The Nation Newspaper

Category: Lawal Ogienagbon

  • Election, unsigned ballots and law

    Election, unsigned ballots and law

    Elections worldwide are guided by laws. They are not conducted on a whim. The laws cover the contestants, the voters and the umpire. The laws are not for decoration; they are to ensure the credibility of the exercise.

    Elections are serious business. They are fought with all that the contestants have – money, men and materials. While the contestants strategise on how to win, the umpire worries about the freeness and fairness of the exercise.

    The umpire is key to the success and transparency of the election. The umpire could be an individual or an institution and integrity must be the umpire’s watchword. In Nigeria, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which has become known by various names under different stages of our political evolution, handles elections.

    The umpire has never come under fire as it is now experiencing. What are its sins? While not defending INEC, it must be stated that in most cases, many of its accusers are just criticising the agency because they lost. Where they won, their verdict usually is, it did well. Sadly, they have transferred their aggression to the court, which is now being dragged all over the place for following the law stricto sensu.

    The laws guiding elections are unique. This is why election cases are described as sui generis (in a class of their own). To win an election case, the petitioner must prove that it was not conducted in substantial compliance with the law. But in most cases, this has become a dilemma. In the circumstance, the court has no choice than to throw out the case.

    That the court cannot take the place of the electorate is not debatable. It is not the court’s duty to elect people, but it is its job to determine the winner of an election in any dispute before it. It is not an interference when the court does that, but part of the process as enshrined in law. It is like that too in other parts of the world. But unlike us, most times, their elections end up at the polls and not in the court. Losers accept defeat and move on.

    Who do we blame that the reverse is the case here? Nobody, as it is the right of the loser to go to court. However, what is not right is not to accept the court’s verdict and then resort to malign the judges, with lawyers in full support. The judges did not enact the law; their job is to interpret it and in doing so, if they observe any flaw, they can point it out. One interesting aspect of the Electoral Act which has come under intense scrutiny of late is Section 63.

    It is on the strength of this provision that the tribunal sitting in Kano invalidated the election of Governor Abba Yusuf of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP). The tribunal found that 165,000 ballot papers did not bear the INEC seal nor were they signed by the presiding officer at the polling units where they were used. As a way of maintaining the integrity of the election, the law empowers the court to invalidate such votes and deduct them from the total scores.

    The tribunal did precisely that and Yusuf’s total votes dropped sharply. His loss became the gain of Nasiru Gawuna of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who the tribunal subsequently declared winner of the election.

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    To some senior lawyers, such as Femi Falana, that amounted to sanctioning 165,000 voters for some electoral officers’ error. How? He did not say. Does he have evidence that the electoral officers issued those ballot papers? Did they match the ones in INEC’s booklet? Where did they come from, if they were not issued by the electoral officers and did not match those in the booklet? Did Falana consider all these before lashing the tribunal for invalidating Yusuf’s election because of the unsigned ballot papers, which may eventually turn out to be fake?

    I can see where Falana is coming from, though. His thinking is that the voters could not have come into possession of those ballot papers without the electoral officers’ knowledge. This will be true to the extent that the ballot papers were obtained at the polling unit and from the right source. But where the process is compromised and party faithful allowed to take over at polling centres, can the court be blamed for invoking the law accordingly?

    Clearly, something went wrong in those polling units, which may be beyond the power of the presiding officers, except if they were part of it. Where then is the fault of the tribunal in all these? I hope Falana is not  saying that it should have looked the other way and aided and abetted electoral offence in clear violation of the law?

    According to Section 63 (1) of the Electoral Act: Subject to subsection (2), a ballot paper which does not bear the official mark prescribed by the Commission shall not be counted. In Section 65 (1), the law allows the returning officer to take final decision on the issue subject to a review within seven days by INEC. After seven days, INEC becomes functus officio and can no longer so act, leaving only the court with the power to do so as contained in Section 65 (2):

    A decision of the returning officer under subsection (1) may be reviewed by an election tribunal or court of competent jurisdiction in an election petition proceedings under this Act.

    The Kano tribunal acted under the ambit of this provision. To say that the court should shut its eyes to the use of unsigned ballot papers is to encourage electoral malpractice. The user and the provider of such ballot papers should answer for their action and the beneficiary deprived the fruit of an unjust victory. 

  • Joe Ajaero v the state

    Joe Ajaero v the state

    What Joseph Ajaero, president of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), was assaulted in Owerri, the Imo State capital, is no longer news. What is in the news is the strike called by NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) over the incident. As condemnable as the attack is, labour pundits are wondering the need for a strike. When did an attack on a labour leader become an industrial dispute?

