As Amaechi Faces Final Hurdle 10 Nov 2013 Font Size: a / A Tomorrow, parties in the seemingly unending legal tussle over the governorship of Rivers State will return to the Supreme Court in what appears to be the final leg of the dispute. Davidson Iriekpen examines the issues. Tomorrow, parties in the lingering legal tussle over the governorship of Rivers State will converge at the Supreme Court in what appears to be the final resolution of the dispute. The court, having consolidated all applications on October 3, is expected to hear arguments, and finally lay the issues rest. The dispute between Mr. Celestine Omehia and Governor Rotimi Amaechi, though once resolved by the court in 2007, was resurrected in 2010 when the Court of Appeal made Omehia a party in a suit in which he was not involved at the lower court. This time at the court, the respondents, Omehia and the Independent National Electoral Commission, would be seeking from the apex court salient answers to the following questions: Can an oath of office be administered on an inanimate object? Can a person take an oath of office on behalf of another person? Didn’t the court say that it is the day a candidate was sworn in that his/her tenure begins to count? How the Case Started The case started in 2010 when INEC published the timetable for the 2011 general elections. The timetable fixed the governorship election in Rivers State for August 2011. This made a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, Cyprian Chukwu, who at the time was the legal adviser to PDP in the state, to file a suit before the Federal High Court, Abuja, with Amaechi and INEC as defendants. Chukwu faulted INEC’s decision to schedule the governorship election in Rivers State for August. He urged the court to interpret the 2007 judgement by the apex court, which sacked Omehia as governor and enthroned Amaechi. Chukwu also urged the court to determine whether a governorship election should be held in Rivers during the general election of April or later, since Amaechi took the oath of office in October 2007, as against May 29 when his counterparts in other states were sworn into office. It was his contention that since the Supreme Court, in its decision upon which Amaechi was made governor in 2007, held that it was his party – the PDP – that won the April 2007 governorship election in the state, Amaechi’s tenure ought to start counting from May 29, 2007 and not October 27, 2007 when he took the oath of office after Omehia was sacked. Although the defendants argued otherwise, the trial judge, Justice Abdulkadir Abdulkafarati, in his judgement, ruled in favour of the plaintiff. He specifically held that though Amaechi took the oath of office on October 26, 2007, his initial tenure ended on May 28, 2011. The judge held that since the Supreme Court in its 2007 judgement, which sacked Omehia, held that it was the party (PDP) that won the April 2007 governorship election in the state and not the candidate (Amaechi), the tenure started counting on May 29, 2007 when Omehia was wrongly sworn in. Abdulkafarati further held that the time Omehia spent in office formed part of Amaechi’s actual tenure of four years since the apex court merely sacked the person who wrongly occupied the office and did not annul the election of April 14, 2007 won by the PDP, and on which basis he assumed office. The judge added that it was wrong in law for Amaechi to expect that his tenure would extend to October 2011 Not satisfied with Abdulkafarati’s decision, Amaechi and INEC went before the Court of Appeal, Abuja. But before the appeal could be considered, Omehia applied to be made a party in the appeal initiated by Amaechi and INEC. Amaechi, through his lawyer, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), opposed the application, contending that Omehia was neither a necessary nor a desirable party, a position Omehia countered by arguing that since he was a party in the case that led to the 2007 Supreme Court judgement, which the Federal High Court interpreted, he was adversely affected by the judgement and was eligible to be made a party. Omehia, in a supporting affidavit, averred: “I am dissatisfied with the judgement of the lower court and wish to appeal against same as a person interested in the matter, and in the office of governor of Rivers State which form the basis of my interest as well as a person interested in the interpretation of a judgement in which I was a principal party.” He told the court that he was desirous of contesting the state’s governorship election under the banner of another party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, and prayed to be made a party in the appeal to enable him challenge the judgement of the High Court, which he described as incorrect. In its ruling, the appellate court held in his favour and made him a party in the case, a decision Amaechi faulted and consequently headed for the Supreme Court. Fagbemi, who filed Amaechi’s appeal, argued that Omehia deliberately hid from the appeal court justices the fact that he actually