Fury Over Judicial Blunders In Kano, Plateau

The two major political parties in Kano, New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP and the All Progressives Congress, APC are set to show might today, Saturday on the streets of the ancient city as the struggle for electoral dominance turns into a street battle following an unprecedented faux pas by the Court of Appeal.

The resort to street power came after the Nigerian judiciary committed another gaffe that again brought to question the integrity and intellectual prowess of the Nigerian judiciary.

GWG.ng reports that the contradictory declarations of the Court of Appeal in respect of the appeal filed by the NNPP against the earlier judgment of the State Election Tribunal which upturned the victory of the party in favour of the APC has cast new mockery upon the Court of Appeal.

In one breath the Court in the body of the judgement tended to quash the appeal of the NNPP but in the conclusion awarded victory to the party.

On page 67 of the CTC, signed by the Registrar, Jameel Ibrahim Umar, the court upheld Yusuf’s victory.

Indeed, while affirming the earlier ruling of the tribunal that the NNPP’s Abba Yusuf was not a registered member of the party, the panel said:

“All issues in this appeal are dismissed, and the judgment of the tribunal is affirmed,” the court stated.

On page 67 of the CTC sighted, the panel headed by Moore Aseimo Abraham Adumein, in its conclusion, said, “I will conclude by stating that the (live) issues in this appeal are hereby resolved in favour of the 1st respondent and against the appellant.”

“In the circumstances, I resolve all the issues in favour of the appellant and against the 1st respondent. Therefore, I find no merit in this appeal, which is liable to be and is hereby dismissed.

“The sum of one million naira was awarded as costs in favour of the appellant and against the 1st respondent.

GWG.ng reports that the hierarchy of the Court of Appeal was thrown into confusion over the faux pas in Kano. That came as the Court of Appeal was still trying to untangle itself from the crisis generated in Plateau over contradictory judgments churned out by the court against the PDP.

Some stakeholders had sought to put the president of the Court of Appeal, Hon Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem on the spot over the controversies given that she is from Plateau State.

However, the case in Kano may have more than brought her stewardship of the Court of Appeal on the spot given the increasing vitriols being passed out by both partisan and non-partisan commentators.

Remarkably, after the contradictions in the CTC on the Kano judgment came out, the court tried to recall the document. However, the NNPP and the Kano Government rebuffed the court and snubbed the registrar.

GWG.ng reports that as the drama played out and realizing the mistakes they had made, officials of the Court of Appeal sent letters to the lawyers to all the parties in the matter to return the CTCs for correction. However, counsel to Governor Yusuf refused to return or even admit the letters of service to that effect.

Meanwhile, Governor Yusuf’s lawyers filed a fresh notice of appeal before the Supreme Court, seeking to uphold only the aspect of the judgment which was in his favour and overturn parts that were not.

However, the staff of the Court of Appeal apparently yielding to administrative pressure from officials over the CTC blunder, refused service of the processes. This then forced Yusuf’s legal team to proceed to the Kano Division of the court where same was accepted with revenue collector’s receipt number: 13164334.

Meanwhile, the blunder over the CTC has continued to reverberate across the polity. While some considered it a clerical mistake as the Court claimed, there were some who saw it as a reflection of the depth the judiciary had sunk in respect of intellectual prowess.

In the last one year there have been reports of judges not being able to pronounce or read the judgments that some alleged were written for them by interested parties.

However, a former chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Professor Chidi Odinkalu said he would not believe that it was a clerical error.

“The confusion is not a clerical error. That was the old law that I was taught. No judiciary that is credible will produce this kind of judgment and certify it. This is not coming from a customary court, it is not coming from an area court, it is not even coming from a high court,” he said in an interview on Channels Television.

“This is the Court of Appeal of Nigeria, the second highest court in the country. Any lawyer worth their onions should be scandalised by it irrespective of whatever side you take.”

He was even more puzzled that nobody had been disciplined over the gaffe.

Others who disagreed with the narrative of a clerical error depose that clerical errors are normally typographical but not in whole paragraphs.

The Kano State Commissioner for Justice, Haruna Dederi is one of those who debunk the narrative of a clerical error.

“What is a typographical error? Does it affect one word? Does it affect two words? Does it affect three words? How can a typographical error affect whole paragraphs? This is something that cannot be accepted by any discernible mind as I have said,” the Commissioner said on Thursday’s edition of Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.

“This is something that is outrageously scandalous and it cannot be accepted. We are not satisfied.”

GWG.ng reports that the gaffe of grammar over the Kano election has added to the burden of logic that preceded the judgments of the Court of Appeal concerning Plateau.

The Court of Appeal had been accused of removing the PDP from everywhere it won on the Plateau and replacing the victorious PDP candidates with APC wherever the party came second.

However, in places where the APC came third the Court ordered for a rerun to in the eyes of critics allow the APC to contest. This was until some stakeholders cried out and the Court of Appeal proceeded on a straight removal and substitution of the PDP with the second allowing Labour to now benefit.

The developments on the Plateau have led to riots with many Civil Society Organisations, CSOs joining hand with PDP to protest what they claim as the Court of Appeal’s decision to reverse the precedence set by the Supreme Court that election panels are not to look into pre-election cases as the Court of Appeal assumed.

In sacking the PDP from the Plateau, the Court of Appeal alleged that the party had no structure, disclaiming earlier Supreme Court judgments that go back to 2021 when the Supreme Court in its ruling on the Anambra State PDP primaries adjudged that the national leadership had the right to nominate irrespective of a lack of structure in the state as was the case in Anambra at that time.

An Abuja based lawyer, Barrister Walshak Barminas speaking on the development faulted the Court of Appeal on its decisions on Plateau, saying that the panel lacked jurisdiction to have entertained the issue about structure.

“The first thing in a case is about jurisdiction and in this case, the Court of Appeal sitting as an appeal court in an election petition case lacks jurisdiction to entertain the issue of nomination which is a pre-election matter,” he told GWG.ng.

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