      By their action, NLC and TUC have shown that not only the government can abuse power. Sadly, labour which should be an example in the use of power, is engaging in what it normally accuses the government of. There are many labour matters that should engage NLC and TUC attention.

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      The Ajaero issue is a private matter between him and his attackers. An injury to him, as Felix Usifo of TUC claimed, cannot be an injury to all. If it were, labour would have spoken up and gone on strike for the thousands of workers daily abused in many companies nationwide. Usifo should note that we are not in an animal farm where some animals are more equal than others.

      This strike is not in furtherance of workers’ interest,  but that of Ajaero, who should be allowed to fight his battles on his own terms. Ajaero can bring a civil suit against those who assaulted him without dragging Nigerian workers into the case.

  • Tinubu, NJC and Supreme Court

    Tinubu, NJC and Supreme Court

    There is nothing more urgent now than the filling of the vacancies in the Supreme Court.  The retirement of Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammed on October 27 increased the vacancies in the highest court in the land to 11. With Muhammed’s exit, the court has only 10 Justices left, and this number is only enough to constitute two panels of five justices each to hear appeals that are not constitutionally-related.

    There will be a problem where the appeal is a constitutional matter because the panel must consist of seven justices. Where that is the case, the court will face the problem of having no Justices available to hear other appeals. Should appeals remain in the court’s docket because there are no enough hands to handle them? Should the number of Justices of the Supreme Court (JSC) be allowed to deplete that much before vacancies are filled? How did this happen?

       It is disturbing that the court has not had its full complement of  21 Justices, as stipulated in the Constitution, for years. It is unacceptable for the apex court to be starved of Justices at any point in time. The Supreme Court is not only a court of law, it also formulates policy. Under its functions, it shapes the nation’s socio-political development. The court’s October 26 verdict on the last presidential election dispute showed how important it is to the polity.

       As a matter of urgency, the vacancies in the court must be filled to enable it continue to function optimally. No less a person than the President weighed in to the matter on Monday at the opening of the All Nigeria Judges Conference of the Superior Courts in Abuja. President Bola Tinubu addressed a pertinent issue in his intervention. He suggested that practising lawyers too be considered for appointment into the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. The President was not saying something new. There is a school of thought which believes that, that is the way to go.

        It happened in the past when Taslim Elias was appointed Chief Justuce of Nigeria (CJN) from outside the bench. The practice in recent times, however, is to appoint Justices from the Appeal Court to the Supreme Court. Despite calls on the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC) and National Judicial Council (NJC) to cast their nets wide in the search for newJustices of both courts, they have stuck to the tradition of looking within for such appointees. Whereas the Constitution throws the job open to all qualified lawyers.

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       A person shall not be qualified to be CJN or a JSC, unless he is qualified to practise as a legal practitioner in Nigeria and has been so qualified for not less than 15 years, says Section 231 (3) of the Constitution. So, if the Constitution makes the job open, can NJC and FJSC limit their pick to only those from the appeal court?

       It is high time NJC and FJSC stopped this practice which appears to be a violation of the right of all practising lawyers qualified for the job. The bodies may cite fairness or otherwise to those career Justices, if they are bypassed in picking a new CJN, by bringing in someone from outside, so to say. But the Constitution allows that. Thus, NJC and FJSC cannot continue to follow convention in respect of this matter.

        It is a patent breach of the right of legal practitioners with 15 years post-qualification call interested in becoming JSC or even CJN, if they are not considered by NJC and FJSC, all because they are not ‘insiders’. The Supreme Court deserves the best brains and they can be either ‘insiders’ or ‘outsiders’ as envisaged by the Constitution. So, it is not a matter of convention, but of law. The Constitution should, therefore, prevail in filling the vacancies in the Supreme Court.

       As the Constitution states in Section 1 (1): “This Constitution is supreme and its provisions shall have binding force on all authorities and persons throughout the Federal Republic of Nigeria”. What else is there to say than for NJC and FJSC to obey the Constitution. It is those they recommend that the President will send to the Senate for approval. The ball is in their court. I rest my case.

  • It’s justice according to law

    It’s justice according to law

    By now, the election should have been long forgotten and only referred to in the past tense. But we are still being dragged back because of the February 25 presidential poll. As the nation takes a step forward, it is pulled back by Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, who contested the election on the platforms of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), and lost to President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC). They were not the only losers. Others have accepted defeat and moved on.

       They are determined to take the nation back to the pre-election era. They want the nation to begin all over again! To them, all the institutions that were involved in the election stand forever condemned. As people who claim to be democrats, the least expected of them is to accept the verdicts of the courts which looked into their complaints. But no, they want to destroy everything and everyone associated with the election for selfish reasons. They forget that an election must be won and lost. The hallmark of a true democrat is to accept the outcome of a poll, whether favourable to him or not.

