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By Stephen Ubimago
Ahead of the August 24 hearing of Honourable Ngozi Okolie’s appeal against the decision of the National Assembly Election Petition Tribunal (NAEPT) that found for Ndudi Elumelu, many have expressed reservation about the judgments emerging from some Tribunals.
To be sure, it’s one such decision that gave rise to the instant appeal.
It would be recalled that on July 24, whilst removing Okolie who won the election by a landslide, the three-man panel of Tribunal justices led by Justice A. Z. Mussa returned Elumelu who came a distant second in the February 25 election for the Oshimili/Aniocha Federal Constituency.
Curiously, Elumelu’s petition at the Tribunal succeeded not because the election umpired by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) was conducted in substantial non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act and INEC Guidelines.
Neither did it succeed because Okolie was declared winner without scoring the majority of lawful votes cast, but rather on the flimsy ground that the Labour Party nomination of Okolie as its candidate for the said election was faulty as alleged by Elumelu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in his Petition.
The Tribunal also aligned with the Petitioner without adverting itself to the robust concatenation of evidence led by Okolie and his witnesses to the effect that indeed he was educationally qualified to contest the election.
Thus, in the estimation of many, particularly lawyers, the decision was as moot as it was delivered in error. It was therefore natural that Okolie would challenge the same on appeal.
In his Notice of Appeal dated 27th of July 2023 and filed at the Court of Appeal in Asaba, Okolie formulated 12 grounds of Appeal in respect of facts and law, wherein he prayed the Court to advert its mind to the Record of Appeal in making its assessment.
He also urged the Court to grant the following orders, namely, an order allowing his appeal against the Tribunal judgment in Petition No: EPT/DL/HR/06/2023; an order setting aside the said Tribunal judgment; and also an order entering judgment in favour of the Appellant (Okolie) by dismissing Elumelu’s Petition.
It is a valid contention that the trial Tribunal seemed to have orientated itself as a Father Christmas in favour of Elumelu. This is as argued by Okolie in his appeal.
In this connection, Okolie with lavish references to binding judicial decisions, argued that the Tribunal snubbed extant principles of procedural and substantive law in order to serve the above-stated end.
For instance, out of the 22 witnesses listed by Elumelu as his, 20 were abandoned, and the remaining two who testified did not even lead any oral evidence in respect of any of the grounds of the Petition.
Neither did they lead oral evidence to prove the Petitioner’s complaint that Okolie was not qualified to contest the election.
However, despite these and many more fatal legal inadequacies in Elumelu’s case, judgment was delivered by the Tribunal for him, leaving many agitating doubts and questions in many a mind.
Against this backdrop, it is needless to point out that Election Petition Tribunals are special courts created under the relevant provisions of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, to assist the democratic process in ensuring that only the will of the people as freely expressed in their collective and overriding electoral choice prevails in the emergence of their political leaders.
Therefore, when a Tribunal is invited by a Petitioner to intervene and do justice following the outcome of an election, it should be its duty to shield itself from being manipulated and used by desperate politicians who seek to achieve through the courts what they could not achieve in a popular and democratic electoral contest.
This is having regard to the fact that as special courts, the Tribunals and their determinations ought to be circumscribed within the ideals of democracy.
These ideas prescribe inter alia that only the will of the people (not of the court), as expressed in periodic elections, should prevail in the face of attempts by disgruntled politicians to abuse the system, impose themselves as leaders, and subvert the popular will.
It is counterproductive for a Tribunal to give the hint through its judgment that it’s not independent or impartial, that its judgments are owned by the highest bidder, that it is in the service of certain vested interests, or that it is disenfranchising the electorate by delivering judgment in favour of the unpopular candidate/party against the popular based on arguably flimsy reason, as in the instant case.
The animadversions which have been expressed by many Nigerians towards the judiciary, in general, are neither baseless nor idle.
Recently, for instance, the Chairman of Kano State National and State Houses of Assembly Election Petition Tribunal, Justice Flora Azinge, publicly expressed her rage over attempts by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), to financially induce her in order to favour his client.
Speaking in open court, in this connection, Justice Azinge lamented how senior lawyers having pending cases before the Tribunal were in the unethical practice of corruptly influencing the bench.
“A Senior Advocate of Nigeria who has a pending case before me is attempting to bribe me. Money has been flying in this Tribunal since yesterday. Whoever collects money on my behalf, God will punish that person and his generation yet unborn to the fourth generation.
“They keep abusing judges, insulting us every day in the papers, in the media that we are taking bribes. Let me repeat that nobody should approach me”, she said.
Besides, sometime in June, Senator Adamu Muhammad Bulkachuwa confessed to influencing his wife whilst she was a judge and former president of the Court of Appeal in order to favour his lawmaker colleagues and friends.
“My wife (Justice Zainab Amina Bulkachuwa) whose freedom and independence I encroached upon when she was in office, had been very tolerant and accepted my encroachment, and extended her help to my colleagues,” he said in what seemed a Freudian slip on the floor of the Senate.
Hence, ahead of the hearing of Okolie’s appeal at the Court of Appeal in Asaba, watchers expect the Court to deliver sound judgment, prove the critics wrong, and restore the people’s confidence in the judiciary as the last hope of the common man.
•Ubimago, a legal practitioner, wrote from Lagos•
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