A sancrosact fact which is undeniable by all is that the Supreme Court allowed the appeal of the APC and its candidate in the matter and thus declared the candidate of APC as the Governor of Imo State in the last Governorship election. The victory candidate of PDP who was declared as the winner of that election by INEC was set aside by the apex court and further that certificate of returns be withdrawn from the PDP candidate and same to be issued in favour of the APC candidate who should be sworn in by the Chief Judge of Imo State immediately.
That was the length and breadth of the pronouncements made by the Supreme Court in the matter on the day the judgement was delivered.
The Supreme Court is yet to give his full reasons on the said appeal that was allowed ad same has been fixed for a later date.
The sad commentary and a recurring decimal with respect to Nigerian Legal Practitioners is that legal opinions in this part of the world are in most cases uncertain. Nigerian lawyers are fond of rendering multi-various and contradictory legal advice to their clients, that we can have various and diverse legal opinions as the number and quantities of lawyers rendering the legal opinion or advice. In the end , both the client and the public become more confused and helpless after seeking counsel’s legal advice in Nigeria. This is to put it mildly ,very shameful and very unfortunate.
Oliver Wendel Holmes said that ” The life of law is no logic but that of experience “. That experience is nothing other than the doctrine of stare decisis or what is commonly known as precedents which is the bedrock of any court’s decisions.
It operates on the premise that giving the same or similar facts and marrying those facts with laws or decided cases, there is the greater probabilty or likelihood that judgement would be delivered in the case at hand like in the previous related case(s). Period. Although we should also bear it in mind that a case is only an authourity for what was decided therein as no 2(two) cases can be equal but may be similar or what we call “on all fours”
Sadly, Nigerian lawyers as well as the Nigerian media practitioners got it wrong because both are even more political than people they always referred to as politicians. It is therefore natural and expected that while most Nigerian lawyers would render legal advice on any legal issue or “interpret ” court judgements depending in their political leanings and or the political party they represent or have soft spot or biases for, Nigerian media practitioners on the other hand will always slant news reports or write features and or articles depending on the interest of their partisansbip or brown envelope payers.
I have always sympathised and emohatised with the Nigerian media practitioners simply because majority of those who populated the media in Nigeria today are untrained personnel ,most of whom have also deliberately refused to undergo any training. There was indeed in a country.
In order not lose focus of my point of discourse here, I make bold to say that nobody has seen the full judgement of the Supreme Court other than the brief decision pronounced in the court. And I make bold to say that only lawyers that are irresponsible and who are not thoroughbred professionals who comment or criticise on the a court judgement that he has neither seen nor read as such would ammount to speculation which is also a professional misconduct.
If you ask all those commentators to tell you the names of the parties in the appeal, the issues in the appeal , the counsel in the appeal and the names of the Justices that sat to determine the appeal, you would be shocked to see them going blank immediately. Also, they wont be able to say whether the decision was unanimous or a split decision. Such is the sorry state we have found ourselves in Nigeria.
Without seeing the judgement and or without reading the reason for the decision yet, I can authouritatively assert , without missing a bit, that Honourable Justice Kudirat Motonmori Kekere-Ekun who was reported to read the lead judgement in the case is one of the most incorruptible justices we have on the Nigerian bench. Kekere-Ekun, JSC is not only very bright and brilliant, but her character and integrity are not only impeccable but they are second to none.
Political lawyers and jobbers as well as the Nigerian biased and compromised public commentators should their perish whatever devilsh thoughts or doubts they may have about that judgement because with Hon. Justice Kekere-Ekun and some of her other colleagues on our bench , we still have rays of hope that not all of us have a price or can be purchased or swayed with the blood money that most of our politicians and their middlemen accomplices in the legal profession ferry arround in a season like this.
Long live the Supreme Court of Nigeria, Long live the Nigerian Democracy and Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Asiwaju Mutalubi Ojo Adebayo is the Asiwaju of Ita-Ege & Idi-Aro, Ward 5 of Ibadan South East Local Government Area of Oyo State of Nigeria.
He is a former Attorney General of Oyo state.
He can be reached via Email- adebayoojo90@gmail.com and +234803375495 ( WhatsApp only).
