Nigerians must with
one voice put this critical question to the seven-member Supreme Court panel of
judges that sacked Governor Ihedioha of Imo State and planted Senator Hope
Uzodinma as his replacement: Distinguished as you all are, would you
have dared to pronounce this same perversity if other than the All Progressives
Congress (APC) is currently in control of the Federal Government of Nigeria?
 |
| *Justice Tanko Muhammad |
The
controversial Supreme Court verdict was read by Justice Kudirat Motonmori
Olatokunbo Kekere-Ekun. Mrs. Kekere-Ekun was born in 1958. She earned her first
Law degree from the University of Lagos, and the second from the London School
of Economics and Political Science, not from backyard or quota colleges that
routinely grant admissions to laggards confirmed incapable of passing basic
School Certificate subjects like English and Mathematics. Called to the Bar in
1981, she was appointed to the Supreme Court 32 years later.
Notable
lawyers hailed her appointment to the apex court, two of whose informed
opinions are here: “I have read a few of her judgments; she is very sound in
law. In other words, she suppresses technicality and allows substance to
prevail. She has that equitable spirit of trying to do justice,” said Professor
Itse Sagay, SAN.
Said
Mr. Tani Molajo, SAN: “This jurist has risen quickly through our judicial
system by sheer dint of diligence, scholarship and uprightness. I dare say that
I speak the mind of the entire profession when I say that the transfer of all
those virtues to our highest court in the person of Justice Kekere-Ekun is
cause for celebration.”
Equity.
Diligence. Scholarship. Uprightness. These are some of the intensifiers used in
support of Justice Kekere-Ekun’s suitability to sit in judgment over the
affairs of her fellow human beings. But, if asked by her son or daughter, would
she be able to pinpoint any of these wholesome qualities in the judgement she
read, which bizarrely manufactured 103,257 votes in excess of the number of
voters registered by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for
last year’s Imo State governorship election? Critical point: None of the
parties to the Election Petition disputed either of INEC’s total number of
registered voters and total number of accredited voters for the governorship
contest, from the Election Tribunal right up to the Supreme Court.
 |
| *Emeka Ihedioha |
The
other honourable members of the Supreme Court panel that decided Imo
governorship in Senator Uzodinma’s bewildering favour are: Chief Justice
Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed (66 years), Justice Nwali Sylvester Ngwuta (68), Justice
Olukayode Ariwoola (65), Justice Amiru Sanusi
(70), Justice (Mrs.) Amina Adamu Augie (65), and Justice
(Mrs.) Uwani Musa Abba Aji (62). That puts the average age of the
distinguished justices at 64.8 years. What impact is the judgment of these
highly respected jurists likely to have on Nigerians that are today only six
years old, or four years old, or eight years old?
Take
the Honourable Justice Ngwuta who has been a Supreme Court Justice since 2011.
He was, like a handful of other Justices of the apex court, arrested in October
2016, by operatives of the Department of State Security, on allegations of
bribery and corruption. Arraigned in court on 13 counts of money laundering by
the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, he was, like his peers,
discharged and acquitted because lawyers successfully argued the incompetence
of all the charges by standing on the key point that cases against superior
court Judges – from the High Courts to the Supreme Court – should first be
treated by the National Judiciary Council (NJC).
How
would Justice Ngwuta respond if a sister or brother of his asked why the
Supreme Court validated election result disavowed by three legally constituted
bodies – the INEC, the Election Tribunal and the Court of Appeal, but
flagrantly submitted to it by a Police officer legally incompetent to do so? We
are here talking of results which, according to the processes filed by lawyers
to Governor Ihedioha who is seeking a review of the Supreme Court judgment,
were computed by Senator Uzodinma. “The fraudulent nature of the additional
votes was demonstrated by the fact that the total votes cast as shown in the
first appellant/respondent’s computation was more than the total number of
voters accredited for the election…,” argues Ihedioha.
How
would Justice Amina Augie react to the following distorted statistics from the
Uzodinma results?
1.
Unit No. 69: The registered number
of voters in this unit is 492. But APC “scored” 819 votes. That is an
astonishing 334 votes over and above the number of those registered by INEC to
vote in the unit!
