and blackmail on the judiciary to make them cave in to award Peter Obi a victory from defeat!


We have heard of pastors and priests turning their pulpits to theaters of threats and blackmail, oozing sterile hot airs each week on judges handling Obi's petition. There was a case where a pastor printed pictures of the judges and placed them on his altar claiming he would ask God to force them to give the presidency to Obi. We watch as Obi's supporters invade radio. television talk shows and public spaces hawking these blackmails and threats each day as though their lives depend on that futile effort. More grotesquely, we have had the social media bombarded with tons of fake news and tendentious lies (favourite staples of Obi supporters) about the case and the tribunal. One particular rogue proprietor of an online portal whose sole business of recent is the manufacturing of fake news for Obi supporters. has ran amok in recent times with slanderous fabricated lies against the tribunal and the judges. He targets top Nigerians with reckless lies in a desperate project to prepare Obi and his supporters for the eventual outcome of their petition before the election tribunal.


So the 'All Eyes On The Judiciary' billboards are very heightened desperation of those who, in their infantile imagination, believes that somehow, the judiciary could be bullied,  blackmailed and threatened to grant their fanciful wishes, no matter how ungrounded and hollow such wishes may be. 


But let us interrogate the grounds for the ludicrous claim of a stolen mandate and the depraved effort to blackmail the judiciary. Peter Obi's party managed to win just one state out of the 36 states in Nigeria. LP won eight out of the 109 senate seats and 34 out of the 360 House of Representatives seats. On what ground does such a party root its ludicrous and outlandish claim of winning the presidency? Again, are Peter Obi's supporters oblivious of the fact that their party did not win up to five percent in all states of the North West, in half of the states of the North East, in the North Central (except in the Bible-belt states of Plateau, Nasarawa and Benue), in the  South West (except Lagos)? With such hard reality, how did they imagine Peter Obi could be declared president even if they muscle the judiciary to forcefully accede to their caprices? President of which country? Nigeria? Peter Obi's good showing in South East, South South and the Bible-belt states is the maximum rip off from the extreme religio-ethnic casing of his campaign. That is the ceiling he can go. He can never exceed this even if he contests the presidency a hundred times. In Nigeria where Christians and Muslims live, in almost equal ratio, a Peter Obi as candidate, with his heavy religio-ethnic baggage will never achieve the spread to win the Nigerian presidency, even if he tries a thousand times. These are priceless realities those that are fixating their eyes on the judiciary  should know, even if they pretend not to know. Every knowledgeable Nigerian knows this except those that are swimming in deliberate self deceit.


So let all eyes be on the judiciary and let us see how the same judiciary can perform magic and do what is not possible by gifting Nigerian Presidency to Peter Obi solely on the basis of infantile blackmail and feckless threat.



Peter Claver Oparah


Ikeja, Lagos.