• Wednesday, February 19, 2025
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Supreme Court of technicality and injustice

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Supreme Court of Nigeria

The recent Supreme Court of Nigeria’s decision in MACHINA V. LAWAN offends the conscience, common sense and basic justice of many Nigerians.

Ahmed Lawan, president of the Nigerian Senate, participated in the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primary in 2022. And by virtue of section: 115 (d) of Nigeria’s new electoral law, a candidate cannot be nominated in two elections. So, he did not participate in the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) supervised senatorial primary for his re-election as a senator. As a result, Bashir Machina participated in the Yobe East senatorial primary and was returned unopposed.

When Ahmed Lawan lost his presidential bid, he ran back to pressurise Bashir Machina to surrender his primary win and Machina refused. Lawan mobilised the whole apparatus of his party in a bid to take the ticket from Machina.

The APC subsequently submitted Lawan’s name as its senatorial candidate even though he did not participate in the primary.

Machina went to court alleging fraud. He started his litigation against Lawan alleging fraud (a crime) by way of “Originating Summons” instead of “Writ of Summons”.

And for that thoughtless TECHNICALITY, the Supreme Court of Nigeria would ignore the evidence, facts and common sense and give the senatorial ticket to the person who did not participate in the primary against the person who did and won by the votes of his people.

Increasingly, Nigeria’s courts have become courts of Mumbo Jumbo and technicality rather than courts of justice. Technical legal rules are supposed to be a guide to justice not a tool to thwart justice. But in Nigeria, the latter seems to be the rule.

Enyinnaya Abaribe, a Nigerian senator, asked the former CJN Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed, in his confirmation hearing about this issue of TECHNICALITY, yet, the courts continue in this strange tract.

That was the track that imposed Hope Uzodimma as governor of Imo State, even though he came fourth in the governorship elections. Godswill Akpabio is now clutching the APC senatorial ticket from Akwa Ibom courtesy of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.

At some point in this country, we have to decide whether we want a court of justice or a court of technicality. Abaribe raised this cogent point at the confirmation hearings of the last CJN, Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed.

The Supreme Court must decide cases to do justice between the warring parties, the rule of law, justice and the country. Members of the court are not from heaven and don’t dwell in paradise, their decisions must not be about technicalities because it has real life consequences to real people.

The Supreme Court must do justice at all times and justice must be seen by the public to be done also.

Read also: Nigerians caution judiciary, INEC over Supreme Court’s verdict on Lawan, Akpabio

The Supreme Court of Justice, as the apex court, in any land, is a final appellate court. It does not generate its own facts, it does not observe the ‘led witnesses’, nor observe their cross-examinations. It does not observe the testimony or the body language of witnesses. It is a review court.

It was the then Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson, of the U.S Supreme Court who was the U.S special prosecutor at Nuremberg in 1945 who uttered an everlasting truism, when he wrote: We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.

The Supreme Court decisions must reflect that at all times. It must bear in mind that there is a devastating finality to any miscarriage of justice at that level.

Ahmed Lawan participated in the APC presidential primary and not in the APC senatorial primary in Yobe. By section 115(d) of the new electoral Act, he couldn’t have.

The Supreme Court by hanging its outrageous decision on whether Bashir Machina’s lawyers, in alleging fraud, in the petition, went by ‘Originating Summons’ instead of ‘Writ of Summons’ is an insult to all our sensibilities. How can the court reward a person who did not participate in the beauty pageant with winning, and dismiss the participant and the scorer of most points?

There is no other appropriate name other than ‘miscarriage of justice.’

Castro Ginigeme is a lawyer and former adjunct law professor in the United States.

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