The Sun News On-line/politics

Though Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke and Chief Mike Ahamba are both lawyers and belong to the ANPP, they are like oil and water, unable to interact on the same wavelength.

The dissimilarity in their philosophy and politics became evident after the April 2007 presidential elections. After the election both ANPP and its presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari had gone to the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal with different petitions.

Even when Ume-Ezeoke and Ahamba agree on an issue, like the land mines laid before the petitioner in the 2006 Electoral Act, they arrive at the same conclusion from parallel routes.

While Ume-Ezeoke contends that the petitioner stands no chance at all, Ahamba queries the judiciary to explain why the odds are weighed against the petitioner.

Ahamba, lead counsel to ANPP presidential candidate, General Buhari, in this interview took on his professional colleague and National Chairman of the ANPP, Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, also the party’s vice-presidential candidate who he accused of spreading falsehood in order to justify his ditching of his principal and subsequent romance with the PDP government.
Seen from another angle, Ahamba shows predilection for politics played from the opposition bench. However the legal practitioner who has celebrated thirty years of practice at the bar argues that it had been politics of fighting to entrench fairness and justice in the polity.

The Senior Advocate of Nigeria and former Minority Whip in the old Imo State House of Assembly under the NPN recollects debates on the floor of the House. According to him, when issue of fairness and justice crop up, especially when then NPP governor, late Chief Sam Mbakwe runs into stormy waters, he always line up on their side.

Chief Ume-Ezeoke said he fell out with General Buhari and a section of the ANPP when he insisted that you, Chief Mike Ahamba should not be the lead counsel for the party at the Elections Tribunal. Is it true
“Did Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke not file a petition for ANPP? Was I the lead counsel? Did he not withdraw it? What has that got to do with me? He filed his petition with the lawyer of his choice, he wanted me to join the legal team, I opted out, I have a right to do so, and I told him to go ahead that I was not going to participate because I did not trust him. I knew they were bargaining. Let me tell you I was a senior member of PDP before I left it and I have my information and based on those information which I could not disclose openly, I reacted.

I said I was not going to be led to a situation where I will be sitting in court and things will be going wrong and I will not be able to do anything about it. Therefore, I said I will not join the legal team, but would give them any legal assistance as a member of the party. That time the compromise was reached to file another petition for Buhari, which I will then lead and then we can join with the man he had chosen later.

We agreed to file two petitions and consolidate later, but before we could consolidate, he was out of court. His reason was that he did not want to fight the government anymore that he wanted to join the government. So how is my not being part of the legal team able to make him to withdraw his petition?
Were you bitter that you lost out to Chief Ume-Ezeoke in the race for the National Chairmanship of the

ANPP
After the ANPP National Chairmanship election, I went to chief Ume-Ezeoke’s office and I have my witness, and I told him that this battle is over. As far as I am concerned, we have a joint purpose to face PDP and make sure we wrest government out of their hands for the sake of Nigerians. He was very happy and he got up and shook my hands. He said you now mean that I can put you in any committee I choose. I said am available. Ume-Ezeoke did not put me in any committee, what he did was to remove me in those where I was. There is nothing personal about it.

I have one concept of taking charge without being in charge, and this is a concept that makes me to operate without official clout. I don’t have to have an officer in order to be relevant. I don’t believe that I need an office in order to be relevant. I knew I would be relevant in ANPP, I would fight for ANPP whether I am an official or not.

Chief Ume-Ezeoke removed me from the BOT, the caucus and he set up a man in Owerri, the state chairman there to harass me.
All what he is saying are neither here nor there, the position is that he has an interest to protect, and that interest is in GNU, let him go ahead. But he has his bag of conscience, which he is carrying and he knows what it contains.

In 2003 as the lead counsel to Buhari, Ume-Ezeoke believes you lack the experience to successfully prosecute the petition this time around
Experience by my definition is the quantum of exposure to new and relevant ideas. If Ume-Ezeoke were around as a lawyer, he would have known that I had been in Elections Petition since 1979 when I was only four at the bar.