      Where he is dissatisfied, the forum for his complaint is the court, which the Constitution recognises as the tribunal for the purpose of resolving election disputes. This is so because election cases are sui generis, that is they are of a special nature and cannot be adjudicated upon like the other well-known common law cases. It is because of this that specific laws are created for them and a time limit set for their conclusion. Atiku and Obi know all these. They are veterans of the tribunal where in the past they won some and lost some cases. But the 2023 presidential poll was a ‘do-or-die‘ for them. They wanted to win at all costs.

       They know that in any election, it is not the wish of a contestant that matters, but the acceptance of the electorate. The electorate rejected them. Since the outcome of the poll, the nation has known no peace, not even after the Supreme Court threw out their appeals against the tribunal’s verdict which rejected their petitions. Just as they claimed that the election was rigged against them, they are wailing that the verdicts were also rigged against them. In a society where the judiciary has consistently stood for what and who is right, Atiku and Obi have sullied the reputation of our judges. They called their lordships all sorts of names, and if allowed they are ready to impale them on a pole.

      Did their lordships commit any sin for ruling against Atiku and Obi? Is it an offence to rule against a party in a case?  Were the Justices influenced in any way in their ruling? Do their lordships deserve the attacks heaped on their persons by Atiku, Obi and their supporters? Being a judge or justice does not detract from the fact that we are all humans. Their lordships, the Justices of the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC) and the Supreme Court, are human beings and are subject to the same foibles like us despite their high office. Their office demands respect, maximum respect. Atiku and Obi have been treating them with disdain. All because of an election which they lost hands down!

      They claimed to have won but could not prove how. Yet, they wanted the court to find in their favour. On what basis will the court do that? The court works with law and facts. Cases are decided on their strength. If a litigant has a good case and a good lawyer, he is on his way to winning. But if he has a bad case and a bad lawyer, there is no magic that he can weave to win. Even if his lawyer is good and the case is bad, nothing can be done about it than for it to be thrown out by the court. Their lordships have become toothpicks for Atiku and Obi for doing their jobs. Atiku was the first to run his mouth, on October 30, over the October 26 Supreme Court’s verdict. Obi followed suit on Tuesday. In essence, what he said was not different from that of Atiku.

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       What I found funny in all he said was his claim that the highest court in the land shut its eyes to “public opnion” in arriving at its decision. Public opinion? Are you shocked too? Yes, you heard right, public opinion. Public opinion has its values, no doubt. It helps leaders in gauging the mood of the nation so as to determine how to meet the people’s expectations. When it comes to law, justice, equity and order, public opinion has no place. Will a judge abandon the law and facts of a case before him and go with public opinion all because he does not want to hurt some people’s feelings? How will the party with a good case feel if at the end of proceedings, the court declares openly:

      “I am sorry; though you (calling the party by name) have a good case, but my hands are tied. I cannot rule in your favour because the opinion outside is that you cannot and should not win this case”. This was what Obi was saying in effect that their lordships should have done. ‘’Setting legal issues aside, the Supreme Court exhibited a disturbing aversion to public opinion…” So, Obi wanted the court to rule against the winner of the election because public opinion wanted it that way. By the way, who determined what that public opinion was? Who aggregated all the opinions of Nigerians to know that their wish was that the court should rule in favour of Obi and Atiku? Obi was living in delusion. He and Atiku are giving their lordships a bad name in order to hang them.

       What any court does while handling a case is to look at the law and not the weight of public opinion. No matter how weighty public opinion may be, it cannot be weightier than the evidence adduced and the law cited in the course of the case. The law is not philosophy, nor is it sociology; the law is the law and the court must apply it as it is not as it ought to be. What is public opinion when we are talking law? It is nothing but a sheer waste of the court’s time to ask that a case be decided on the strength of public opinion. Not even Lord Denning, as unconventional as he was, would do that. Courts do justice, according to the law, and not public opinion.

      To do otherwise will amount to grave injustice to a party. The law will no longer be law when it bows to public opinion. Do we want a nation of laws or of public opinions? I will go for the former because without laws, society will turn upside down. Obi and Atiku want such a society. But, the electorate said no with their votes.

  • Supreme Court: Muhammed’s swansong

    Supreme Court: Muhammed’s swansong

    To Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and his camp, the Supreme Court’s Oçtober 26 verdict was a devastating blow. Reason: Atiku had invested a lot in what he thought was an unassailable case to unseat President Bola Tinubu. Atiku spent time, energy and money to fish for ‘after-discovered evidence’.

