Eminent Professor of Law, Itse Sagay, SAN, has said the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s legal team should apply to the Supreme Court for a review of its judgments on Zamfara and Rivers states.
Sagay is the chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC).
While the apex court, in its ruling excluded the party from fielding candidates in Rivers during the general elections, it also nullified the APC’s victory in the election and confirmed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as authentic winners, the twin decisions Sagay described as travesty of justice.
Oshiomhole’s similar stance
His position came barely three days after the APC National Chairman, Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole said the Supreme Court’s judgement was an injustice.
Among other things, the party’s chair said: “So, there is no justice when ground of technicalities you imposed on the people of Zamfara state, not just a man or a woman, but a whole party candidates from governor to Senate and others they didn’t elect.
“If the court thought we were wrong, the justice would have demanded that we repeat but you cannot use technicalities because we are in a democracy, there is nothing democratic when the court imposes strangers to govern a people. But we understand is that after the Supreme Court we can only go to the court of God. To that extent, we must obey the court but what we got in Zamfara is a judgement that didn’t translate to justice.”
And Sagay compliments position
Complimenting Oshiomhole’s position in a statement Thursday, Sagay said: “The Zamfara and Rivers states’ judgements are a national tragedy. We should not allow our legal system to throw up such unimaginable injustice.
“This major judicial disenfranchisement of the Zamfara and Rivers electorate should be reversed. I advise the APC legal team to apply for a review of the two judgments.
“Their Lordships ought to be given an opportunity to reverse this unprecedented tragedy.
“The prefix ‘Justice’ preceding the names of Supreme Court and Court of Appeal Judges is significant, for it prescribes what they stand for and what they represent: Justice!”
Sagay said in the governorship election in Zamfara, the APC candidate scored well over 500,000 votes whilst the PDP candidate polled just over 100,000 votes.
He said the APC won all three Senate seats in the state, seven House of Representative seats and 24 State House of Assembly seats.
“By this judgement, the landslide APC victories in the governorship, Senate, House of Representative and state House of Assembly are transferred to the PDP.
“If the APC primaries were defective, should the electorate be deprived of their democratic and constitutional rights to vote? Is the electorate to be punished for the transgressions of party officials?
“Should the judiciary replace the electorate’s decision and install losers in office? Could the judiciary not have drawn on the deep recesses of its intellectual capacity, authority and its inexorable commitment to justice, to prevent this undemocratic calamity?
“Can the APC officials not be punished, for their lapses without denying the electorate their democratic rights? Should the judiciary take over the electoral rights of the electorate? Is this not a clear case of technical law completely overthrowing justice?
“Have the members of the Supreme Court not achieved a level of creativity and authority to provide a solution without burying democracy and taking over from the registered voters as the judicial electorate?
“If this judgement had been an international one, it could have been described as ‘shocking the conscience of humanity’. In this case, it shocks the conscience of Nigerian humanity,” he said.
Relying on some authorities, the PACAC boss said the Supreme Court was specially endowed with the power and authority to do justice and to ignore law when it is technical and would create injustice, and to avoid at all cost a mechanical approach to the interpretation of the law.
He said: “Now, has justice been served in Rivers and Zamfara states? No! In one case innocent electorate in their hundreds of thousands were prevented from voting for their party by judicial order.
“In Zamfara, where voting took place, the verdict of the electorate was taken away from the victorious party and awarded by the judiciary to the woeful losers.
“In the next four years, Zamfara state will be governed by a party and politicians rejected by the electorate. This indeed shocks the conscience of Nigerian humanity.”
Quoting Section 140(1) – (3) of the Electoral Act, which prohibits any court from declaring a loser of an election elected even if the person with the highest votes was not validly elected, Sagay said: “I am not interested in the provisions of the Electoral Act 2010. I am only deeply concerned and interested in the fundamental and peremptory principle of justice.
“No judge should announce his judgement until he is satisfied that justice has been served, no matter how strong the pull of mechanical and technical law.”
Non-NWC officials on Oshiomhole
Meanwhile, the call for Oshiomhole’s removal continued to gain momentum as a forum of Non-National Working Committee has demanded for an urgent meeting.
Party’s Deputy National Chairman, Senator Shuaibu Lawan recently asked Oshiomhole to resign from office on account of not providing the APC the right leadership.
But making another call in a leaked letter signed by the Chairman, Non-NWC members, Alhaji Nasiru Danu and Secretary, Hon. Omolayo O. Akintola, and seen by our correspondent Thursday, the forum said there was need for the party’s NWC to summon a meeting.
The letter dated 29th May, 2019, titled: “Demand for an urgent interface with NWC organ of our party-APC” and addressed to the national chairman, said the meeting is principally to address critical issues affecting our great party before such issues go out of hands which could be inimical to the general welfare of the party.”
They said the body would have called for such meeting earlier “but we considered the concluded 2019 general elections as determinant or our party’s survival which had come and gone with successes and losses.
“This body rose from her today’s (29/05/2019) emergency meeting shortly after the presidential inauguration ceremony held at the Eagle Square, Abuja and concluded the following request be made.
“We hereby request for a meeting to be fixed from your end as soon as possible in order to meet with the urgency it demands.”
The letter, addressed to the party’s chair was also copied to the chairman of the APC Governors Forum, Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi state.