In 1983, I did fifteen petitions for NPN, and I got to the Supreme Court with about three or four of them, and I had matters pending in the Supreme Court when the Buhari coup occurred. Even as a junior lawyer, my relevance in elections petitions has been recognized.

In 2003, I was the lawyer for Modibbo in Adamawa State, we won at the Tribunal, but it was overturned at the Court of Appeal in Jos. I was the lawyer for Awuse in Rivers State. I was also the lawyer for our man in Imo State.

At any given election since 1983, I have never been involved in less than ten election petitions, and all of them have been very serious and tedious.
So if Ume-Ezeoke says I have no experience, he does not know the meaning of experience. His problem is professional senility or acute shortage of integrity.
He says he was called to the Bar in 1978, I was called in 1974. I am older than him at the Bar, even though he is older than myself in age.

By 1979, he was in the House of Representatives and was there till 1983. And since then he had always been in public life, so where did he practice law? If he wants to know whether I am experienced or not, he should ask those who are of this same plane with me on election petitions. The Afe Babalolas, the Wole Olanipekuns, the Ricky Tarfas, etc, he should ask them.

I do not bother myself what opinion Ume-Ezeoke expresses about me because it is made from a position of ignorance. He does not know, he does not understand, he is not playing pranks, that is the limit of his knowledge, I sympathise with him
He observed that I called only one witness. He does not know what happened, that the one witness did not finish his testimony before the judge stopped us saying there was no need for witnesses. The words of the court were: witnesses were unnecessary in view of the documents admitted before the court.

I listed 150 witnesses, and I insisted on calling them and even begged to call only five, but the court stopped me.
Yes, most of my depositions came from Imo State and the reason can be found in the lapses on the part of Ume-Ezeoke. He told Buhari that he was going to source depositions through his state party chairmen, he was allowed to do it but he failed to do it and brought only his own. Since he failed, I could only muster witnesses from my state to rush in to testify and they did.

Time was not on our side and I had to make sure our petition was not struck off because I did not file depositions and so we decided to put what we had.
In any case, the Evidence Act did not limit witnesses to only oral evidence. The Act states that you can use oral or documentary evidence, and I brought in documentary evidence from 29 states. Did those documents referred in the judgment come from Mars? I tendered them in court after arguments from the other side who tried to stop me from tendering them.

At the Supreme Court
We have gone to the Supreme Court to ask whether it is true that documentary evidence is no longer legal evidence before the court. I cannot proffer an answer but we are asking the Supreme Court to proffer an answer. But I do know that evidence can be documentary or oral.
We are going to present very, very serious case for the Supreme Court to answer. First in section 146.1 of the Electoral Act, which has been the bane of all the problems we have had in this country in past electoral matters.
Second is section 46.3 of the Electoral Act
Section 146.1 of the Electoral Act says that elections will not be invalidated because of the non-compliance if that court is satisfied that the election was conducted substantially in compliance with the provisions of the principles, not provisions, principles of the Electoral Act, and that the non-compliance did not substantially affect the result.

The question we are putting to the Supreme Court to answer is who should satisfy the court that the election was conducted substantially in accordance with the law, and that its outcome did not affect the result? Is it the man who came to court to nullify the election in the first instance or the man defending the election. I cannot proffer an answer right now, but it is one basic question we are taking to the Supreme Court for it to answer.

I believe that if this question is resolved, INEC might realize the need for it to accept some responsibility for its conduct during elections. Right now it is totally absolved from any responsibility in the conduct of elections. The petitioner carries his own can and carries the can of INEC by existing judicial interpretation.
Section 46.3 says that the mere fact that an agent does not sign a result does not invalidate the result, it has a rider: “if things were otherwise properly done. Now who is to establish that things were otherwise properly done”?

Is there any hope for the ANPP that has been diminishing in size as it were with each general election
The hope the party has is the hope the nation has. What is keeping the party down is what is keeping the nation down. That is what we are fighting against. People do not understand something, that this project we are engaged in, though Buhari is seeking to be the president of Nigeria, it is only a means to an end. That end is the proper institution of democracy in this country and getting somebody who will protect that institution to the point it grows to maturity and stands. I believe that if Buhari becomes the President , that will happen. That is our objective in this matter and that is what we are fighting.