*I thought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more! Macbeth is murdering
sleep.” Innocent sleep. Sleep that soothes away all our worries. Sleep that
puts each day to rest. Sleep that relieves the weary laborer and heals hurt
minds. Sleep, the main course in life’s feast, and the most
nourishing**”*
*.** – Macbeth.*
The timing of the judgment did not even support the illegality
allegedly perpetrated
by the five- man member panel headed by Justice Oyebisi Omoleye, who robbed
Abians of the treasured sleep by delivering a judgment that has been
tagged” the most controversial in the recent history”. The judgment that
nullified the mandate Abians unanimous gave Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu to serve
them as the number one citizen of the state.
The judgment came on the eve of the new year when Abians were savouring the
goodies that the festivities usher. It came at a period Abians in the
Diaspora had cashed in on the opportunity provided by the yuletide to have
a firsthand assessment of the transformation going on in their state,
courtesy of the seven months old administration of Ikpeazu.
Indeed, the five- man member panel that nullified Ikpeazu’s mandate at the
Appeal Court in Owerri on 31st December, 2015 murdered sleep that soothes
away all the worries of Abians. Sleep that has put their decades of neglect
to rest. Sleep that has relieved them of their weary labour and hurt. And
like Cawdor and Macbeth, sleep had eluded them.
Like the proverbial character that stirred the hornet’s nest, it has been
banters, knocks and bashing. It has been barrage of criticisms from the
legal to moral and to what have you.
Few days after the controversial judgment, the Chief Justice of Nigeria,
Justice Mahmud Mohammed, had, while addressing justices of the Court of
Appeal in Abuja at the Annual Conference of the Court of Appeal held in
Abuja, expressed concerns over conflicting judgments emanating from the
Court of Appeal.
He said: “As the guardians of the law, we must not only be just but also
convey certainty in our justness”.
The Peoples Democratic Party largely affected by the decisions of justices
of the Court of Appeal in electoral matters had accused the justices of
interpreting the laws to favour the ruling All Progressives Congress. The
party had also accused the justices of the Court of Appeal of giving
conflicting judgments in similar cases and refusing to follow the
precedents laid down by the Supreme Court.
He told the justices that they were not allowed to continue to shift the
goalposts when the game was on.
While advising them to adhere to certainty and stop creating confusion,
Justice Mohammed said: “As your lordships will agree, where an aggrieved
person perceives, whether rightly or wrongly, that they will not receive
justice, such a situation can indeed bode ill for the community in which he
lives and can lead to acrimony and anarchy. “We must not ignore the
negative perception that is occasioned by conflicting judgments delivered
at various divisions of the Court of Appeal. Such judicial contradictions
only result in untold hardships to litigants in their quest for justice.
They further cast your lordships in an unfavourable light and leave the
judiciary at the mercy of innuendoes, crass publications and editorials”.
A highly- respected and celebrated columnist, Amanze Obi, in his column
”Broken Tongues” of Thursday , January 7, 2016 entitled” Judiciary
on trial
again” raised some pertinent questions that call for sober reflection.
For clarity and comprehension of the piece, permit me to reproduce
substantial part of the piece:” This latest judgement from the Court of
Appeal is in the mould of some of the radical judgements, which our courts
have had to deliver in election matters. It will go down in our political
history as one of the judgements that have tried and tested the
impartiality and independence of the judiciary in Nigeria. It should be
noted, for instance, that the judgement is a radical departure from the
earlier one given by the Abia State Governorship Election Petition
Tribunal, which upheld Okezie’s election. Given this earlier verdict, the
expectation was that the worst that could happen would be to call for a
rerun in the event of a higher court feeling that the earlier judgement
could not be upheld.
“But what came from the Court of Appeal was a bombshell. It was not in
conformity with the wildest imagination of bookmakers. Our recent
experiences with our courts show that such judgements, whenever they are
given, are largely political and ultimately spiteful. There are plans
behind them. They are usually directed at persons or institutions, which
the courts feel have deliberately perverted the principles of equity and
fair play. When, for instance, the Supreme Court declared Chibuike Amaechi
as the governor of Rivers State, even when he did not stand for election,
the story behind it was one of spite. The court saw Amaechi as the
oppressed, in fact, an underdog, who was trampled upon by the PDP and some
powers that be who did not want him to become governor. The court’s
disposition was that such a man needed help. And so, it veered off the
legal route in order to procure a favourable judgement for Amaechi. But the
court was later to be embarrassed by its own indiscretion. Today, the
verdict of the Supreme Court on Amaechi remains one of the legal
aberrations of our time.