       Atiku had other mission beyond being president. It was a case of either him or any other person, but Tinubu. As long as it was Tinubu that was going to be president, the Wazirin Adamawa was determined to fight it until the last drop of his blood.

       After Tinubu was declared winner of the February 25 poll, Atiku, in exercise of his right, went to the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC), the constitutionally recognised tribunal for challenging the outcome of the poll.

       His lawyers were to, in what the Supreme Court described as a joke taking too far, turn round on appeal to say the PEPC is not a tribunal. It is trite that election disputes are not handled by the regular courts. As they are sui generis (of their own kind), they are handled by courts specially constituted for that purpose and backed by specific laws.

       Unlike common law cases which come up in court everyday, elections are seasonal and so the disputes. Elections are held at intervals, depending on the timeline fixed by countries. In Nigeria, they are held every four years, except the off-season elections which are held as exigencies demand. Election tribunals are creations of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), which confers them with exclusive power.

       According to Section 285 (1) of the Constitution, the National Assembly Election Tribunals, shall, to the exclusion of any court or tribunal, have original jurisdiction to hear and determine petitions related to that poll and other incidental matters.

      For the presidential election, the Court of Appeal is designated as the tribunal to adjudicate on disputes arising from it. From the outset, it was glaring that the February 25 poll would end up at the tribunal. Everything pointed at a contentious election. The supporters of Atiku and Peter Obi of Labour Party (LP) were hell-bent on ensuring that the election went their respective principal’s way, come what may.

      At the PEPC, Atiku lost hands down. The tribunal  threw out his petition for lacking in merit, declaring that he did not provide any facts to back his claim that Tinubu was not qualified to run.

      The petitioner, the tribunal held, only pleaded non-disqualification without providing particulars thereof. Atiku’s lawyers tried to cure the defect on appeal. The Supreme Court saw through their plan and stopped them in their tracks. The court said they could not introduce fresh evidence at that stage of proceedings which was not canvassed at the tribunal. To wriggle out of the dilemma, they said the PEPC was not a tribunal, but a conventional court.

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      But, Section 239 of the Constitution stipulates that the Court of Appeal, shall to the exclusion of any other court of law in Nigeria, have original jurisdiction to hear and determine whether any person has been validly elected to the office of President or Vice-President. It goes without question that the PEPC sat as a tribunal to hear Atiku’s petition and his lawyers did not object.

      The apex court dismissed the objection outright. Atiku is whining that the court was unfair to him by dismissing his laughable claims, especially the evidence he imported from the United States (US). He points at what former Supreme Court Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammed said at his valediction a day after the verdict to justify his spurious claims. Muhammed had said the panel that heard the appeal should have been composed of people from the country’s six geopolitical zones. Is that so?

       His answer was: “in the interest of justice”. I do not get his point. Is he saying that the justices will do justice according to the zone they come from and favour any candidate from there even if his case is bad? That will be the day when the Supreme Court starts to do justice according to where their Lordships hail from!

      Muhammed might have meant well in his assessment of the judiciary (I refuse to call it criticism), but he went about it the wrong way. Is the Supreme Court’s verdict flawed because the panellists did not come from all the geopolitical zones? It is not. The panellists did justice according to the law and not where they came from. Thank God, Muhammad was not on the panel. Otherwise, he might have ruled in favour of his kinsman or near-kinsman, according to his postulation.

       Does this have anything to do with ego? In a profession where seniority is cherished, Muhammed found himself serving under his junior at the bar, Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Kayode Ariwoola. He was called to bar on Saturday, July 2, 1977, four years before Ariwoola became a lawyer on Saturday, July 11, 1981. This is an accident of life over which humans have no control. It is not the making of either of them, but the wish of God.

      People learn to live with such things and I do not expect Muhammed’s case to be different. Sadly, what Muhammed has done is to give Atiku, his ilk, and some lawyers the munition with which to attack the apex court. They can continue, if that will make them happy, but is this what Muhammed wants after spending 47 years in the judiciary?

  • Lamentations of a loser

    Lamentations of a loser

    Talk is cheap. A few weeks ago after his fishing expedition to the United States (US), Atiku Abubakar, the standard-bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 25 presidential poll, made a public promise. It was at what he called a world press conference to present his lawyers’ finding after the voyage of discovery. He was so sure that he had a bomb of evidence in his hands, which would easily win him his appeal then pending at the Supreme Court.

     Without batting an eyelid, he promised to abide by the apex court’s decision no matter how it went.. The court threw out his appeal against the September 6 verdict of the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC), which affirmed President Bola Tinubu as duly elected. Atiku was never going to fulfil his promise and that became clear yesterday when he addressed another briefing in Abuja on the apex court’s October 26 verdict. He had nothing for the highest court in the land but harsh words.