2. Unit No. 285: The registered number of voters in this unit is
449. But APC “scored” 780 votes, which figure is 335 votes more than the number
of voters registered by INEC to vote in that unit.
How
would Justice Uwani Musa Abba Aji explain the following incongruities?
1.
In the 388 Units whose results were
computed by Senator Uzodinma, he won an incredible 95 percent of the votes.
But, in contradistinction, he won a miserly 12 percent of the votes cast in the
2883 polling units on which INEC result was based.
2. In the 388 units of Uzodinma’s votes computation, no results
were entered for the 68 other political parties that fielded candidates for the
governorship election. Damningly, there were no fields in Uzodinma’s dubious
result sheets even for the inputting of scores of the other political parties.
My flabber is
comprehensively gasted.
Senator
Sola Akinyede is a constitutional lawyer. After forensically dissecting the
text of the Supreme Court judgment, he published an article entitled Supreme
Court and Imo: A Matter of Courage on the back page of ThisDay of
January 27, 2020. In it, he called for a review of the Supreme Court decision.
His argument: “The decision of the Supreme Court in Imo goes beyond Ihedioha.
It goes beyond Imo. It goes beyond PDP or APC. It goes to the heart and
foundation of the acceptability, credibility not just of the Supreme Court, but
of our justice system and our democracy. Amid its conflicts and contradictions,
if this decision is allowed to stand, it will set a precedent, and under the
doctrine of STARE DECISIS, the decision must be replicated in the different
Election Petitions Tribunals and Divisions of the Court of Appeal across the
country with each one picking any that fits its fancy. With a loss of confidence
in the justice system and disparate decisions by the various courts and
Tribunals, the consequences could be grave, leading to a breakdown of law and
order in different parts of the country in 2023/2024.
“By
changing the time-honoured legal principles and accepting the results from a
police officer who was not at the 388 polling units, the Supreme Court may not
appreciate the serious implications of their decision. But as a politician, I
know that without knowing it, they have just given a licence to politicians to
manufacture results from their bedrooms and call an army officer, Civil Defence
officer or anyone to present the results in court.”
 |
| *Hope Uzodinma |
Nigeria
is retrogressing, rather than progressing. In the years immediately following
the Wind of Independence that blew across Africa, Nigeria played a leading role
in supplying many newly independent eastern and southern African countries with
judges. Dr. Udo Udoma was the Chief Justice of Uganda in the 1960s, for
instance. Justice Michael Onyiuke was a judge in Tanzania. Justice Emmanuel
Ayoola was a Judge of the Appeals Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra
Leone. Nigeria’s renown as a centre of jurisprudential excellence was global.
Justices Teslim Elias, Charles Dadi Onyeama, Bola Ajibola, and Clement Akpamgbo
were judges of the World Court in the Hague.
But
witness what is happening today. The Kenyan Supreme Court on September 1, 2017
nullified the re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta, after finding that the
presidential ballot held a month earlier were “tainted by irregularities.”
Only
on February 3, 2020, a Malawi constitutional court nullified last May’s
election of President Peter Mutharika on the grounds of “massive
irregularities. Kenya gained Independence in 1963; Malawi gained Independence a
year later. But, in Nigeria that became Independent in 1960, the Supreme Court
has foisted a Governor on Imo State on the strength of fabricated results that
are tainted by massive inconsistencies, illogicalities and irregularities.
It
is welcome news that Governor Ihedioha promptly filed processes for the Supreme
Court decision that unjustly ousted him from office to be reviewed. People,
however learned they may be, are wrong who claim that all Supreme Court
judgments are set in granite. They are changeable. Here is the Hon Justice
Chukwudifu Oputa, the Socrates of the Nigerian Bench, on the subject:
“We
are final not because we are infallible; rather, we are infallible because we
are final. Justices of this Court are human beings, capable of erring. It will
be shortsighted arrogance not to accept this obvious truth. It is also true that this Court can do inestimable good
through its wise decisions. Similarly, the Court can do incalculable harm
through its mistakes. When, therefore, it appears to learned counsel
that any decisions of this Court has been given per incuriam, such
counsel should have the boldness and courage to ask that such a decision be
overruled. This Court has the power to overrule itself (and has done so in the
past) for it gladly accepts that it is far better to admit an error than to
persevere in error.” Justice Oputa was delivering the lead judgment in Adegoke
Motors Ltd vs Adesanya in 1989.
