I always advised social media denizens or even people who don’t know the mechanics and intricacies of the law not to comment on it. issues concerning judgments of courts or law or election tribunals.
But the age of techno apologies to Wole Soyinka has made it possible for everybody to become a lawyer and attempt to interpret judgments of courts even without reading them to digest the reasoning of the judges; to evaluate how they assess the evidence adduced by both parties during trial.
After evaluating the evidence he put it into the mythical scale of justice he holds in his right to weight, and you see which side the scale tilts.
After that, the judge will apply the law to those facts before he delivers his judgment.
When you read the judgment of the tribunal and that of the court of Appeal and grasp it well you will see the predilection of politicians to be so desperate for power that most times they disregard rules, regulations and the law with recklessly abandoning all decency, all in a frenzied bid to grab power by all means.
Then when they reach the cul de sac they expect judges to close their eyes to their murder of the law and proceed to use sentiments to wriggle them out.
But judges are blind to public opinion sentiment and emotional outbursts of the social media mobbers.
Governor Kabir Yusuf was a member of the PDP and a governorship aspirant in the party. Kano State.
When it dawned on him that he would not grab the party ticket he recklessly and quickly made a volte-face and hurriedly joined the NNPP and grabbed its ticket.
He didn’t know that APC political intelligence was scooping him to gather hard evidence against him.
By the time Governor Yusuf was purportedly given a ticket by NNPP; the period prescribed by the Electoral Act for political parties to submit the list of their candidates to INEC had closed.
What is the implication of all this?
Simple; at the time Governor Kabir Yusuf purportedly joined NNPP and filed his nomination under its platform, he was not a member of the party.
Membership in a political party is a must for anybody who wants to be a governor of a State and is indeed a fundamental constitutional requirement he must fulfil.
Section 177 (1)(c) of the constitution makes it obligatory for someone to be a member of a political party that wants to sponsor his election.
This is the provision of the constitution that Governor Kabir Yusuf NNPP brazenly and with ignominy breached which the Court of Appeal found against him.
Governor Yusuf and NNPP had a bad case.
Even at the Tribunal, they called one witness. This witness strangely told the Tribunal that it should use all the documents rendered by INEC to decide the case!!
The documents tendered by INEC demonstrated that the results sheets were not stamped and signed by presiding officers at more than 16,000 polling stations.
That will amount to a sheer waste of precious judicial time to appeal this judgment to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court is an appellate court and ordinarily would not substitute its findings with those of the trial court and intermediate appellate court save in rare cases.
The Supreme Court will not disregard the findings made by a trial court that hears the case, or observe the demeanour of the witnesses during cross-examination save in exceptional circumstances.
I have not seen any exceptional. circumstances that will cause the Supreme Court to do otherwise in the case of Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf & NNPP versus INEC & APC!
Governor Kabir Yusuf and NNPP should just throw in the towel, period.
@ Okoi Obono-Obla
Disclaimer: The opinion expressed in this article is strictly that of the author, Okoi Obono-Obla and does not represent TheLumineNews or its agent.
