Kogi Election; The Law is really an ass!!! Often a tragic ass!!!

An election was conducted for governorship/deputy governorship position, not for governorship and deputy governorship positions. The votes of the governor is not counted separately from that of the deputy governor, it is assumed that what ever is counted for the governor, equally applies for his deputy. There are countries where the deputy governor stand election separately from the governor. Of course the joint ticket has to be sponsored by a political party. The election was over 85% concluded before about 41,000 votes were and rescheduled. Can we cancelled an on-going election on the basis of the death of an aspirant? Can we void legitimate votes because an aspirant dies?


Now, the governorship candidate of the leading political party suddenly died, supposing he is the losing candidate, what would have been the reaction of the people? The election was declared inconclusive and a supplementary election was ordered by INEC. But even the supplementary election is said to be strange to the constitution and any other electoral law. Some people insist that the supplementary election is illegal. This implies that if supplementary election is illegal, then, as at the end of the election, there should have been a winner, abi?
It is easy to accept this argument, after all, there was actually an election in the about 90 polling units that were affected, but the result there were cancelled due to irregularities, therefore punishing the rest of the people for the sins of the few shouldn't be justice, should it? Anyhow, as at the time of his death, there is no governor or deputy governor elect.

In the case of Rotimi Amaechi versus INEC in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the votes casted was for the sponsoring political Party and not for the candidate who replaced Amaechi, few days to the election, and thus Amaechi was swore in. Based on that we are having a scenario where, people are saying that we can substitute the candidates ( whoever emerged as the new governorship candidate may not be too comfortable with the deputy candidate nominated by Late Abubakar Audu ) So how can you have a new set of candidates in an election that was almost concluded?

But then what nobody will say is the ethnic colouration of the whole issues. And on this note I will continue to insist that parliamentary democracy is the best way to solve Nigeria's problem!!!!

Abdulazeez Adeniyi