The Alliance of Civil Societies has called for a new panel to look into the review of the Supreme Court judgment on the Imo governorship as the apex court hears the application filed by Emeka Ihedioha on Tuesday.
Ihedioha had approached the court to review the January 14, 2020 judgement, which removed him as governor and declared Hope Uzodinma, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as Governor on the grounds that results from 388 polling units were excluded when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced the final results in the March 9, 2019 election.
Addressing reporters in Abuja, Co-convener of the Alliance, Livinus Ibiang, said the Court owes Nigerians the clarity about what happened to the votes of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and other political parties in the 388 units tendered by the APC and its candidate.
Reading from a statement co-signed with Igho Akeregha and Ugochukwu Hamks-Ezekiel, he said: โThat the Court of Appeal had earlier dismissed the petition of Senator Hope Uzodinma as incompetent and struck it out.
โHowever, the Supreme Court did not consider the appeal of Hope Uzodinma on this point and so the judgement of the Court of Appeal dismissing the petition still stands or subsists. There was therefore no basis for the Supreme Court to pronounce on the Appeal and declare Hope Uzodinma, elected.
โThat the judgement was delivered without jurisdiction in that by virtue of S.140(2) of the Electoral Act, once the Court says that the election was invalid, the only possible judgement the Court is allowed to give is a nullification of the election, and not to declare Hope Uzodinma, winner.
โThat there was no proof before the Court nor did the Supreme Court state how it arrived at the declaration that Hope Uzodinma met the constitutionally required geographical spread. To meet this requirement, the Supreme Court ought to state the scores and percentages of all the 70 candidates that contested the election, Local Government by Local Government. This was not done by the Supreme Court and therefore had no basis and jurisdiction to declare Hope Uzodinma winner of the election.
โThat the judgement was a nullity having been obtained by fraud or deceit in that Hope Uzodinma fraudulently misled the Supreme Court into holding that a total of 213,495 were unlawfully excluded from his votes. The fraud was further orchestrated by the fact that the total votes cast was more than the number of voters accredited to vote. The fraud was further demonstrated by the document tendered by INEC (FORM EC40G) which clearly showed that there were no valid elections in the disputed 388 polling units.
โThat the judgement was a nullity because it was given per incuriam, which means that the Supreme Court did not advert its attention to some existing laws and facts even on the face of the proceedings. For instance;
โBy Exhibit A1 (Form EC8D) the total number of voters accredited for the Governorship Election held on 9th March 2019 in Imo State was 823,743,while the total valid votes cast was 731,485. Note that the Petitioner did not plead or lead evidence of a different accreditation figure from the 388 disputed polling units.
โWith the inclusion of 213,695 votes for Hope Uzodinma and 1,903 to the votes of Emeka Ihedioha, as ordered by the Supreme Court, the total number of votes cast at the election now stands at 953,083 (i.e. 731,485 + 213,695 + 1,903) making the total number of votes cast at the election to be far in excess of the total number of voters accredited for the election, 129,340.
โIt is unlawful for the total number of votes cast in an election to exceed the number of accredited voters and that illegality rendered the judgment sought to be set aside null and void.
โThe rationale behind the inherent power of this court to set aside its judgments in appropriate cases was graphically and beautifully stated by Oputa JSC in the case of ADEGOKE MOTORS LTD. v. ADESANYA (1986) 3 NWLR (Pt. 109) 250 at 274 as follows:
โJustices of this court are human beings capable of erring. It will certainly be short-sighted arrogance not to accept this obvious truth. It is also true that this Court can do inestimable good through its wise decisions. Similarly, the Court can do incalculable harm through its mistakes. When therefore it appears to learned Counsel that any decision of this Court has been given per incuriam, such Counsel should have the boldness and courage to ask that such decision shall be overruled. This Court has the power to overrule itself (and has done so in the past) for it gladly accepts that it is far better to admit an error than to preserve an error.โ
