CSO seeks review of a’court verdict sacking senate minority whip

The Coalition for Social Justice and Good Governance (CSJGG), a group of civil society organisations (CSO), has called for the review of the appeal court judgement sacking Darlington Nwokocha.

On Saturday, the court of appeal sitting in Lagos sacked Nwokocha, a member of the Labour Party (LP), as senator representing Abia central.

The appellant court declared Augustine Akobundu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the winner of the February 25 national assembly election.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Nwokocha as the winner of the election with a total of 92,116 votes. Akobundu came second with 41,477 votes.

Akobundu then filed a petition before the election petition tribunal to upturn Nwokocha’s election. His appeal was, however, rejected in September.

He subsequently filed an appeal at the appellate court and was declared winner of the election on Saturday.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Ciroma Ahmed, CSJGG’s co-convener, claimed that the judgement is “dangerous, troubling and conflicting”.

“First, the appeal panel members on this case were changed and reconstituted three consecutive times before Justice Georgewill from Rivers State was posted as the Panel Chairman,” the statement reads.

“The question is, what led to the changing of the panel members about three times? 

“Also, by the Rules of Court proceedings, hearing notice for judgment was supposed to be given to parties ahead of time but Justice Georgewill-led Panel never informed the Counsel to the Labour Party nor Counsel to Distinguished Senator Nwokocha.

“Senator Nwokocha only got to know about the planned judicial coup when an anonymous lawyer on Friday, November 3rd, 2023, alerted him that he saw the case list suggesting that judgment on his matter may come up for ruling on Saturday, November 4, 2023.

“True to this intelligence, the Panel delivered judgment on the matter at about 600HRS on the night of  Saturday, November 4, 2023, without adducing any reason for the purported disqualification.

“This was happening after the Panel had earlier denied scheduling the case for judgment, but mysteriously they turned around, sat on the night of Saturday, November 4th 2023 and delivered a hatchet job.

“Perhaps, what is most shocking was the fact the judgment, which lasted less than three minutes declared that Sen. Darlington Nwokocha was not qualified to contest the elections without any legal reason and strangely went ahead to declare the PDP candidate as the winner.”

The group stated that the circumstances around the ruling raise questions begging for answers.

“Curiously, however, the same Justice Georgewill in about twenty minutes when the court proceeding reconvened for the second round of cases, reversed himself when he upheld the election of the Labour Party House of Representatives Member for Isi-ala Ngwa North/South Federal Constituency who had a similar case and pleadings both in character, contexts and on point of law with that of  Senator Darlington,” the group said. 

“It is a judicial coup on the democratic process, a subversion of the purposeful will of the People of Abia Central Senatorial District.”

The group further asked Monica Dongban-Mensem, president of the appeal court, to constitute a judicial panel to “examine the circumstances of the conflicting judgements”.