A special Nigerian tribunal upheld the 2007 election of President Umaru Yar’Adua, rejecting challenges from rivals who wanted the vote annulled because of massive rigging. Yar’Adua’s two main rivals in last April’s election, former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari and then Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, had asked the tribunal to annul the election, alleging widespread fraud, as pronounced by local and international observers.

The tribunal ruled that Buhari, Yar’Adua’s main opponent, had failed to prove that violations of the electoral law were substantial enough to invalidate the overall result. The five judges of the tribunal also rejected Abubakar’s challenge.

Read what leading analysts said before the ruling and have your say on how the tribunal’s dismissal of the challenges will impact on Nigeria’s politics and economy.

Patrick Smith, Africa Confidential (see full analysis)
“Nigeria’s post-election crisis has taken a very different turn from Kenya’s. Unlike Kenya’s thwarted politicians, Nigeria’s opposition leaders are contesting the election results through the courts and this time seem to be confident of success - even if they have to take their claims to the Supreme Court.”

Bismarck Rewane, Financial Derivatives Company (see full analysis )
“The Nigerian judiciary, in trying to entrench the principle of the separation of powers and its independence, might seize the historic opportunity of the election tribunal to redeem its battered reputation.”

Antony Goldman, PM Consulting (see full analysis)
“If the court says the April 2007 presidential election was unfair on the grounds that it was rigged - which is what Buhari and Atiku are arguing - presumably someone is guilty of the rigging. It seems strange to say one candidate rigged an election to such a degree that it must be re-run, only then to allow that candidate to have another go, apparently without any censure or sanction.”

Amin Dalhatu, politician, northern Nigeria (see full analysis)
“The much anticipated verdict of the Nigerian presidential election tribunal will leave us in deeper political quagmire than we already are in, whichever way it goes.”

Nigeria’s post-election crisis has taken a very different turn from Kenya’s. Unlike Kenya’s thwarted politicians, Nigeria’s opposition leaders are contesting the election results through the courts and this time seem to be confident of success - even if they have to take their claims to the Supreme Court.

Along with many observers, I would say that Nigeria’s vote counting in April 2007 looked even more inventive than Kenya’s last December. Indeed, Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’Adua has acknowledged that the widespread criticisms of the performance of the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission need to be addressed.

Yet in Nigeria, there are no visiting UN secretaries general, no high-level mediation and no talk of power-sharing. There’s just a simple demand from the opposition politicians - Abubakar Atiku and General Muhammadu Buhari - that the election should be rerun under an independent electoral commission.

I went down to the Niger Delta to report on the election last April where there had been several violent clashes before the elections. On the day before the Presidential elections in Bayelsa, a group of militants stormed into the state capital Yenagoa, released some of their comrades held in a police cell and blew a hole in a local hotel.

Across the country there was plenty of election day violence. But after the result was announced, there was an almost eerie calm - even the Delta militants announced a truce of sorts. Neither of the opposition contenders seemed ready to take their battle to streets.

General Buhari told me that he expected the ’cause of free elections’ to be taken up by civil society groups and he wasn’t the sort of politician who would lead protest marches through the capital.

So against expectations, Nigeria is facing the prospect of a quiet revolution as the courts overturn the ruling People’s Democratic Party’s election victories. So far the courts have overturned the governorship election results in six states, as well as ruling against the election of several senators and representatives in the National Assembly.

Now Nigeria is to enter unknown territory. The Presidential Election tribunal is due soon to announce its verdict on the mass of evidence and petitions presented to it by Abubakar’s and Buhari’s lawyers. That judgement is unlikely to be definitive: whichever side loses is likely to appeal. So there is the prospect of a lengthy legal battle ahead.

Should, the tribunal rule against President Yar’Adua and the PDP, all sorts of imponderables come into play: firstly, who will run the country? In the event of the elected President and Vice President having to stand down, the President of the Senate has to take over and organise fresh elections within 60 days. However, the current President of the Senate, David Mark, faces his own election petition. If he loses, who then takes over?

Nigerian civic activists point out that a rerun of last year’s elections without fundamental reform of the electoral commission is unlikely to be much of an improvement. Yet the prospect of another vote has sent the political class into paroxysms of plotting, the ruling PDP is to hold a national conference early in March at which some of its more ambitious members will scheme to replace Yar’Adua’s name on the ballot with their own, if there is a rerun.

And the old military politicians in the party - Generals Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida - are still mentioned as kingmakers, if not kings trying to get back on the throne. The opposition candidates have their own problems: General Buhari has fallen out with some of the leading members of his own party who joined the Yar’Adua government and doubts persist about Abubakar’s seriousness as a presidential contender.

So much is hanging on the court’s decision that Nigeria’s literati have taken to rewriting those lines in Shakespeare’s King Henry IV part II: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a judge’s wig …”

The Nigerian judiciary, in trying to entrench the principle of the separation of powers and its independence, might seize the historic opportunity of the election tribunal to redeem its battered reputation. Hitherto the Court system was believed to be corrupt, slow and weak. However, election issues are not just criminal or of a Common Law dimension but have major implication son stability.

The judges will not be oblivious to the violence and chaos in Kenya and the possibility of a contagion across Sub-Saharan Africa. Nigerians remember too well the problems in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast and dread a repeat in their country. Therefore the judiciary could be caught between horns of a dilemma in trading off strong judicial precedents of obiter dieta in the defence of plural democracy and stability of the nation.

