Judgment on Imo ‘is one of the wonders of the world’

Some civil society organisations (CSOs) have described judgment of the supreme court on Imo governorship election as a travesty of justice, saying it could make Nigeria a laughing stock in the comity of nation.

On January 14, 2020, the apex court sacked Emeka Ihedioha as governor and replaced him with Hope Uzodinma.

In the election results released by INEC, Uzodinma came a distant fourth. But he had challenged the victory of Ihedioha and lost at the tribunal and appeal court.

However, the supreme court upheld Uzodinma’s prayer that INEC unjustly cancelled his results in 388 polling units in the March election.

But the CSOs faulted the judgment, accusing the judges of violating well established principles of the law.

“On 14th January 2020, the Supreme Court in open Court gave judgement in the Imo State Governorship Appeal. However, unlike the other cases, it gave reasons for its judgement. It did not reserve another date to give reasons,” a spokesman of the CSOs said at a press conference.

“The respondents were shocked when they approached the court for a copy of the judgement delivered in open court which lasted less than 10 minutes on that day and contained in about 6 pages, only to be given a judgement of 46 pages on 22nd January, totally different from the one read on 14th January. It was a full and final judgement on 14th January. The 22nd January judgement unsuccessfully tried to cover up loopholes observed by Nigerians following their outcry and condemnation of the judgement by both local and international community.

“The danger which this judgement released now in the CTC poses is that after the judgement delivered in open court the Court went ahead and raised new legal issues and determined them to suit its resultant orders. These new legal issues and reasoning were not pronounced in open court.
The judgment read in open Court only considered the evidence of the Policeman (PW54), but the text now released has included other witnesses including PW12 – PW34, PW11 and PW51.
This is unprecedented in Nigeria’s judicial history. We have the audio recording of that judgement and the transcript which we shall release shortly.  No wonder Nigeria’s anti-corruption index continues to fall in the transparency international ratings in-spite of anti-corruption efforts of the Federal Government. This judgement will go down in infamy and may make Nigeria a laughing stock in the comity of Nations, if not reversed.

“This new judgement was not given in open court and not in the presence of the parties as required by S.36 (3) of the Constitution.

“This effort by the Supreme Court to manipulate its own judgement is unnecessary and may be futile as it failed to explain why total votes cast as it allocated to only 2 parties is still more than the total accredited votes by 129,340 on the face of the record on Form EC8D , accepted by all the parties and even also tendered and relied on by Senator Hope Uzodinma.

“Section 179(2b) of the Constitution is clear that to be declared elected as Governor a candidate must have not only the majority of total votes cast but also ¼ of the votes in 2/3 of the Local Governments of the State.”

The CSOs alleged that the apex court upheld Uzodinma’s prayer without him substantiating the claims in his petition.

“It is axiomatic that nowhere in the petition or evidence did the Petitioner/ Appellant, Hope Uzodinma claim that he met the constitutional requirement of spread to be declared the winner,” the CSOs said.

“He only claimed it in the reliefs without any supporting pleadings or evidence. It is one of the wonders of the world that the Supreme Court declared him winner without any evidence of spread. There was no breakdown of the total votes illegally added to him and no tally of votes for each candidate that contested the election.

“Where did the Supreme Court find the evidence that the Appellant satisfied all Constitutional requirements to be Governor and what was the quantum of votes it allocated to the Appellant on a local government by local government basis?

“In recent times, since after the return to democracy in Nigeria , the Courts have declared Oshiomole of Edo State, Mimiko of Ondo State, Fayemi of Ekiti State, Aregbesola of Osun State and Peter Obi of Anambra state as winners of Governorship elections, as against the candidates declared by INEC. In all those judgments, the Court expressly stated the votes by which those candidates won and the scores of all the candidates that contested the election after exhaustive re-computation exercises. Those decisions were given by the Court of Appeal.

“Senator Hope Uzodinma did not prove entitlement to the reliefs sought by cogent, credible and sufficient evidence. The relief granted to him by the Supreme Court was based on nothing and therefore should be a nullity.”

Some of the CSOs are Transparency Centre Network; Movement for the Protection of Peoples Rights; Coalition for Good Governance and Accountability; Network for Freedom and Defence of Democracy; Center for Human Rights and Justice; Human Rights and Accountability Project; Rights Monitoring Network; and Human Writers Association of Nigeria; Coalition in Defence of Nigerian Democracy and Constitution and Free Nigeria Coalition.