Judges Keep Political Parties Honest

OKEY NDIBE 

2021 was a politically disastrous year for Andy Uba, a former aide to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo. On November 6, he came a distant third in the Anambra State governorship election. 

He scoffed at the result, threatening to contest it in court. But on December 20, Justice Inyang Ekwo of the Federal High Court in Abuja delivered a coup d’grace. He declared Uba and his political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), impostors in the election. The judgment arose from a lawsuit filed by a fellow APC member, George Moghalu, asserting that Uba’s nomination was irregular as their party had not held a primary on June 26, 2021.

Judge Ekwo upheld that claim. Berating the party’s conduct as “crude and primitive,” he instructed the electoral commission to erase Uba’s name from the roster of governorship contestants. He also ordered the errant APC to refund to Moghalu the N22.5 million he had paid for a slot in the party’s botched primary.

That second order is bound to have a chastening effect on the way Nigeria’s political parties conduct their affairs. For some two decades, parties had behaved like criminal entities. Each election cycle, they rake in cash by setting high price tags for candidate eligibility forms. And then, instead of conducting the promised primaries, party chieftains – thieftains, if you ask me – auction off tickets to the highest bidder.Often, the combination of exorbitant fees and hanky panky sideline the most enlightened candidates, securing the field for rich, vision-deficient aspirants. For years, defrauded aspirants merely sulked, but invariably sucked it up.

Docile dupes, they seemed scared to incur the wrath of the grubby goons running the parties.Ultimately, one brave man – who happens to hail from Anambra State – decided that enough was enough. The man in question is Chukwunweike (Chike) Maduekwe, current chairman of the Anambra State Physical Planning Board (ANSPPB). 

A cerebral lawyer, Maduekwe comes across less as a politician than a professional in politics.In 2015, he had paid N4.5 million to secure a spot in the the Peoples Democratic Party’s senatorial primaries. On the scheduled date, he and several other  aspirants gathered at the advertised venue. To their amazement, the party officials appointed to conduct the primaries were unaccountably absent. Soon the apprehensive candidates received shocking news. From a secret venue, the party officials had announced the results of an ostensible contest, declaring Uche Ekwunife the winner of the senatorial ticket.

It was a bizarre twist, but altogether familiar, smacking of racketeering worthy of vicious mobsters. You’d expect the impunity to provoke outrage. You’d think the cheated candidates would insist that the party cancel the farcical exercise, and do it over. If the party balked, you’d expect the deceived candidates to demand for a refund of their fees.

Instead, each of Maduekwe’s fellow aspirants decided to match their party in shamelessness. Quickly, each one booked a hall in one hotel or another in Awka, the state capital. With a few supporters acting as excited prop, each candidate declared himself winner of a primary of their own invention.Maduekwe’s advisers pressured him to follow suit. He should call a press conference and claim victory in his own faction’s primary. This, his team contended, was how to play the political game in Nigeria. It would fall to the courts to sort through the miasma of claims, and cast a decisive vote for the “lucky” candidate.

Maduekwe spurned his advisers’ counsel. He was adamant that the PDP and other candidates had engaged in absurd theater and criminality. He would neither accept the party’s unlawful behavior nor indulge in a hollow, self-mocking act.
Maduekwe knew full well that the PDP’s immoral conduct was the political norm. But he felt called to use the instrument of the law to stop scuttle what had evolved into political robbery. He sued the PDP and the electoral commission at the Federal Capital High Court in Abuja. Ms. Ekwunife, the alleged winner of the fake primary – who had been returned by the electoral commission as a senator – applied to join the suit as a defendant.Maduekwe’s lawsuit accused the principal defendant, the PDP, of obtaining money from him under false pretenses. His case rested on an equitable principle known as “money had and received for a failed consideration.” In lay language, the plaintiff presented three claims before the court. One was that the PDP had collected N4.5 million from him. Two: that the party had undertaken to organize a primary election in which he would be eligible to seek the party’s senatorial ticket. The third assertion was that PDP officials violated the law and the party’s electoral guidelines when they announced from a secret location that Ekwunife had won a primary election that never took place.

Recall that lots of politicians had suffered the same fate as Maduekwe, but chose to do nothing. Their inaction – or, worse, acquiescence – helped fertilize impunity. Maduekwe’s steeliness and ethical mettle made all the difference. He defied pleas not to rock the boat, and stared down threats of a political backlash.

His steadfastness paid off. On December 5, 2017, Justice O.O. Goodluck of the Abuja High Court upheld his claim. The judge ordered the PDP to refund to the plaintiff the sum of N4.5 million “being monies had and received by the 1st defendant for a failed consideration.”

It was a landmark judgment, the first time a Nigerian court ruled that a political party would not get away with its 419 scheme, illicitly obtaining cash from political aspirants. If Maduekwe had hearkened to his advisers’ proposal, he would have disqualified himself from ever pursuing a legal challenge. After all, as a well-known legal axiom goes, one who seeks equity must come with clean hands.

A party with a modicum of moral funds would have exhibited a sense of remorse over its conduct. It would have promptly redeemed its debt to Maduekwe, signaling a determination to mend its ways. Instead, the PDP showed no inclination to pay back what it owed Maduekwe. Worse, the party sat on its hands until the window to appeal the judgment had passed. Then it made an inelegant detour to the Court of Appeal, seeking permission to contest the earlier judgment.

The maneuver bespoke the party’s desperation to delay its inevitable day of reckoning. Thankfully, the appellate court did not fall for the gimmick. On September 30, 2021, the three-member panel of justices, led by Justice Abubakar Datti Yahaya, affirmed the lower court’s judgement. Suspecting that the PDP wasn’t acting in good faith, the judges revealed they would hear the appeal only if the party deposited the sum of N4.5 million in a designated bank account. The party would not abide the condition. The court was left no option than to dismiss the application, declaring that the party had failed to justify why it did not file a timely appeal since 2017.

Sooner or later, the party must pay its debt to Maduekwe, or risk garnishment of its assets. Beyond that, the Maduekwe case – now the locus classicus for cases brought under the equitable claim of money had and received for a failed consideration – is bound to have a salutary impact on internal party politics. Maduekwe’s lawsuit enabled the judiciary to serve notice to political parties that their season of fleecing political aspirants and then bungling primaries is about over. 

Maduekwe’s ethos is bound to embolden mistreated candidates to seek reimbursement from rogue party officials. It’s noteworthy that Justice Ekwo relied on Maduekwe’s precedent in nullifying Andy Uba’s purported primary triumph and ordering the APC to return the N22.5 million George Moghalu had paid to participate in a nomination contest that never took place.It all goes to show how much good can flow from one individual’s irrepressible effort to rein in criminal behavior by political parties.