“But the Abia situation, to all practical intents and purposes, cannot be
likened to the Rivers scenario. There are, no doubt, notable political
gladiators, who have been battling for political space in the state. But in
all of this, neither Okezie nor Otti was in the picture. The two
governorship contenders may have been associates of the contending power
brokers in the state, but their involvement is too tangential for the
political judgement that is playing out. And so, the question must still be
asked: Why is the Court of Appeal incensed over Okezie? Why is he being
made a subject of spite and disdain? Why has the Court of Appeal acted as
if it was on a mission? The majority of the Abia electorate are raising
these questions. They are incensed by the judicial fiat that wants to make
nonsense of their verdict. And so, the court may have pleased itself in
this matter, but the people who are supposed to be the ultimate
beneficiaries of the judgement are not satisfied.
“The people cannot also fathom why Abia is being factored into the
political earthquake that the ruling All Progressives Congress ( APC) is
allegedly planning to unleash on the polity. The party has moved into Akwa
Ibom and Rivers States and appears set to topple the apple carte. We fully
understand the politics behind all this. The two South South states gave
the Jonathan candidacy a big boost with the reasonable number of votes they
returned in last year’s presidential elections. Given the winner takes
all disposition of the present order, somebody somewhere may be feeling
that the two states should be punished for their practical support for
Jonathan.
“But how does Abia come into this mix? Abia, we must recall, is one of the
South East states that supported Jonathan only in words but not in action.
South east states, most embarrassingly, could not return substantial
number of votes because of the shallow thinking of the political elite in
the zone. They did not play the politics of numbers. They did not know that
the ultimate braggadocio is to ensure victory, using numbers as a bait.
This device was masterfully employed by Attahiru Jega’s Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC) in many northern states, notably Kano,
Katsina and Kaduna where it posted huge figures to boost Buhari’s chances
at the polls. This notwithstanding, nobody is complaining about the padded
figures from the north. The courts are not going there to try their hands
on any form of radical displacement of the existing order.
“Even if Abia has to be tinkered with for whatever reason, the people do
not understand why that should come about through massive
disenfranchisement of a section of the Abia electorate. In fact, the most
contentious aspect of the entire drama is the cancellation of the results
of the three local government areas in Ngwa land where Okezie hails from.
The affected local government areas are those of Osisioma, Obingwa and
Isiala Ngwa North. The court cancelled the results of the elections in
these local government areas and did not order for a rerun. This is the
crux of the matter.
“Those who have peeped into the strength of the registered voting
population in the state say that the aforementioned local government areas
have about 300,000 registered voters. With the cancellation of the results
of the April 2015 governorship elections in the state in these areas, this
huge number of the voting population has been disenfranchised. Our
experience here shows that whereas INEC bothers about the
disenfranchisement of voters, one of the reasons it has declared a number
of elections inconclusive, the courts do not care a hoot about who is
disenfranchised or not.
“The recent governorship elections held in Kogi and Bayelsa states, for
instance, were declared inconclusive by INEC because there was need to
ensure that registered and eligible voters are not unduly schemed out in
the electoral process. In the case of Bayelsa State, the result of the
election is still pending because INEC is insisting on a rerun in Southern
Ijaw Local Government Area. The argument here is that the number of
registered voters in Southern Ijaw can tilt the result of the election to
any direction.
“The same thing is largely true of the Abia scenario. Here, three local
government areas with a registered voting population of over 300,000 are
involved. If the court complained of substantial non compliance with the
Electoral Act in the election that held in these areas, the right thing to
do is to order for a repeat of the election in the affected areas. To
declare a winner without minding the fact that the votes of the three local
government areas could alter the equation is the height of arbitrariness.
The action undermines the right of the electorate in the state to choose
who should govern them.
“It is unbecoming of our judges to sit in their comfort zones and declare
results of elections, which took so much to conduct. By that act, the
courts are making nonsense of both the electoral process and the
elections. The Supreme Court should rise to the occasion and save our
courts from imminent infamy”.
