ONITSHA (Sundiata Post) – A coalition of over 20 rights and democracy groups based in the South-East, have described the judgment of the 2023 Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal as the second most anti democratic case-law in Nigeria.
A coalition of pro democracy groups ranked the judgement after the Jan 2020 Supreme Court Verdict on Imo State Governorship Election.
In a statement made available to Sundiat Post on Thursday, the coalition explained that the Supreme Court Judgment is, therefore, a must delete from Nigeria’s ‘Case-Laws’ or Decided Cases which must be speedily effected through electoral and judicial reforms; else credible electoral process will permanently be destroyed and the principle of ‘one-man-one-vote’ gone forever in Nigeria or any part thereof.
This was made known in a statement jointly signed by Emeka Umeagbalasi (Intersociety); Comrade Aloysius Emeka Attah (South-East CLO) and Prof Jerry Chukwuokoro (South-East Rights and Democracy Coalition).
The statement reads in part; “It is our Joint-Position that the 2023 PEPT Judgments are the second most anti democratic Case-Law in Nigeria after the Jan 2020 Supreme Court Verdict on Imo State Governorship Election.
“The 2023 PEPT and the Jan 2020 Supreme Court Judgment are therefore a must delete from Nigeria’s ‘Case-Laws’ or Decided Cases which must be speedily effected through electoral and judicial reforms; else credible electoral process will permanently be destroyed and the principle of ‘one-man-one-vote’ gone forever in Nigeria or any part thereof.”
According to the groups, Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar and their camps are called upon to allow the time allocated for filing of appeal or challenging the Judgments at the Supreme Court to elapse. Adding that it is their considered opinion that from their several findings that the composition of the present Supreme Court of Nigeria with regard to the 2023 PEPT case is not friendly to credible democratic process in Nigeria.
“Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar and their camps are called upon to allow the time allocated for filing of appeal or challenging the Judgments at the Supreme Court to elapse. It is our considered opinion that from our several findings that the composition of the present Supreme Court of Nigeria with regard to the 2023 PEPT case is not friendly to credible democratic process in Nigeria.
“Therefore, taking the case to the Apex Court will most likely end up lending apex credibility to the democratically harmful Judgments and elevate the same to ‘Grand Case-Law’ or “Supreme Court Judicial Precedent” with which Nigerian jurisprudence will be mirrored globally with contempt and resentment including being internationally mocked or laughed at all the times.
“With the 2023 PEPT Judgments and the Jan 2020 Supreme Court Judgment on Imo Governorship Poll as “the Nigeria’s newest Supreme Court Judicial Precedents or ‘Case-Laws’, the hopes of the presumed winners of Governorship and Presidential Polls in Nigeria to seek redresses in the Election Petitions Tribunals and their appellate and apex stages will be dead on arrival or permanently closed.
The coalition ‘thanked’ the five Justices of PEPT for “a job well-done”
“We ‘thank’ the Five Justices and the 2023 PEPT for a ‘job well-done”. We specifically ‘thank’ them for wasting more than three months (March 18 to May 30, 2023 and weeks of unwarranted adjournments and delays into June, July and August) in frivolities and allocating less than three months into compressing the PEPT cases before them; forcing the litigants into time unfriendliness and mangling of their petitions, evidence and witnesses.
“We ‘thank’ them for conspiring with INEC in denying the petitioners fair hearing including access to relevant materials used in the conduct of the Feb 25, 2023 Presidential Poll. We ‘thank’ the PEPT for monumentally failing to enforce her issued orders and for allowing INEC to flout them with reckless abandon and impunity.
“We ‘thank’ the PEPT for conspiring with INEC in denying the petitioners access to see and inspect the requested electoral materials contained in the requests duly made by the petitioners and granted or ordered by the same PEPT. We ‘thank’ them for supervising the brazen violation of her orders by INEC.
“We ‘thank’ them for allowing INEC to enter and finish its defense without tendering all relevant materials and pieces of evidence whether manually or electronically including FormEC8As from more than 24 States and the FCT showing how the Commission came about the results used in declaring Ahmed Bola Tinubu as a “winner”. The above was also to the extent that INEC became jubilant on account of all of the above; the height of ‘legal technicalities’ that are killing or destroying Nigeria’s post election cases particularly since 2015.
“Further, we ‘thank’ the PEPT for introducing immorality in the art of studying and practicing law in Nigeria. We ‘thank’ them for institutionalizing political thuggery, immorality, brigandage and armada of electoral fraud into Nigeria’s electoral process. We ‘thank’ them for institutionalizing poll rigging and militarization in Nigeria or any part thereof.
“We ‘thank’ them for institutionalizing the “credible and popular votes do not count anymore in Nigeria”. We ‘thank the PEPT for reducing electoral process including voters’ registration and voting to “INEC, political parties’ candidates and their loyalists, hired urchins and security personnel affair” in Nigeria or any part thereof in the future.
“We ‘thank’ the PEPT for institutionalizing and deepening voter apathy and ‘selection process’ in Nigeria or any part thereof. We ‘thank’ them for deepening Nigeria’s international pariah status. By expunging the EU Poll Observer Report from her records, we ‘thank’ the PEPT for cutting themselves including their wives and children off from European soils and soils of other Democratic Nations including US, Canada, Brazil, Malta, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, etc.
“We ‘thank’ the PEPT for judicially insulting democracy and rule of law including popular and credible voting. We ‘thank’ them for pushing Nigeria and Nigerians including themselves into the roads to Somalia and Afghanistan where demographic and electoral banditries and bandits inhabit, cohabitate and mingle in a ‘state of nature’,” the statement added.