    The court, he claimed, misdirected itself by dismissing his appeal. The court, he claimed, endorsed fraud, identity theft, impersonation, certificate fabrication and perjury at the expense of justice. Atiku spoke like a typical politician, imputing motives to the seven-man panel of Justices’ action. “If the Supreme Court implies by its judgment that crime is good and should be rewarded, then Nigeria has lost and the country is doomed irrespective of who occupies the presidential seat.

      “If the Supreme Court decides that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) can tell the public one thing and then do something else in order to reach a corruptly predetermined outcome, then there is really no hope for the country’s democracy and electoral politics”, Atiku said. Did the apex court misapply the law in determining his appeal? Did Atiku’s lawyers make a strong case for him? The court is no respecter of persons or institutions; it is only interested in doing justice to all that appear before it. This is why the scale of justice is blind.

    The court did not just throw away Atiku’s appeal as he insinuated yesterday. He lost because his appeal did not stand on strong grounds. There was nothing else their lordships could have done but dismiss the appeal on all the seven issues distilled for determination. The judgment rested on the profound work done by PEPC, which five-man panel of Justices first dismissed Atiku’s petition for lacking in merit. The Supreme Court also found the appeal unmeritorious. It is no mean feat for the President to have won unanimously at the PEPC and Supreme Court. The victory speaks volume about the quality of his legal representation.

     In affirming his election, the PEPC held that Atiku did not provide any evidence to show that Tinubu was not qualified to contest. Elucidating on this point on appeal, the Supreme Court held that the appellant could not file fresh evidence at this stage to buttress his claim of non-qualification of the President since the 180 days for the prosecution of the case had lapsed. Atiku had come back from US with a deposition by Chicago State University (CSU) Registrar Caleb Westberg purporting that the certificate Tinubu submitted to INEC did not emanate from the school, where he graduated from in 1979. But the CSU maintained that Tinubu was his product, who was issued a diploma after graduating with honours.

    “The 180 days having expired, the lower court therefore, no longer has the jurisdiction to allow the deposition sought to be introduced into the trial of this petition. This is the law, which at this stage, is elementary. Consequently, since the lower court no longer has the jurisdiction to entertain any such application, it follows that this Supreme Court also has no jurisdiction to allow the deposition to be used in this appeal. Let me state it clear that the 21 days provided for the filing of election petitions, having long expired, even if the applicants had applied for an extension of time to amend their petition in order to bring in the deposition, it would not have been granted based on the provisions of the Constitution and the Electoral Act.

     “More so, there are no paragraphs in the petition to accommodate the case of forgery… one wonders what the appellants intended to do with the deposition since appeals are heard on the issues distilled for determination by the parties in court”, the court said. Atiku’s lamentations in the wake of the verdict cut no ice. His lawyers did not help his case in any way. Their claim that the election was vitiated because the results were not uploaded in real-time as promised by INEC was dismissed outright. The court said: “the non-transmission of results on the INEC portal, IReV, cannot be a ground for nullifying the election. The failure to transmit results to IReV did not affect results of the election. IReV is a storage  and not a collation mechanism”.

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     Atiku and his lawyers undid themselves. Rather than admit their fault, they are blaming their lordships for their tardiness. Were they expecting the court to conduct their case for them? The court answered the poser thus: “It is clear that the appellants having not put forward their perceived rightful scores to rebut the results put forward by INEC, the law presumes its (INEC’s) version as correct. It will not matter whether the appellant can prove having won most states or if the first respondent admits that much. The figures before us show that the second respondent (President Tinubu) won the highest number of votes and was accordingly returned elected.

    “From where, therefore, do we manufacture evidence to support the appellants’ claim that they scored the majority of lawful votes cast at the election or that there was non-compliance with the Electoral Act which affected the validity of the election? The case is done and dusted. But Atiku is still pining, contrary to his promise to let things be after the verdict.  To him, there can be no stronger evidence of the ‘injustice’ done him than the claim of former Supreme Court Justice Musa Dattijo, who retired on Friday, of corruption in the judiciary.  Atiku is just looking for any straw to hold on to.

  • The Supreme verdict

    The Supreme verdict

    Yesterday, the legal dispute over the February 25 presidential election won by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) was laid to rest forever.

    The Supreme Court upheld the September 6 verdict of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), also known as the Tribunal, which affirmed Tinubu as the winner of the election.

    The apex court dismissed the appeals by Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) against the verdict.

    The thrust of their appeals was that the tribunal erred in law when it held that Tinubu did not require 25 per cent of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to win the election.

