 The Lagos governorship election petition tribunal has dismissed the petition filed by the PDP candidate Olajide Adeduran aka Jandoor against the March 18 election while subsequently striking out and expunging all evidence and exhibits from Labour parties candidate Badibor Viva Roads. According to the court, the petition filed against the election by Adeduran and Roads Viva lacked merit and as a result Governor Babajideh Somolu and his deputy Abafame Hamzad have been duly elected and therefore declared the winner. Joining us to discuss this is Shagun Shopita, he's the chairman act network. Mr Shopita, it's so good to have you join us. Good evening. Like I always ask when it comes to these judgments, did you see this coming? Clearly I don't think there are any surprises, especially given the way the rulings have been rolling in. I think that there is a general trend, might be wrong but it looks like the tribunals are generally unwilling to rock the boat and the verdicts that have come in seem to have haven't seen anyone that has been earth shaking that has tried to undo the status quo, especially at the gubernatorial and the presidential level. So no surprises here. I don't think anybody expected anything different. I don't think that especially given the precedence that has already been set by the presidential election's petition tribunal regarding the burden of proof that is required to opt on the election of the chief executive at the national, at the federal level. I don't think that we're expecting to see anything different at the state level because the implication of the ruling, especially of the presidential tribunal was that you would pretty much have to prove polling unit by polling unit your case with regards to manipulation of the results. And we all know, given the time that the electoral act has made available for these cases, and indeed given the time that such cases should run for anyway, we all know that it would be practically impossible to prove on a polling unit by polling unit's case basis, a case for manipulation of results or electoral malpractice. So it looks as if the bar has been set extremely high again for obtaining the results of the presidential and gubernatorial elections. So no surprises here, Miriam. The tribunal has called the PDP candidate a busy body. I'd give you some insight into it. The tribunal, in fact, Justice Mikhail Abdulahi read the judgment on behalf of the panel. He said the petition did not fall under the provisions of section 177 and 182 of the Nigerian Constitution as amended. He also declared that the tribunal did not have the powers to include or inquire into the primary election of the APC, which produced Somolu as the governorship candidate, because the matter did not fall under its jurisdiction. And we've seen this recurring in other state governorship elections. Now, he says only an aspirant or a member of the political party can complain about the outcome of the party's primary, not a busy body like the petitioner, which is Jandoor. Apparently, they focused mostly on the preliminary objections filed by the parties before passing the judgment on Jandoor's case. So he looked to, from the outside, from the outside looking in, it looks like the Labour Party, the PDP didn't have a watertight case per se that could be on reasonable doubt, convince the panel that there was any wrongdoing during the elections. Although many people would disagree being that they were part of the elections, they saw the violence, they saw all of the things that happened. But then one would wonder if a person is going to court based on the regularities of an election, shouldn't they go prepared? Look, it looks to me as if there's something that is fundamentally wrong with our judicial system, with our justice system. It looks to me that the procedures, the procedural requirements when you take these cases to court, have been designed in a manner that has made delivery of justice very difficult. That's the pattern that, for me, I am beginning to see. So like you said, we were all witnesses to these elections, and regardless of what side of the divide you might be, or you might fall into, nobody will deny that those elections in significant places across the state had significant violence, significant malpractice, many of which were captured on video. The question of materiality can come in, but that then becomes a separate question. But I don't think that anybody can question the reality that those elections were extremely fractitious and that a lot of irregularities actually did take place. There's ample and sufficient evidence in the public space. Now converting that evidence in the public space to evidence in a court of law upon which a court can then make a decision to obtain such elections appeared to be very difficult, based on the procedures of our judicial system. So the tribunal would expect that the petitioners must come with watertight evidence to prove, for example, that their supporters were unable to cast their votes in enough polling units with enough registered voters to have influenced the outcome of the elections. How do you prove this? So it looks to me as if whilst the reality that played out might be clear to everybody, the winners and the losers alike, proving it in courts may really, be very difficult. And I think we're seeing that across board. So for me, I would think that maybe we need to ask ourselves questions with regards to our justice administration system and try to find a system that is more pragmatic, that is simpler and easier to deliver, to prove your case and ensure that justice is delivered. So we run a system that is modeled after the British judicial system. I think we need to start looking across the pond towards the United States for a process that is more pragmatic, that is easier, where the burden of proof, the nature of evidence and all of that are deliberately made easier, such that justice can be served more easily. What we have in Nigeria right now is really leaving a bad taste in the amount of a large chunk of citizens. Of course, there will be people that will be happy with this outcome and they will disagree perhaps with what I'm saying. But I think in the interests of the country, in the interest of progress, the good of the majority, I think we really need to ask ourselves questions on whether our justice system is indeed delivering justice for the majority. I have my doubts with regards to that. Still talking about proof here, the tribunal deleted all exhibits that Rose Vival had submitted as proof of Jando in Jando's plea. Don't forget, these people submitted their petitions differently and then after a while it became a joint petition. Do you think that maybe that move by the Labour Party and the PDP to join their petition? In fact, because I see that the court literally said Rose Vival could not challenge anything in Jando's case because he could be seen as an intrusive outsider. Was it a very taught up plan to go together against Somolou in this particular case? I think the cases were consolidated by the court, just like it happened at the presidential panel. What, from what I've read with regards to the outcome of this, the verdict of the tribunal, what it's done is not to strike out the evidence of the Labour Party and Rose Vival against the APC and Governor Somolou. What it's done is to fault PDP's Jando in challenging, you know, it's a very strange thing. It's actually unusual. I've never seen this before. What the PDP did was to challenge the victory of the APC and then join the Labour Party