Knowledge Is The Most Expensive Property

Taraba Election Tribunal ruling and matters arising

The Sun News / Our Reporter / 4 hours ago

By Idang Alibi
THREE years ago, a lawyer friend of mind gave me a legal tome of a work he had done and requested me to help him proof read it. He had painstakingly assembled the lead judgments in landmark cases an erudite judge had delivered in the course of his illustrious career in both the Appeal and the Supreme courts of our country. The over nearly 3000-paged work was done in honour of the distinguished legal personage. Three months later, I was done.
When I took the manuscript to his house, I, in my foolish innocence, remarked, as a part of my compliment, that from the many decided cases I had read in his manuscript, why do lawyers and judges still take so much time to decide cases which have exactly the same or similar body of facts with cases which sound precedents have been established?
In my naivety, I thought that if the tribe of lawyers and judges are truly minded about serving the cause of fairness, justice and equity in order to ensure peace, stability and the development of the society, it will make eminent sense if a litigant brings up a case, a judge will just bring out a standard case decided before by a reputable judge and every- body involved (the lawyers, judges, litigants) is guided strictly by what was canvassed then and the decision arrived at in that case. This will save everybody’s time and efforts. After all, I reasoned to myself, there is hardly any- thing new under the sun. There is no case that anyone would bring up today that has never been brought up before and has therefore not been decided upon.
But to my utmost surprise, a lawyer visitor present in my friend’s house told me in all seriousness whether I do not want lawyers and judges to eat again? I found that remark very eye-opening. So, lawyers and judges do not serve in the sacred temple of justice to bring peace, justice and development to society as they often claim; they see cases primarily as a means to earn their upkeep? So, the longer it takes, the pains it inflicts on the litigants and the chaos they sometimes bring unto society are good for lawyers and judges? I was cured of my naivety that day. This telling remark came to my mind following the judgment delivered by the panel of judges in the Taraba Election Tribunal which recently nullified the election of Governor Darius Ishaku on the ground that he was not validly nominated by his party, the PDP, to stand for that election. All hell broke loose following that ruling. Nearly forty lives were lost and billions worth of property destroyed. Legal pundits have since universally condemned that ruling saying that the judges erred in law by treating a pre-election matter instead of focusing on election matters for which they have jurisdiction.
I am neither a lawyer nor the son of a lawyer so I will not argue here on points of law. I leave that to the legal men who are better placed to do so and who have already proffered their opinion that even on points of law, the judges erred big time. Rather, my opinion on the matter will be based essentially on pure common sense and the need for social stability.
The main legal argument the judges stood on to pass such a weighty judgment is curious and tenuous, to say the least offensive word at their verdict. INEC did not complain that Darius Ishaku was not validly nominated. The PDP did not complain that someone had imposed Darius Ishaku on the party. No aggrieved member of the PDP had gone to court complaining that he had been robbed of victory in the primaries. It was the petitioner who had complained that her opponent was not validly nominated. And from decided cases, outright victory could not have been awarded to her if it was true that her opponent was not fit to be a candidate of his party.
From what we can see, it is the kind of judgment that reeks of all sorts of suspicion. It is as if the judges resolved to help one of the parties and they strenuously looked for even straws to hold unto in order to arrive at the conclusion they reached. If the Tribunal wanted to show their sympathy for the APC candidate, they could at best have blamed INEC for allowing a non-validly nominated candidate of the PDP to have stood election and not to punish Ishaku for a sin those who ought to have complained about never accused him of. The judges seemed to have decided to give to Aisha Jummai Alhassan in the law court what she could not achieve for herself on the political field. I think this was what irked some people in Taraba to resort to violence.
Tarabians seem to have resolved to live with the outcome of the governorship election. Darius Ishaku was declared governor after the titanic fight and there was no uprising against his enthronement. Aisha Alhassan who lost to him accepted nomination by the President to be a minister and had just been confirmed by the senate at the time the shock ruling was delivered. Alhassan herself and her supporters were happy that she did not lose it all. Why, then, stir the hornet nest by such a verdict that has, in the first place, no strong basis in law if mischief was not intended by the judges?
Even if judgment on the case had been written long ago, recent development re- counted in the preceding paragraph to the point of that judgment and the fact that the state was at peace with itself would have necessitated a rewriting of the judgment. The business of judges is not to tear society apart but to use wisdom to bring about social and political cohesion.
Our judges are required not to be partisan but they are not expected to be apolitical, especially in deciding very political cases such as the one they handled in Taraba. They live in a socio-political milieu and cannot pretend not to know what may follow some of the decisions they make. The Taraba Tribunal ruling is disturbing for another reason. Keen watchers of the actions and non-actions of some of judges have realized that they sometimes look at the same body of facts and arrive at judgments that are far apart from one another as the north and south poles.
It is common knowledge in our country that in the 2015 election, Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue participated in the governorship primaries of the PDP. It was when he felt shortchanged that he jumped ship and sought election on the plat- form of the APC. There is no way he could have participated in the primaries of his new party, the APC, for him to have been validly nominated ac- cording to the prescription of the Electoral Act. Yet, the tribunal that heard the case instituted against him by the PDP ruled that he was validly nominated.
For Ishaku, there is no dispute as to the fact that he participated in his own party primaries. It is just that it did not take place in the state capital in Jalingo. But the Supreme Court has ruled in a similar case elsewhere that the doctrine of necessity, in the case of Taraba, the insecurity challenge in Jalingo, should absolve INEC and any party concerned from blame. Between Ortom and Ishaku, even an unbiased layman can see that Ishaku had a greater claim of valid nomination, yet two different panels made up of experienced learned judges, saw the similar cases differently.

*Alibi writes from Lagos.