Other
congruent views are apposite here. Professor Ben Nwabueze is generally
acclaimed as Africa’s foremost constitutional lawyer, with dozens of books and
hundreds of scholarly papers to his name. In a 2005 paper entitled When
A Court Decision, As The Foundation Of The Rule Of Law, May Be Set Aside,
Professor Nwabueze argued that “The general rule governing the latter (setting
aside or reversing the outcome of a case) is that of stare decisis;
past decisions should be followed in the decision of present or future cases in
the interest of certainty, predictability and stability in the system. But the
rule allows for considerable flexibility in its application, a discussion of
which is not appropriate here, except to say that even the Supreme Court, as
the court of last resort, has laid it down that it will, albeit only sparingly,
‘depart from and overrule its previous decisions where, inter alia, (i)
it is shown that the previous decision is erroneous in law; or (ii) the
previous decision was given per incuriam; or (iii) it is shown that
the previous decision is contrary to public policy or is occasioning miscarriage
of justice or perpetuating injustice’: Att-Gen of the Federation v. Guardian
Newspapers Ltd [1999] 9 NWLR (Pt 618) 187 at page 266, as per Iguh JSC
delivering the lead judgment.”
Again!
“…the Supreme Court has laid it down that such a power (to alter decision
already taken) does inhere in every court. In Okafor v. Att-Gen of Anambra
State (1991) 7 SCNJ )Pt 11) 345 at pages 360-361, it said, per Karibi-Whyte
JSC: ‘There is no doubt that a court has the authority to declare its judgment
or the judgment of another court of co-ordinate jurisdiction null and void if
there is a fundamental defect in the proceeding which goes to the issue of
jurisdiction and competence.”
It
has been reported that all the 17 distinguished Supreme Court Justices will sit
to examine Governor Ihedioha’s plea for a reversal of the outrageous judgment
that forced him from office. Only one prayer is inevitable at this critical
junction. It is this: That the cerebral, honourable and distinguished Supreme
Court Justices should bear in mind the forthrightness and impeccable moral and
legal rectitude of Justice Oputa, their late, incorruptible member, to wit: “It
is … true that (the Supreme Court) can do inestimable good through its wise
decisions. Similarly, the Court can do incalculable harm through its mistakes.”
Justice
Oputa was saying that, by its decisions, the Supreme Court could make or mar a
nation, could preserve or pulverize a people, could develop or demolish an
entity. Would the apex court succumb to the allure of lending a hand to the
dismantling of Nigeria, or would the cadences of its pronouncements constitute
cornerstones for the enthronement of a society bound by truth, equity and
justice? There is no doubt whatsoever that what Governor Ihedioha got from the
Supreme Court judgment of January 14, 2020 was a short shrift. How could it
ever be dreamt of, let alone be brazenly declared in the state of wakefulness,
that during 2020, someone assumed the governorship of a Nigerian State on the
untenability of 103,257 fictitious votes incongruously sanctioned by the
Supreme Court of the Federal Republic of Nigeria?
Yet,
still, to cite Senator Sola Akinyede one more time: “Justices of the Supreme
Court are human beings and, therefore, fallible. This is more so having regard
to the workload thrust upon them not just by gubernatorial election petitions,
but by pre-election matters in gubernatorial and other elections.”
The
point of the above citation is to forcefully dissuade the proclivity to
insinuate corruption as the launchpad of the bizarre anti-Ihedioha verdict. I
personally consider it a mistake, albeit a lamentably grievous one. What NOT to
do? The Supreme Court must NOT shoot into the belly of permanent, inerasable
records a declaration that it is legally fitting and morally proper to index
Nigerian electoral offices on fictitious votes illegally submitted by
characters in uniform. What to DO? The only sensible option for any sane person
trapped in a pit is to stop digging.
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