The immediate and remote consequences of any decision will impact on the political equilibrium, business/financial dynamics and the levers of control in Nigeria. Assuming that the election is annulled and a fresh one is held, the incumbent is expected to have a strategic advantage, assuming he can secure the nomination of his party, the PDP.

The PDP is already in the middle of a squabble over its leadership. Even though there are no strong ideological differences of opinion, the struggle and acrimony over control of the party is vicious. In the eye of the storm is ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo whose legacy and influence is being threatened. Therefore, even though conventional logic points to a no-contest for the incumbent, it will be fool-hardy to assume that Yar’Adua’s nomination is a fait accompli.

However, if Yar’Adua bows out because of his lack of interest (a rumour that has been widely circulated) then it could be a free-for-all amongst the northern elite who will produce a candidate, according to PDP rules. A fiercely fought political battle in what was considered the monolithic northern establishment is a dreaded situation.

In the meantime, Yar’Adua has maintained a strong hold on the purse and upheld fiscal discipline much to the dismay of the influence peddlers. A vicious political struggle and the attendant trade-offs could compromise these gains and lead to undesirable macroeconomic consequences.

Two constituencies that need to be watched at these times remain the military and the oil-producing Niger Delta. The military have a history of destabilising political systems in Africa whilst the Niger Delta crisis even though ebbing could easily become effervescent again.

There are a few things that strike me as curious about the process in Nigeria.

If the court says the April 2007 presidential election was unfair on the grounds that it was rigged - which is what Buhari and Atiku are arguing - presumably someone is guilty of the rigging.

It seems strange to say one candidate rigged an election to such a degree that it must be re-run, only then to allow that candidate to have another go, apparently without any censure or sanction.

Nor, for that matter, was there anything to suggest that the presidential election was somehow altogether out of step with the rest of the electoral process in Nigeria. A handful of governors have been ordered from office by courts - but on technical grounds relating to interpretation of the electoral commission’s powers rather than because of proof of cheating. The problems in the presidential election were not isolated - they were a function of Nigeria’s political class.

Was it a question of a few bad apples? Or was the whole barrel rotten? And in civilian politics in Nigeria, are those elected to office ever more accountable to, or representative of, the broad masses of voters below, or a handful of barons above? Perhaps in 2007 the real difference only was that the illusion of democracy was just too thin to be credible.

And if the court does order a re-run, what guarantees are there that the process will be fairer, with the same electoral commission and the ruling PDP in an even stronger position in the states? The process should be managed by David Mark, the Senate president. But his election to the Senate has also been challenged. If he has to go, the PDP’s support for the zoning of top offices means his replacement will also have to come from the north central zone. Of the zone’s 19 senators, five are from opposition parties; of the remaining 14 at least 8 face challenges to their elections. The contest for Senate president could be almost as frenzied as those that took place last April.

Unless of course the PDP were to engineer a change in its candidate - and it’s worth remembering that there was nothing terribly democratic about how any of the presidential candidates secured their original nominations - which might mean that Atiku and Buhari had gone to all that trouble potentially only to give former president Olusegun Obasanjo, their nemesis, another crack at putting a more reliable place man in the job.

As with Kenya - can a political problem be fixed by anyone other than politicians? Let’s not forget, the courts in Rivers state decided the PDP governor should stand down because he ought not to have been the party’s candidate in the first place. That was a fairly contentious ruling - but the court then went on to say that the man who it said should have been the candidate should immediately be sworn in as governor, because the PDP had won the election - in a state where many observers said little or no polling took place at all! So in the interests of due process, someone who was never a candidate and who did not stand in an election that in any case did not happen rules over a state with a budget this year of close to $2bn.

The much anticipated verdict of the Nigerian presidential election tribunal will leave us in deeper political quagmire than we already are in, whichever way it goes. If judgement favours President Umaru Yar’Adua, we’ll all be expected to accept it and move on. It will, however give people the wrong impression that whatever one gets away with at the polling stations will eventually find legitimacy at the tribunals.

If on the other hand President Yar’Adua loses, several critical issues will become manifest:

The political problems created by the manner in which the elections were handled still remain unresolved. Among these is the credibility problem that hangs over the Independent National Electoral Commission, which by law will be charged with the responsibility of conducting fresh elections if the tribunal so directs.

President Yar’Adua may have a bigger challenge from within his own party. It is an open secret that some members of the PDP are warming up to the idea of forcing for a re-run of their party primaries which they feel had been manipulated to favour Yar’Adua. If they succeed, the situation may be a bit messy and whoever eventually emerges as the candidate may be so bruised that he may have difficulty winning a rerun election.

General Buhari may even be in bigger trouble. He may not even have a platform on which to re-run given the level of disaffection between himself and his party, the All Nigeria Peoples Congress. Moreover, he may have to look for a new running mate because his former running mate, who doubles as the party’s national chairman, has disowned him and is now in working “alliance” with the ruling party, the PDP.

Atiku Abubakar’s party, the AC, is in such total disarray that it can no longer have strong national reach to guarantee his success. Moreover, his decision to stay out of the country due to what many believe is his fear of being arrested, has earned the anger of many of his erstwhile supporters. Compared to Buhari’s doggedness, many see him as too weak and self-centred to be an effective leader. An interesting idea being mentioned is for Atiku to throw whatever remains of his support and resources behind Buhari. That should surely give the PDP a big challenge and make the outcome of a re-run election far from certain.