    The FCT issue was a bone of contention even before the election. Lawyers expressed divergent opinions on it. Former Nigerian Bar Association president Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) stirred controversy when he wrote to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) a month before the poll to make its stand known on Section 134 (2) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), which states the requirements for winning the election.

    The section reads: “A candidate for an election to the office of President shall be deemed to have been duly elected where, there being more than two candidates for the election – (a) he has the highest number of votes cast at the election; and (b) he has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the states in the Federation and the FCT.”

    Shortly after INEC declared Tinubu winner on March 1, Atiku, Obi, and their parties went to town, accusing the electoral umpire of constitutional breach.

    They claimed that INEC should not have declared Tinubu elected when he did not score 25 per cent of the votes in Abuja.

    Is that the interpretation of Section 134 (2)? If a candidate wins in all 36 states but fails to get 25 per cent in FCT, will that count against declaring him validly elected?

    The PEPC answered both questions in the negative. The five-man panel of Justices held that FCT is like a state and cannot enjoy a “special status”.

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    Upholding the PEPC’s position, the apex court asked rhetorically: “Are you saying if someone scores 25 per cent of votes in 30 states, but not in Abuja, he should not be President? Is that how you interpret the law? That is not the law. The Supreme Court agrees with the court below.”

    The court said the framers of the Constitution did not intend that FCT should be conferred with a special status, adding if that was their intention, they would have stated it expressly.

    “The Constitution is for everyone and not for some selected people,” Justice John Okoro, who read the lead judgment, declared.

    With that proclamation, the highest court in the land settled the Abuja conundrum. In future elections, it will be taboo to talk of winning 25 per cent of votes cast in FCT before a candidate can become president.

    Atiku did everything to make his appeal succeed. But it was all to no avail. His fishing expedition to the United States (US) for “after-discovered evidence” came to naught.

    Although he came back with a deposition by Caleb Westberg, the Registrar of Chicago State University (CSU), the alma mater of the President, the apex court said the trip was an exercise in futility.

    The court held that issues not raised at the court of original jurisdiction could not be brought up on appeal.

    That, it said, would amount to going out of the record of proceedings compiled at the lower court for adjudication on appeal.

    According to Justice Okoro, the Supreme Court lacks the jurisdiction to admit new evidence. The appellant’s application, he said, was also against the provisions of the Electoral Act, which governs election petitions.

    Election petitions, he said, were sui generis (of their own class) and must be handled strictly within the special laws created for resolving such disputes.

    “There cannot be any amendment by introducing new facts not contained in the election petition as stated in Section 132 (7) of the Electoral Act,” Justice Okoro said.

    He said the deposition could not be brought in at this stage because it was not submitted at the PEPC, which heard the original petition within the 180 days stipulated by law.

    “We cannot activate Section 22 of the Supreme Court Act to admit fresh evidence. We cannot grant the leave sought. There is no paragraph in the petition alleging forgery. It is not in the interest of justice to admit the deposition,” the Justice added.

    In his concurring judgment, Justice Emmanuel Agim pointed out that the deposition which was made in a lawyer’s office before a stenographer had no seal.

    Besides, being a document obtained outside the country, it was not registered locally before the appellants sought to tender it. The deposition failed all known legal tests of integrity, he noted.

    He explained that it did not bear the signature of a notary public, but was said to have been sworn to in a court in Chicago.

    The deposition was, therefore, rejected because it was not canvassed at the PEPC.

    The court declared that the appellants failed to perfect their pleadings despite having additional 21 days to do so after frontloading them.

    It said the appellants sought to ambush the respondents by bringing fresh issues at a stage that the defendants could no longer reply.

    “The purpose of the 21 days is not to bring in fresh evidence but to enable the petitioner (now appellant) to respond to new claims arising from the respondent’s reply to the petition.”

    The apex court said this while agreeing with the PEPC for ignoring the testimony of Mr Enahoro Ebah whom Atiku’s lawyers cross-examined even when he was not listed as a witness in the petition, details of which they frontloaded.

    Ebah, in his testimony, alleged that Tinubu forged the certificate he submitted to INEC. He claimed that the diploma certificate the CSU gave Tinubu on request was different from what the President presented to INEC.

    His testimony was set aside because he was not listed by the petitioner as one of his witnesses.

    In the lucid verdict of the Supreme Court, hailed by political watchers last night, the Justices said the issue of not uploading the outcome of the election in real-time on the INEC Result Portal (IReV) was not illegal. Although it noted that the action was capable of making the public lose confidence in the process as INEC had promised to upload the results as announced at the polling units, it said it was not enough to invalidate the election. Agreeing with PEPC, the apex court said the results could be collated manually in accordance with the provisions of the Electoral Act.

