There are traditionally three sorts of governmental powers – the legislative, the executive and the judicial powers of government. The doctrine of separation of powers demands that these three powers are to be independent with separate functions and manned by different persons or body of persons or institutions. This is to prevent the emergence of tyranny which will result in the convergence of all the powers in one person and avoid the desecration of the liberty of the citizens which is the hallmark of a democratic government. Among these arms of government, it is only the judiciary that is not elected directly from the people. The President, who represents the executive arm, and the members of the National Assembly, who represent the legislature, are all elected directly from the people.
The reason the judiciary is exempted from being elected directly from the people, even when they are regarded as an equal arm of the government to the executive and legislature, is because of the specific qualification needed to become a judge. This qualification requires, according to Justice Daltijo, a recently retired justice of the Supreme Court, sound knowledge of the law, hard work, integrity and honesty. These are qualities that are not found at random in people, they are qualities that are cultivated over the years with an evidence of experience in that field. A judge must have been a practising lawyer for at least 10 years to be qualified to be a judge. It’s because of these peculiarities that the law requires that the judiciary shall be appointed by the executive, on the recommendation of the National Judicial Council (a judicial body) subject to approval by the legislature. The three arms of government are present and have a duty in the appointment of a judge. Before appointment of judges are compromised, the three arms of government must be incompetent, complicit, corrupt and compromised. Little wonder, Justice Daltijo lamented that the Supreme Court he is leaving behind has become something else insinuating openly that the necessary qualifications necessary for the appointment of judges have been compromised.
There’s always the saying that the judiciary is the last hope of the common man. The truth is that the judiciary is the last hope of everybody. This saying stems from the fact that conflict is inevitable in every human relationship. It then behoves simply logic that the arm responsible for the resolution of conflict is the only hope for the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Any time this arm fails in this duty, the result is anarchy. It is wrong for any body to make excuses for any arm of government because nobody forced any of them to be appointed. They were appointed on the impression that they were qualified.
Today, it’s unfortunate that politicians of all shades and colours and even ordinary Nigerians are expressing loss of hope and confidence in the judiciary and this portends great danger for our country. Immediately after the sham election of Kogi State, where even the Independent National Electoral Commission, initially admitted some inexplicable compromise of their processes in what is now known as prefilled results and promised to investigate it, but instead went ahead to declare its bogus results without the promised investigation, which led to the uploading of embarrassing mutilated figures on the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IRev Portal), where the number of votes exceeds in some cases by more than hundred percent the number of accredited voters, the gubernatorial candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dino Melaye, came out to announce openly that he will not go to court. His reason was that he has lost confidence in the judiciary. Hear him, “Judiciary is no longer the last hope of the ordinary people, it is now a department under the All Progressives Congress. Why should any responsible person go to the tribunal when the APC have captured the judiciary? I have lost complete confidence in the judiciary.”
What the gubernatorial candidate of the PDP does not know is that even the All Progressives Congress (APC) has also lost confidence in our electoral judicial system. The Senator who represented Osun Central and Spokesperson for the ninth Senate, Ajibola Basiru, who is now the current National Secretary of the APC told a national daily when he lost his re-election bid to the candidate of the PDP, that he would not challenge the result at the court because he chose to move on, maintaining in his own words that “The election was neither free nor fair. It was one that reported cases of voter intimidation, voter suppression and harassment. Ballot boxes were snatched from our strongholds particularly in Ila, Boripe and Orolu Local Government Areas. So, there were a lot of inadequacies in the election, but as a matter of choice, I don’t think going to court is what I want to do. For me, being in politics is about service. There are a lot of fault lines in our electoral justice system by which to establish such cases of brutalisation of voters, intimidation of supporters of our party and many more. When you report such cases, you will be told to prove it beyond reasonable doubts. That fault line encourages electoral heist. I only hope that the Nigerian law develops to a point that such acts will no longer be the order of the day”. (Please see < https://punchng.com/i-wont-challenge-my-defeat-at-election-tribunal-bashiru-senate-spokesman/> last accessed on 1st December, 2023 at 8:41am). He is absolutely correct. The fault line in our electoral justice system (the courts) encourages electoral heist (electoral robbery). This signifies that the decisions from our courts are encouraging electoral banditry and robbery and unless something urgent is done immediately, it will lead to renewed hopelessness, which is an open invitation to anarchy.
To complete this circle of loss of hope on the court, the Labour Party recently screamed that the Supreme Court up until today has refused to provide any certified true copy (ctc) for the judgment of Labour Party and Peter Obi’s case against Tinubu, Shettima and APC. Recall that on Oct 26, 2023, we were all at the Supreme Court for judgement and the Supreme Court only proceeded to read the judgment for PDP. After that, the Presiding Justice, John Inyang Okoro JSC, verbally stated that the decision for PDP applies to Labour Party. He even went further to berate the Appellants for bringing the issue of the double nomination of the vice presidential candidate of the APC, Shettima, before them, because according to him, the issue has already been settled by the court before that day. In the words of some media houses loyal to some APC Chieftains, it took the Supreme Court about 120 seconds (two minutes) to dismiss Peter Obi’s appeal. As an eye witness, it was shocking to see each of the remaining six Justices concur to what can be described at best as an undelivered judgment.
It is an undelivered judgement because the two appeals are different in most aspects and have basically only about one issue in common. The issue of the consequence of a candidate not obtaining 25% of the votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The PDP’s appeal contains the issue of certificate forgery which was not in the LP’s appeal. Forfeiture of funds by Tinubu being proceeds of narcotics trafficking contained in the LP’s petition was not in the PDP’s. Failure to comply with the mandatory requirement of Section 73(2) of the Electoral Act, 2022, the consequence of which the provision stipulates, renders the election invalid was only in LP’s appeal. The effect of the certified true copies of 18,088 blurred and unreadable polling unit result sheets (Form EC8As) containing blank A4 papers, pictures, and images of unknown persons, purported to be copies of polling units results, downloaded from the IReV, issued by the INEC to the LP and its candidate which they tendered in Court was not in the PDP’s appeal. Even with the materiality of these issues, no judgement was read or given for Labour Party at the Supreme Court.
The position of the law is very clear in Section 294(1) that a Court should furnish all parties with duly authenticated copies of the decision it made within seven days of the delivery. The Labour Party sent a letter dated 26th October 2023, to the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court for the ctc of the judgment in the LP appeal but no response was given. Again, on the 8th November 2023, Labour Party sent a letter requesting for the ctc of the judgement but no response was given. This has created the avoidable impression that the Supreme Court has refused to provide any ctc of the judgment for the Labour Party appeal, because either it illegally quashed the case or it avoided to give any judgement because it knew how vital the issues on the Labour Party’s case were and would have attracted decisions other than it intended to give if it had decided the issues on merit.
As it stands today, the Court is by law, functus officio and has lost jurisdiction to address all these issues raised because the mandatory 60 days to deliver judgement on electoral issues had elapsed. The court also is not allowed to deliver judgement privately. It must be publicly done. This means that the court is stuck with the unprecedented judgement that the unrelated PDP’s judgement abides the LP’s appeal. This will eternally define this era of judicial inadequacy which a fellow Justice of the Supreme Court described as something else. The Supreme Court however has no choice but to release the ctc of whatever judgement it delivered on the 26th of October, 2023 after issuing the hearing notice on the 25th of October, 2023. The most dangerous aspect of the unfolding drama is the loss of confidence of most Nigerians, including a Justice of the Supreme Court, in our modern day judiciary. This is a recipe for anarchy, if nothing is done urgently to reverse this trend. This, in itself, is really something else.