The pawn gets punished
The 2021 conviction of Akwa Ibom's returning officer in the 2019 elections, Professor Peter Ogban, for rigging the senatorial election for Godswill Akpabio was upheld by the Court of Appeal.
The Court of Appeal in Calabar upheld the 2021 conviction of Professor Peter Ogban for rigging a senatorial election for Godswill Akpabio. Ogban, a professor at the University of Calabar, was initially jailed for three years for announcing false results in two local government areas in Akwa Ibom North-West District during the 2019 general elections. The Court of Appeal affirmed this conviction and criticised Ogban's involvement in election manipulation as a professor. Ogban falsified results to favour the All Progressives Congress (APC), adding 5,000 fake votes. Another professor, Ignatius Uduk, was also jailed for election fraud in a separate case.
Consequences for electoral malpractice of this nature are essential to foster free and fair elections. Yet there is a glaring contradiction at play: while the electoral officer has been convicted and imprisoned for fraud, the principal beneficiary of that fraud currently occupies the office of Senate President. The repercussions cannot—and must not—end with the returning officer.
If the election that produced Mr Akpabio has been legally and factually deemed fraudulent, then at the very least, the seat should be declared vacant. More crucially, an independent investigation must determine whether the beneficiary was complicit in the rigging. If proven, he should face sanctions proportionate to his involvement, if not more severe.
The Court of Appeal in Calabar’s recent affirmation of Professor Peter Ogban’s 2021 conviction represents a rare, albeit belated, victory for electoral integrity in Nigeria. The judgment upholds the original three-year prison sentence for falsifying senatorial election results and delivers a stinging rebuke of how academic authority has been weaponised to subvert democracy. That Professor Ogban’s case mirrors the conviction of another academic, Professor Ignatius Uduk, underscores a disturbing trend: the growing complicity of highly educated professionals in electoral fraud.
INEC’s reliance on university professors as returning officers hinges on an expectation of neutrality, intellectual integrity, and moral standing. These convictions shatter that assumption, exposing how even the most credentialed individuals can succumb to political pressure or inducement.
While the court’s decision is commendable, it also lays bare the systemic rot enabling such misconduct. In Nigeria, electoral accountability remains the exception, not the rule. For every Ogban punished, countless others evade justice. Without sweeping institutional reform, such rulings risk being merely symbolic.
The Ogban case's true weight lies in its precedent—a rare instance of judicial clarity in a system riddled with fraud, violence, and impunity. The challenge now is to transform this into a sustained culture of accountability: one where electoral crimes are not just punished retrospectively, but proactively prevented, and where the law applies equally to both the perpetrators and those who profit from their crimes.