BY IKE ONYIA
*Read 25 Remarks from the judgement below
*(1)* In allowing the appeal, the Supreme Court did not state the new scores which the petitioners proved from the 388 polling units, especially having regard to the following facts:
*(2) (a) that only 28 polling unit agents out of the 388 polling units testified and they admitted that the result sheets had all the vices itemised earlier;*
*(3)* (b) that PW11 also admitted over voting apparent in some of the results in the chart in the petition;
*(4) (c) that more than 90% of result sheets were neither identified nor referred to by any witness;*
*(5)* (d) that the respondent, particularly, INEC denied the existence of those result sheets and tendered documentary evidence to show that election did not hold in 388 polling units;
*(6) (e) that PW54 tendered purported result sheets that were less than the number of polling units mentioned in the petition;*
*(7)* (f) that PW54 did not open or read any of the purported result sheets and stated clearly that he did not know the figures or scores they contained or whether there were “mutations or tampering” in them, and that the documents were not submitted to him.
*(8) The Supreme Court did not state that it has computed the new scores, local government by local government, and determined that the petitioners had satisfied the requirements of section 179(2) of the Constitution before it arrived at the decision that Senator Uzodinma should be sworn-in as the new Governor of Imo State.*
*(9)* In reaching its decision, the Supreme Court ignored well established principles of law which had guided its previous decision in similar cases. Perhaps, it is better to state that the Court turned those decisions upside down thereby creating the impression of double standard.
*(10) Two recent decisions of the Supreme Court easily come to mind. The first decision, SC. 409.2019: PDP v. INEC & Others was delivered on 24.5.2019. It was in respect of Ekiti State governorship election.The second decision, SC. 1211/2019: Atiku Abubakar v. INEC (unreported) was delivered on 15.11.2019. At pages 62-63 of the judgment, the Supreme Court reiterated, thus:*
*(11)* Before I conclude on this issue, let me state that whenever documents are tendered from the Bar in election matters, the purport is to speed up the trial in view of time limitation in election matters. Such tendering is not the end itself but a means to an end. The makers of such tendered documents must be called to speak to those documents and be cross-examined on the authenticity of the documents.
*(12) The law is trite that a party who did not make a document is not competent to give evidence on it. It is also the tested position of the law that where the maker of the document is not called to testify, the document would not be accorded probative value by the Court.*
*(13)* That indeed is the fate of Exhibit P80 and P24.
If the decisions in the above cases were applied to the appeal of Senator Uzodinma and APC, the outcome would have been a dismissal of the appeal.
*(14) It is a matter of concern and conjecture that the Supreme Court, inexplicably, chose to chart a new, strange course in their decision.*
*(15)* Unfortunately, the Court did not indicate that it would give reasons for the decision. That would have offered the Court the opportunity to explain the basis of the decision and state the fate of the long established principles of law it had led the legal profession and the public to believe were trite.
*(16) In the absence of the explanation, it would be difficult for practitioners and the litigating public to respect decisions of the Supreme Court thereby encouraging disregard of the rule of law.*
*(17)* Before concluding this piece, it is needful to draw attention to a decision of the Supreme Court in SC. 1384/2019: Ugwumba Uche Nwosu v. Action Peoples Party (unreported) delivered on 20.12.2019, during the pendency of the appeals being discussed.
*(18) The first two paragraphs of the judgment are remarkable. They read:This Appeal deals purely with the issue of double nomination.The Appellant contested and won the primaries conducted by All Progressives Congress [APC] on 16/10/2018; and his name was forwarded to INEC (fourth Respondent) as gubernatorial candidate of APC at the general election slated for 9/3/2019.*
*(19)* But the Appellant also contested and won the Primaries conducted by another Party, Action Alliance, and on 2/11/2018, he was issued with “a Certificate of Return & Confirmation as the duly elected Governorship Candidate” of the said Party.
*(20) The Supreme Court, therefore, held that by “allowing himself to be nominated by two political parties, the Appellant(Uche Nwosu), not only did an act that is not authorised by law, which is illegal, the Electoral Act clearly says in its Section 37, that such a nomination “shall be void”.*
*(21)* The implication of the above judgment is that Uche Nwosu was the nominated candidate of APC in the election, but that his nomination became void because he had secured *“double nomination”.*
*(22) It followed that if Uche Nwosu was factually the candidate of APC in the election, Senator Uzodinma could not have, validly, also be the APC candidate in the same election without any record of substitution of Nwosu with Uzodinma.*
*(23)* It was for this reason that Emeka Ihedioha filed an application at the Supreme Court, which was argued on 14.1.2020, contending that Senator Uzodinma and APC’s appeal should be struck out because of the implication in the above-named Supreme Court judgment.
*(24) In the judgment, the Court summarily dismissed Ihedioha’s application on the false basis that the matter of double nomination was a pre-election decision and it could not be applied to the appeal which was a post-election litigation.The Supreme Court, in this instance, chose technicality at the expense of substantial justice and denied Ihedioha the benefit of an established legal outcome.*
*(25)* The effect of the foregoing is that the judgment of the Supreme Court does not reflect the justice of the case. The electorate in Imo State have been short changed.
*This is not about anyone or party,but the deliberate attempt to kill the institution of trust called Judiciary.*
I am worried and I submit that Supreme Court should save the Nation’s Democracy and Reverse itself .
Ike Onyia