Former President Goodluck Jonathan has called on the National Assembly to fundamentally restructure how Nigeria handles election disputes. During a high-profile gathering in Abuja for the 70th birthday and book launch of Senator Gbenga Daniel, the former leader proposed the establishment of a specialized Constitutional Court dedicated solely to electoral matters. He believes this move is essential to ending the agonizing delays that often plague the nation’s political transition process.
In a conversation captured by Reports Jonathan pointed out the inefficiencies of the current three-tier litigation system, which drags cases through the tribunal, the Court of Appeal, and finally the Supreme Court. He argued that this multi-stage approach is slow and creates unnecessary tension in the polity. By moving to a specialized court, the judicial system could resolve these cases with more speed and precision, ensuring that the will of the voters is determined without years of legal back-and-forth.
To illustrate his point, the former president recalled a particularly frustrating historical case where a governorship election was overturned on a mere technicality involving the color of ink used by voters. Even though initial rulings had confirmed the validity of the ballots, the prolonged nature of the appeals process allowed such minor issues to derail the entire democratic outcome. While he acknowledged that recent reforms have improved the process somewhat, Jonathan insisted that the overall timeline for litigation remains far too long for a modern democracy.
He suggested that Nigeria look toward the models used in several Francophone African countries. In those systems, constitutional courts handle electoral disputes in a single, streamlined phase, which prevents the legal system from becoming a bottleneck for governance. According to Jonathan, adopting a similar one-stop shop for election cases would not only simplify the process but also restore greater public confidence in the finality of election results.
The event featured a rare gathering of Nigeria’s political elite, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Bola Tinubu, who was represented by the Minister of Finance, Wale Edun. The presence of such heavyweights underscores the weight of Jonathan’s proposal. As the National Assembly considers various constitutional amendments, this call for a specialized court is expected to take center stage in the ongoing debate over how to perfect the Nigerian electoral process.
Reports notes that if such a court were established, it could potentially free up the regular court system to focus on civil and criminal matters, effectively killing two birds with one stone.
