* The courts will continue to decide election results for as long as stakeholders decide not to play by the rules

The Supreme Court has been delivering verdicts on some state governorship elections that were held during the 2019 general elections.

early last week, the highest court of the land delivered a verdict by which it sacked Emeka Ihedioha of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as governor of Imo State and installed Hope Uzodinma of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the saddle.

On Monday, the court delivered verdicts on four state governorships where, unlike Imo, it upheld the mandate of the incumbent governors.

Abdullahi Ganduje of the APC retained his seat in Kano while Aminu Tambuwal of the PDP, Simon Lalong of the APC and Bala Mohammed of the PDP survived in Sokoto, Plateau and Bauchi states, respectively.

A day after, the court also affirmed Samuel Ortom of the PDP and Ahmadu Fintiri, also of the PDP, in Benue and Adamawa, respectively.

The Supreme Court’s verdicts ordinarily are final, and so it is only now that the governors whose mandates were being contested could sit easy in their respective position, while challengers face up to living with their defeat in the poll.

Of course, nearly all the triumphant governors have held out the olive branch: inviting opponents to bury the hatchet and join in the task of governance.

Litigation up to the Supreme Court has become a standard feature of electoral decision-making in the country. And that is welcome. It is better that politicians take their grouse over electoral outcomes to the courts for adjudication rather than resort to self help.

Decency in electoral culture also dictates that politicians must learn to abide by judicial verdicts when they have exhausted all appellate avenues.

That is why the street protests which trailed the Supreme Court verdict on Imo State were avoidable. Not that there aren’t aspects of the judgment that seem contentious.

But the final court’s verdicts are final and must be accepted as such. It has been argued in some quarters that protests are a healthy expression of civic rights within the democratic space.

But they must be well calibrated to do just that: express civic rights, and not seek to disrupt the civic order. Patriotism also demands that deliberate efforts be made not to ‘pull down the house on our heads,’ as in seeking to undermine the integrity of this arbiter of last resort.

This is perhaps all the more important because it has been argued by some that Nigerian politicians are about the most litigious in the world.

Only a couple of days ago, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was reported saying no fewer than 807 petitions resulted from the 2019 poll.

According to the commission, 582 of these petitions were dismissed, 183 were withdrawn by the petitioners while 12 Certificates of Return have been reissued on the order of the courts.

The tendency of political gladiators to readily challenge verdicts declared by the electoral umpire in the courts is a measure of their trust in the electoral system.

There is deep suspicion about the fairness of the electoral process, especially as many in the political class are themselves hardly disposed to playing fair – leaving most in mutual anticipation of the other’s underhand.

The over-exertion of security operatives who have been widely accused of partisan meddling has also not helped matters.

INEC must be an impartial and dispassionate umpire and must be widely seen as such. A heavy onus also falls on the commission to design its processes in a way that will build up public trust.

But politicians must as well learn to rein in their desperation for power and condition themselves for sportsmanly responses to electoral outcomes.

Culled from TheNation Editorial

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