Amanze Obi
After two weeks of stultifying ennui, I have finally experienced the much anticipated release. The mental blockade which held me hostage has given way. I can now confront the oddity that tried to force a sense of inertia on me. I can confidently say at this moment that I have come to put myself together to deal with one of the most unconscionable absurdities of our time, which is the Supreme Court ruling of 14th January, 2020 on Imo governorship election.
The Supreme Court of Nigeria had, on this day, done the unthinkable. It violated our peace. It assaulted our sobriety. The event of the day reminded me of John Milton’s account of the fall of man in which Earth felt the wound, and in which Nature from its entrails heaved sighs of woe that all was lost. For men and women of goodwill, the verdict of the apex court signposted a huge loss. The disruption was epochal. It has, for me, been like a long night of drudgery.
What is at issue here? The Supreme Court had, on that dark day, annulled the election of Emeka Ihedioha as the governor of Imo State. In his place, Hope Uzodinma was announced as the new governor. The development, from what is easily discernible, has all the trappings of choreography. It was a well rehearsed melodrama which had as one of its dramatis personae a priest called Ejike Mbaka. I will not waste valuable time on this necromancer who masquerades as a priest. I will simply note that at the conclusion of the plot, Mbaka was recruited to play the role of the messenger of doom. He was asked to pretend, as he always does, as if he had a revelation. As a willing tool in the hands of the plotters, he stepped forward with his so-called prophecy. It is only a nitwit that can associate Mbaka with prophecy. He is simply a conman polluting the religious space with his fakery.
Having used Mbaka to test the waters, the conspirators then set sail. That eventuated in the infamous verdict of 14th January that has set the public space ablaze.
The world would have understood and moved on if the judgment had any iota of credibility. But the quaint and quixotic rubric which is being made to pass as justice is too scandalous to be overlooked. Tongues are wagging. The world is simply bewildered by the violent rape that has been inflicted on justice.
Before now, we had thought that the Supreme Court was insulated from the judicial rascality that has infiltrated our courtrooms. But the open air injustice oozing forth from the apex court on the Imo State electoral debacle shows that the rot is total. So, who will bell the cat?
Since this judicial assault took place, the public sphere has been awash with all manner of commentaries and analyses. Significantly, one common thread runs through them. Everybody agrees with the fact that the judgment cannot stand logical scrutiny. The Supreme Court glossed over unhidden errors and entered a wrong judgment in spite of them. Even the not-so-lettered easily spot the illogic that went into the judgment. The verdict is not even supported by commonsense. And so, people are asking why. So far, the conclusion is that the Supreme Court was working towards a predetermined answer and would not therefore be bothered about logic and commonsense.
Even though I have been too stupefied to join the rave reviews that have been trailing the outrage, a lawyer-friend called me about a week ago to sympathise with me as a member of the Ihedioha administration. In the course of our discussion, I could not but raise a few issues about the judgment which I find very confounding. Let us look at a few of them.
First is the issue of Hope Uzodinma’s candidature. The Supreme Court had, a few weeks before the infamous January 14 judgment ruled that Uche Nwosu, one of the candidates in the March 9, 2019 governorship election in Imo State, was the candidate of both the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Action Alliance (AA). His double nomination was considered an infraction. It was not supported by law. Consequently, he was disqualified from the election. His participation in that election was therefore a nullity. The logical outcome of this judgment is that Uzodinma who contested the election on the platform of the APC merely wasted his time because he was not a candidate in that election. Since Nwosu held APC’s ticket, it means that Uzodinma cannot at the same time hold the same ticket. In other words, Nwosu’s disqualification was supposed to affect Uzodinma in an adverse way. But curiously it did not. The Supreme Court maintained a studied silence on the matter.
As we dissected this matter, my lawyer-friend suggested that I should wait to see the text of the judgment to know the position of the court on the issue. Interestingly, the document has since been released, but the Supreme Court had no explanation for recognising Uzodinma as the candidate of the APC. It was silent on that.
The second point we looked at bordered on the so-called 388 polling units. Again, I relied on an earlier judgment of the Supreme Court. In ruling on a similar petition brought before it by Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 elections against Muhammadu Buhari of the APC, the Supreme Court held that all the witnesses in the polling units in an election must appear one after the other to account for what happened in their polling units. Atiku did not produce all the witnesses in the polling units where results were being disputed. Consequently, the court declared his claims deficient and dismissed it accordingly.
In the case under review, Uzodinma, like Atiku, did not produce witnesses to give account of what happened in all the 388 polling units where he claimed his results were excluded. Yet, the apex court upheld his claim. By so doing, the Supreme Court contradicted itself. This is double standards at play.
In trying to pigeonhole what the apex court did with Uzodinma’s claim on 388 polling units, we went further afield to cite decided cases where the Supreme Court said in the case of the Sokoto State election petition that it has no powers to count or allocate votes. The relevant aspect of that judgment reads in part: “ It is not the duty of the court to sift through documents tendered by parties which have not been demonstrated in the open court. It is also not the duty of the court to sort out the various documents, the figures and do the calculations in chambers to arrive at a figure given in a final judgment, especially in an election petition challenging the number of various votes polled by the candidate declared and returned as winner of the election.”
Curiously, in the case of Ihedioha versus Uzodinma, the Supreme Court swallowed its own vomit. It did exactly what it said it has no powers to do. Again, this is another case of double standards.
The curious resort by the Supreme Court in Ihedioha vs Uzodinma to the sifting and sorting out of documents, computing figures and adding and subtracting figures,
This brings us to where we are now- a review of the illogical and unjust judgment. The watching world is interested in what the court has to say about these contradictions. Since these issues cannot possibly be defended by the Justices that sat in judgment over the matter, the wise thing for the court to do is to take recourse to the wise counsel once given by Justice Chukwudifu Oputa of blessed memory to the effect that even though the Supreme Court may be the final court, it is not infallible. The court should, in this instant case, admit its own errors and make the necessary amends. It has to do this to save its name from eternal infamy. Much more than that, it has to save Imo from this state of siege.
• Dr Obi writes from Owerri