Anambra: The Supreme Court Has Spoken
The former Chief justice of Nigeria, Justice Alfa Belgore once admonished the judiciary to guard being used to shorten justice. His profession admonishes that justice should not only be done, but also be seen to be done. In furtherance, Justice Belgore warned the judiciary not to allow procedure to choke the wheel of justice delivery. And the judiciary has lived up to that admonishment as social democrats have seen took place in Anambra State on June 14, 2007, occasioned by the Supreme Court’s ruling that the intimidated Governor Peter Obi should complete his four year tenure in office, thereby resulting to deposing the Governor-selected Andy Uba.
Mr. Obi went to the Federal High Court before the take-off of the just concluded April polls, to seek for completion of the four years, when he noticed that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was bent on conducting elections in Anambra State.
A lot of people who did not believe in Obi thought that it was a journey bent in futility just because dishonourable Andy Uba who was contesting had a very strong rope ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo tied on his waist to forge ahead in corruption and in the guber race, under the platform of the (People Debase People) PDP.
When Obi went to the court, to the best of the knowledge of the court, it allowed the case to drag on. People thought that it was business as usual! Nigerians wondered if the court were alive to their responsibilities. They envisaged that the court would had dispensed with the case even before the elections, a fact that explained the decision Judiciary resolved to deal with such cases speedily in the interest of justice. The fate of Obi’s tenure was on the amiss, if it had ended or not, because Nigerians were waiting on the judiciary.
The lawyers’ say that jurisdiction is important, because once a court hears a case without that; it would be an exercise in futility. The statement the Court of Appeal made on hearing the matter that the INEC had powers to disqualify a candidate, irked the collective intelligence of many Nigerians. The lower courts with arsenal of lovely jurists nearly messed the case up on account of lack of jurisdiction, which perhaps they did not interpret nicely, and the Supreme Court has spoken, that the matter has jurisdiction.
It is heartwarming to perceive that democracy has come to stay in Nigeria; it has a different phase now unlike the asphalt democracy Obasanjo practiced. He intimidated virtually all the facets of the arms of government, and he did not respect the rule of law. Obasanjo was lawless and made his loyalists the crusaders. So, now that the Supreme Court has spoken that ignoble Andy Uba should leave Awka, the capital of Anambra State, as self-acclaimed governor, for Obi, the Court has to order for his arrest for eating into the tenure of Obi through the elections that even Obi shouted hoarse was a sham. If this is done, it will be a cautious approach to the to-be dissidents and lawbreakers Obasanjo had bred.
Odimegwu Onwumere
Oyigbo, Rivers State, Nigeria.
+2348032552855