    The appellants failed to prove how INEC did not comply with the law in collating the result, the court added.

    “The appellant did not produce any original or certified true copy of the evidence it wants the court to rely on.

    “The Electoral Act empowers INEC to determine the best method to use during the election. The IReV portal is not a collation system, even though it is part of the election process.

    “The failure of IReV does not mean that the collation of results must stop. The non-availability of the presidential election results on the IReV portal did not invalidate the election,” the seven-man panel of Justices declared.

    The court said the failure of the appellants to provide results to back up their claims of winning the election was fatal to their case. It said the only results before it were those provided by INEC and they showed that the second respondent (President Tinubu) scored the highest number of votes and was declared winner.

    It added that only polling agents who witnessed what transpired at polling units could testify as to what happened there and not third parties who could only narrate what they were told.

    This, the court said, was hearsay evidence which is not admissible under the Evidence Act.

    It said the appellant’s lawyers were tardy and not diligent in the prosecution of their cases, dismissing as a dry joke their claim that the PEPC was not a tribunal for presidential election disputes.

  • Obi’s wolf’s cry

    Obi’s wolf’s cry

    It has become a pattern for which Peter Obi,  Atiku Abubakar and their bands of rabblerousers are known. When things are not going their way, they resort to blackmail. They start by crying wolf, where there is none. They mastered the trick in the run-up to the February 25 presidential election when they saw that they had no chance whatsoever in the poll.

    Just last week, this reporter warned here that they will be up to the same old trick once the Supreme Court starts sitting on their appeals against the September 6 verdict of the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC), also known as the Tribunal, which affirmed Preident Bola Tinubu’s victory in the election.

    It is not that one is a prophet. It is just that a leopard cannot change its spots. Obi of the Labour Party (LP), Atiku of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and many of their misguided supporters known as Obidients and Atikulators have a penchant for tarring others while portraying themselves as saints. Nobody except them, they claim, know what is good for the country.

    While Obi is riding on the shoulders of youths to take them for a ride, Atiku is enjoying the backing of many failed and upcoming politicians who use him as their ATM. Obi and Atiku are expected to know better, but since they are enjoying the noise being made by their people, nothing else matters. Both of them know that they did not win the election. They even knew beforehand that they were not going to win.

    How could they have won when a house divided against itself has never been known to stand? They went into the race divided and they lost woefully. They find it hard to swallow this bitter pill of defeat. Their way out, it appears, is to take the country down with them. Are these then leaders? If a prospective president cannot take defeat in his strides, then he is not worthy of the high office he seeks to occupy.

    As I predicted last week, Obi has already started throwing stones not only at Tinubu, but also the court. Hardly had the Supreme Court reserved judgment in his appeal than he went on Twitter now known as X to sermonise on morality, law, justice and leadership. It was his usual style of rousing his mob of supporters to take up arms. Why this early resort to blackmail, deceit and lies? Has he seen the handwriting of what will happen to his appeal on the wall?

    I do not understand why Obi went hysterical on X, imputing what is not to the judiciary. He wrote like a frustrated man. He made no sense at all in what he said, except to his co-travellers. The apex court has only reserved judgment and he went overboard. His insinuations and innuendos about the character of a leader and the judex (judicial officers) are nothing but the cacophonous noise of a bad loser. Why are Obi and Atiku such sore losers?

      Calling the judiciary names is not the hallmark of an aspiring national leader. It is this same judiciary that Obi wants to destroy that restored him as governor in Anambra State in 2007 . Or has he forgotten that? If the judiciary was good then, what makes it bad today? Oh! Is it because the PEPC ruled against him? There lies the problem with Obi and Atiku. Anything in their favour is a cinch, while the contrary could only be a fraud.

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      These people want to stand on the moral high ground when every fibre in their bodies shows how ugly their character is. The judiciary is a sacred institution which should not be dragged into any political fight the way Obi and Atiku are doing. Once you submit to the authority of the court, the right thing to do is to wait for its decision instead of taking the law into your hands, as Obi did, with his X thread, moralising and sermonising.

       How clean is Obi sef? Does he have the moral force to impugn the character of others? Very soon, some people go open book for am, as Fela once sang. Obi cannot go on appeal and expect to determine the case in his own terms. His Rule of law and the credibility of leadership that was posted on X on Tuesday, barely 24 hours after the Supreme Court reserved judgment on his appeal is contemptuous of the highest court in the land.