A legal luminary and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Chief Mike Ozekhome
has lent his voice to the issue. Ozekhome, who spoke at a Channels TV
Breakfast Programme ‘Sunrise Daily’, described the judgment as
‘fundamentally wrong’ and full of errors in Law.
He pointed out that the Court of Appeal was wrong in nullifying the
election of Abia State Governor, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu and declaring the
candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, Mr. Alex Otti as the
winner of the election.
According to him, “the Court of Appeal erred in Law by granting the Appeal
of Mr. Otti who could not adopt his own Written Statement on Oath at the
Tribunal and also by admitting in Evidence, the Card Reader Report from a
witness who was not the maker of the document. He also wondered how the
Court of Appeal could give credence to the Evidence of the APGA Star
Witness, Mr. Ahamdi Nweke, who was only a Collation Centre Agent and could
not have been at the Polling Units where Elections were alleged not to have
held”.
Ozekhome reasoned that on the facts of the case before the Court of Appeal,
it was fundamentally wrong for them to have declared Mr. Alex Otti as the
winner of the elections and ordered his swearing-in. He noted that
considering the fact that even going by the calculations of the Appeal
Court Justices, the difference between the votes allocated to Mr. Otti and
Dr. Ikpeazu was 48,000 while the total number of registered voters in the 3
Local Government Areas of Obingwa, Osisioma and Isialangwa North where they
cancelled elections are over 250,000 and as such, going by the Electoral
Act, the very worst the Court of Appeal should have ordered should have
been a rerun election in those 3 Local Government Areas where they
cancelled elections to decide the eventual winner.
He equally faulted the Court of Appeal for relying only on the Card Reader
to determine the issue of over-voting and wondered why they discountenanced
the Manual Accreditation done in those Local Government Areas considering
the fact that the INEC Guidelines allowed for Manual Accreditation where
Card Readers fail.
Ozekhome is optimistic that the Supreme Court will not allow the Appeal
Court Judgment on Abia State Governorship Elections to stand in the
interest of Equity, Justice and Fairness.
Just like Ozekhome, political watchers are expressing high hopes that the
alleged faulty judgment by the five- man member panel would not stand the
intense scrutiny of the Supreme Court, especially with the recent Supreme
Ruling on Zamfara.
It will be recalled that the Supreme Court on Friday affirmed the election
of Malam Abdulazeez Yari of All Progressives Congress (APC) as governor of
Zamfara. The grouse of the appellants in this issue, basically, is that
there was over-voting and that because of that there was substantial
non-compliance with the Electoral Act.
Delivering the judgment, the Justice John Okoro-led panel of six justices
held that the petition lacked substance.
The Court ruled that” to prove over-voting, the law is trite that the
petitioner must tender the voters’ register”.
A public affairs analyst and lawyer, Ugochukwu Amaraizu, argued that “the
Petitioners in Abia Tribunal did not tender same. The Respondents at the
lower Tribunal hammered on this issue with respect to the elections in
Obingwa, Osisioma and Isialangwa North. The Tribunal rightly observed it
and dismissed the petition”.
On the ground that the appellant ought to have shown that figures
representing over-voting, if removed, would result in victory for the
petitioner, Amaraizu maintained that Dr Livy Uzoukwu, SAN who appeared for
the 3rd Respondent- INEC told the Tribunal that even if the total number of
invalid votes or the number representing over-voting is removed, the 1st
Respondent- Dr Okezie Victor Ikpeazu would still be leading.
Amaraizu said:”The question now is which evidence did the Court of Appeal
rely on to cancel both the valid and the invalid votes?. If you check item
No.3 of the Order of the Court of Appeal, you will notice that the Court of
Appeal cancelled election in Obingwa, Osisioma and Isialangwa North. The
valid votes that were added are the ones from the supplementary election
that took place only in few polling Units in Osisioma and Isialangwa North.
But there was no supplementary election in Obingwa which was cancelled
alongside Osisioma and Isialangwa North. This is why the Court of Appeal
declared Dr Alex Otti winner of the election of April 11 and 25. The Appeal
Court cancelled the election held in the 3 LGs on 11/4/2015 thereby
disenfranchising over 300,000 registered voters”.
Ukegbu, a public affairs analyst, writes from Umuahia, Abia State.