and Rose Vival who lost the election as co-respondents in their own case. So in other words, what the PDP was trying to do was to say the APC manipulated, no, the APC candidates did not qualify to even run for this election in the first place. Governor Somolou's certificate was fake. The Deputy Governor Hamzat had dual citizenship. They were not properly nominated by their parties due to, I think, a mix up in the timing of nomination and all of that, so disqualify them. Then the PDP now joined the Labour Party who also lost the election to say the Labour Party also candidate was not properly nominated, therefore disqualify him. So what the PDP was trying to do was to disqualify the two people that had more votes than them so that on the basis of their own 62,000 votes, remember the APC according to our next court, 760-something thousand votes, the Labour Party came second, scoring 300-something thousand votes and the PDP came an extremely distant third with 62,000 votes. But the PDP wanted to disqualify, wanted the tribunal to disqualify the APC and the Labour Party and declare him as winner. So the court disagreed with the PDP candidate on that note and said you cannot join a loser, somebody who lost along with you as a respondent alongside the winner. It's not done. So they will not entertain that and they struck out everything that the PDP had brought against the Labour Party to prove the need for the tribunal to disqualify the Labour Party. That's what has happened. The reason that the tribunal has for striking out the petition of the Labour Party, it has not yet put it forward. So we'll still, I think it's a developing story, we'll still have to wait to hear what the tribunal has to say with regards to the Labour Party's petition against the APC. But right now it has settled that the APC actually won and I think that so the only thing that's just outstanding now is why, what's wrong with the petition of the Labour Party that we still need to hear from the tribunal with regards to the I suspect that they're still sitting, if not then maybe it's still tomorrow. I don't have that detail at the moment. Let's talk as a representative of civil society and someone who advocates for good governance and what we've seen. I mean my previous segment we talked about the situation in Kano and you know they're moving to the appeal to appeal that particular judgment and just as you've said we've seen similar judgments across you know the country starting with the presidential petition tribunal but many who have made a case for these judges are saying that the court is only able to work with what you present to them and if you don't present enough evidence that goes beyond reasonable doubt what you see is what you get. But as civil society are we doing enough to make sure that these cases are watertight and if there be any case whatsoever to go to court with? Well I think the only role that civil society has in this in this instance is maybe education, public enlightenment with regards to the processes in the various tribunals, ensuring that the general public understand what is going on and hopefully accept the outcome. Because it's important for us to ensure for the sake of functioning society, functioning country, the court is the end game. Once the supreme court has made a pronouncement on any of these cases it's over. There is no other recourse. We cannot talk about self-help, you can grumble, you can say whatever you want to say but you have to accept the outcome and I think that the role that civil society has is to continue to drum this message into the consciousness of Nigerians so that society continues. If you lose today, work harder, you win tomorrow. With regards to the actual outcomes and the goings on within the cases themselves, there's very little civil society can do. The owners squarely on the shoulders of the political parties and the candidates themselves to ensure that they understand the rules, the procedures of these courts, understand the limits that they have and the extent to which they can go or that they actually need to go to prove their cases and then to do so. It would seem to me as though for some reason the legal representation in majority of these cases as the rulings have started rolling in, it will seem as if the courts are saying that the lawyers are not doing enough and these lawyers in most cases are sans. These are people that charge tens of millions of Naira, in some cases hundreds of millions of Naira to represent these people and you find that the opinions of the judges seem to be suggesting that their work is very wishy-washy. In fact, in the presidential election by a petition tribunal, the judges, the justices actually lambasted the lawyers. They descended almost to the point of descending into the arena and they almost sounded as if they were taking sides with the respondents to tell the petitioners that their cases were poorly presented and I found that very odd. I found it strange that the justices actually came down to almost insult using insulting language against the people that came to them to seek justice. I found that quite strange. Lastly, let me just put this because we're out of time. Where I was going with that question again is the average person will tell you because of what they've seen and the results of this election, whether it's in their favor or not, will say well you told us social society, the media, come out and vote, your votes will count. The judiciary is the last hope of the common person but they're not seeing that and they're saying next election we're not showing up. We don't care anymore because the average person is not prioritizing this country. So again, you have your work cut out for you. How do you in four years try to convince those people to come back out and vote, risk their lives, that's what they endured during the election and they got no justice? Miriam is a tough, tough job. You're absolutely right. I remember personally going on air on so many TV stations to assure Nigerians on behalf of our neck that these elections based on the electoral act were going to be our freest and fairest. I went out, I went out, put my personal integrity on the line, spoke so much copiously about these things. So I felt personally disappointed with what happened. So we go again. Like I said before, society must continue for us to achieve the results that we desire, to see the Nigeria that we want to see. We must not give up. We have to keep at it. We have to keep the faith. We have to now, between now and the next elections, we obviously need to take another look at the electoral act and tidy up for that to ensure that the loopholes that INEC played with, that the loopholes that some of the politicians played with are blocked, are blocked. And then we go again, we start talking to the populace and try to reassure them. It's fairly the young population who came out so much, but were so terribly disappointed. We will not give up. We can't give up. The education continues. The enlightenment continues. The encouragement continues and eventually we will get there. Chagonsha Bhattana is the chairman of ACT Network and also a good governance advocate. I want to say thank you for being part of the conversation. We appreciate it. It's always a pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right. Thanks for joining us. And that's the show tonight. Don't forget, you can follow us on YouTube to play catch up on our previous episodes on Plus TV Africa or Plus TV Africa Lifestyle. I'm Mary Anacorn. Do have a pleasant evening.