      On what moral authority did he question “the fairness of the judiciary and the transparency of judiciary operatives”? Obi cannot preach morality to anybody, with what the world knows about him as contained in the Panama Papers. How many of the Justices that he is running down were named in that scandal? None. So, who should be preaching “fairness and transparency” to who?

       From his X thread, something sticks out and that is he has lost faith in his own appeal, even before judgment is delivered. Like many other Nigerians, I cannot wait for the verdict.

    Day of judgment

    I had finished writing the above piece when news broke that the Supreme Court will today deliver judgment in the Atiku Abubakar’s and Peter Obi’s appeals against the September 6 verdict of the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC), which affirmed President Bola Tinubu’s victory in the February 25 election. I concluded the piece by saying that I was looking forward to the verdict.

        The Supreme Court sent notices to the parties yesterday to that effect. Will the apex court uphold or upturn the Tribunal’s decision? The public will know where the pendulum swings in a few hours. But some of the parties are already jittery, going by their statement in the social and traditional media. They need not be anxious. The Supreme Court will do justice in this matter, according to the Constitution and the Electoral Act.

       Anyone expecting the court to go outside those provinces is living in delusion. Hopefully, the nation will take a breather from the unnecessary acrimony over the election after this final decision which will lay the issue to rest forever, whether or not any party is satisfied with it. I rise.

  • Day of judgment

    Day of judgment

    I had finished writing the above piece when news broke that the Supreme Court will today deliver judgment in the Atiku Abubakar’s and Peter Obi’s appeals against the September 6 verdict of the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC), which affirmed President Bola Tinubu’s victory in the February 25 election. I concluded the piece by saying that I was looking forward to the verdict.

        The Supreme Court sent notices to the parties yesterday to that effect. Will the apex court uphold or upturn the Tribunal’s decision? The public will know where the pendulum swings in a few hours. But some of the parties are already jittery, going by their statement in the social and traditional media. They need not be anxious. The Supreme Court will do justice in this matter, according to the Constitution and the Electoral Act.

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       Anyone expecting the court to go outside those provinces is living in delusion. Hopefully, the nation will take a breather from the unnecessary acrimony over the election after this final decision which will lay the issue to rest forever, whether or not any party is satisfied with it. I rise.

  • 17 days to the final call

    17 days to the final call

    Early next month, the nation will, legally speaking, finally know where it stands on the February 25 presidential poll. By the time the Supreme Court decides the pending appeals before it on the election, the issue will be buried for all time. But will the two major appellants allow the nation breath?

        There is nothing the apex court says that will sit well with the duo of Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), except it favours them. Any ruling contrary to the notion that they won the election will, to them, be nothing but miscarriage of justice.

         Interestingly, the duo have never sat down to think deeply over the matter. How can there be two winners in an election? And an election already won fair and square by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), for that matter. They have done and are still doing everything possible to pull the President down.

      Atiku and Obi are bitter and their bitterness has turned them to sore losers. Atiku in particular cannot stand the Tinubu Presidency. To him, anybody but Tinubu can occupy the high executive office. Why this much hatred for a colleague, friend, associate and confidant with whom he fought many political battles in the past? Should politics become war because of electoral loss?

      The kind of bitterness being exhibited by Atiku and Obi has never been seen in the history of elections in the country. For all they care, the country can go up in flames. They do not care if lives and properties are lost. All they care about is their own selfish interest and that is to be declared winner of the election. I ask again, how can two persons win an election?

       Elections have always been won by one person and in case two contestants emerge with equal votes, the outcome is called a tie, meaning there is no winner or loser. This was not the case in the February 25 poll. A clear winner emerged and he was so declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The losers, in line with electoral requirements, went to the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC) to challenge the President’s victory.

       It was within their right to do so and it is still within their right to appeal to the Supreme Court, but it is not within their right to adopt extra-judicial means to achieve their aim. These sore losers and their supporters have left the ball to go for the legs of not only Tinubu, their nemesis, but also of the Justices who are only performing their duties. The PEPC Justices went through hell in their hands. Their Lordships of the Supreme Court may experience the same thing.

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      But these are people who have developed thick skin in the course of their jobs while handling cases of this nature. So, they know what to do. Come rain, come shine, whether they are called names or not, they have sworn to do justice to all manner of man without fear or favour, affection or illwill. No amount of blackmail will make them to do otherwise. So, it is all in the line of duty for them. They will not be moved by fake video and audio clips meant to destroy their image and integrity.

      May their final decision which is likely to come up in the next 17 days help to finally end the unnecessary acrimony over the presidential poll. Atiku and Obi should bear in mind that Nigeria is greater than any of us. Nigerians  are equal stakeholders in the Nigerian Project, irrespective of Atiku’s and Obi’s status as presidential candidates.