By Isaac Olusesi
The news of the Supreme Court decision on Osun State governorship and compensative national honour to be conferred on the former All Progressives Congress (APC) governor of the state has elicited reactions across the state, partly with well grounded disgust and partly with well founded applause. And social media feeds were awashed with commendation and condemnation of the dual news in a range of different positions.
The Supreme Court had in a unanimous judgement declared , “The entire proceedings at the tribunal is a nullity,” “……….” and held that the All Progressives Congress (APC), with its candidate, Mr Gboyega Oyetola failed to substantiate its argument. And the court affirmed Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s Ademola Adeleke as Governor of Osun.
President Mohammud Buhari’s valedictory conferment of a national honour on Oyetola, albeit for his contribution to the nation’s development, is compensatory to recompense the Osun APC- Oyetola’s loss of the court judgement to moral persuasion. Oyetola, practically did very well and contributed substantially to the governance and administration of Osun. And as corollary, he deserves all honours, but by dissection, the Commander of the Order of Niger (CON) conferred on him is an alibi to mitigate or reduce, at best, offset the unpleasant effect of the court judgement. Yes, unpleasant! CON is a make up in exchange for the APC- Oyetola governorship, lost to ethical reasoning, one of the non-legal regulatory responses by the homeostasises or homeostatic control systems of the interconnectivity of the judiciary and executive organs of government, in this case, at the center, how? We will come back to that in the course of our scanning.
The apex court had operated as a super legislature with moral values as decisively over-riding criteria for the judgement on the Osun governorship brawl between Oyetola and Adeleke, and not on the basis of legal rules, sourced, interpreted and applied in the instance, with the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC)’s regulations and guidelines. This is the inventive truth in any seriously unbiased assessment of the court judgement. The judgement only distilled the moral contents but unfairly outside skilled application of legal rules in the judicial process on the Osun governorship.
The Supreme Court ought to have refused any injection of moral reasoning in its decision as essentially non – legal. After all, the governorship in question did not belong in any such highly visible moral issues as abortion, homosexuality, homeless remedies, woman battering or home violence that are currently in our courts and well within the ambit of morality with the rightness or wrongness of the issues, evaluated by their consonance with moral values.
In ironic contradistinction, the judgement of the Supreme Court on Osun governorship relied on and was rather influenced by the reported violence and palpable threats of breakdown of law and order in the state. The judgement, pointedly was to maintain political order in Osun. If the judgement had been otherwise, un- helped by the moral permissibility of the court, it’s believed in the interrelatedness of judiciary and executive arms of government at the center that the Osun residents might, on reflex action, want to cause more troubles and create further socio-political dislocations by the free reign of political killings within the state to snowball to violence of unimaginable magnitude in presence, direction and distance. That’s the rationale at this time that the nation is at the threshold of the presidential baton set to be passed from Buhari to Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Akin to a relay race.
Source: Vanguard
