The Article About Nothing.

STILL ON THAT EPIC TARABA TRIBUNAL RULING:

Apart from being a symapthiser of the All Progressives Congress, APC, I am also an individual who has a great passion for the rule of law and these factors alone make the outcome of the Taraba State Election Petition Tribunal a very interesting one for me.

First, as an APC sympathizer, I'm more than happy to see PDP suffer for their own illegalities and 16 years of misrule by any means possible, and as such, even without recourse to the ratio for the decision in the Taraba case, I'm super excited.

More seriously, as a law student, it is one more lesson learnt, and a confirmation of the popular maxim or quote that you can't build something on nothing. 

At first, when my father told me the "good news" of the annulment of the Taraba polls by the tribunal, I was a bit indifferent because for me, Taraba is a PDP state and if a re run is ordered, the party would still coast home to victory. Well, my indifference turned to optimism when I read about the land mark judgement, and understood that the election was not just annulled but also that the incumbent Governor was asked to vacate his seat immediately because his election as the PDP candidate was not in compliance with the provisions of the electoral act.

Simply put, the summary of the Tribunal's ruling is that the PDP had no candidate in the April,11 Guber Polls in Taraba because the process of selecting the Party's flagbearer was contrary to the provisions of Sections 85, 87 and 137 of the Electoral act which regulates the procedure for the emergence of a candidate from a political party.

From the above, it is important to state that the decision of the Tribunal in Taraba introduced a hitherto unknown term and doctrine in the history of the Nigerian electoral system, which has been named The doctrine of wasted votes.

It is very important to add that the Tribunal did not nullify the election on the grounds of irregularities, rather, the deciding factor was the fact that the PDP had no candidate in the elections because no candidate emerged from their primaries, and as such, all the votes that were supposedly cast for the PDP candidate were a nullity.

Interestingly, the court did not rule that the PDP candidate did not have the most votes, the court actually ruled that the Party had no votes because all their votes were null because there was no foundation for fielding the candidate at first.

Clearly, the PDP is a victim of it's own famed illegality, and honestly, I dont have pity on them.

Personally, I feel that the decision here signals a hope for our nascent democracy because this judgement clearly implies that the days when political parties are just going to choose their candidates without recourse to the rule of law.

Well, times have changed, and like Lai Mohammed said, Rebrand or go down.