participated in the April 2011 governorship election on the platform of APGA and lost. He contended that being a party in the case leading to the 2007 Supreme Court judgement, which the High Court judge interpreted, was insufficient to confer on Omehia the right to be made a party in the case before the Court of Appeal, since no relief is sought against him in the case. Politics of the Case For those who have been following the politics of the state, the cold war between President Goodluck Jonathan and Amaechi may have started way before the 2011 elections. Apparently, not trusting Jonathan to allow him get the Rivers State governorship ticket after the president would have won the 2011 presidential election, Amaechi had opted for the suit. He preferred that his election should come at the same time with the other governors. That way, he would also reap from the general endorsement of the PDP governors’ second term by Jonathan, which was a condition for them to support Jonathan in the party’s presidential primaries. The belief in some quarters was that Amaechi was afraid of the swelling rank of opposition against him in the state and wanted an easy election by running his own race at the same time that the president’s election would hold. But Amaechi’s apprehension was later confirmed in neighbouring Bayelsa State, where despite the understanding with Jonathan to allow all the PDP governors to do second terms, the president supervised the exclusion of then Governor Timipre Sylva from re-contesting the governorship post. Critics maintain that Amaechi originated the suit as a way of overcoming the threat by the opposition to his re-election in 2011. They allege that he not only arranged for the case at the trial court, but also paid both the counsel to the plaintiff and the defendants. Those in this school of thought believe that if the governor had run for the August 2011 election alone, he would not have been able to properly take charge of all that would have happened on the day of the election, as the attention of the whole country and the police as well as election observers would have focused on the state. The governor’s critics wonder why did he not challenge the powers of the court to hear the case, especially when the judgement back-dated his tenure, if he did not originate and bankroll the case. Also, they wonder why he would allow a judgement to be given against him so cheaply, knowing the governor’s antecedents as a fighter. They equally question why the case went to Abuja when the person who went to court was the Rivers State Legal Adviser of PDP, who was based in Port Harcourt where there is a Federal High Court. Also curious is why, in a country where it takes a court an average of a year or more to exhaust a court process, a case would be filed and judgement delivered within two weeks. “This speed is remarkable in the history of the judiciary in Nigeria,” a source who pleaded anonymity told THISDAY. Many analysts had faulted the judgement by Abdulkafarati on several grounds. First, was its contradiction with the case of Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State versus INEC, where the Supreme Court, while sacking Andy Uba from office as governor and berating INEC for conducting election into an office that was never vacant, held that the tenure of a sitting governor starts the day and date he was sworn in. Analysts held that since Amaechi was sworn on October 27, 2007, his tenure should have ended on October 26, 2011 and not May 28, 2007 as held by Abdulkafarati. Part of their argument was that if the opposition who were trying to unseat Amaechi had got wind of the suit, they would have challenged it on the grounds that in the case involving Peter Obi vs Andy Uba, INEC and others, the Supreme Court held that a governor’s tenure irrespective of which party he rode to power, starts to count the day and date he was sworn in. Another angle to the argument is that since the Supreme Court judgement that brought Amaechi to power on October 27, 2007 said in the eyes of the law, it was PDP that contested and won the election with Amaechi as its candidate, having won the primaries, it is the candidate that would be sworn in, and candidate’s tenure should have started to count the day he was sworn in. The Posers No doubt, the case has thrown up a lot of posers on all sides. First, on the side of Omehia, many have faulted the judgement by Abdulkafarati. They fault the judgement when compared with other judgements of the same Federal High Court, particularly the judgement of a Federal High Court in Gusau, which upheld the defection of the then Governor Aliyu Shinkaffi of Zamfara State from the All Nigeria Peoples Party, a platform on which he rode to Government House, to the PDP in 2008. They also draw attention to Imo State where the then Governor Ikedi Ohakim who contested and won election on the platform of Progressive Peoples Alliance, later defected to PDP and still maintained his position. Their argument is that if it is the party that contests elections, Shinkafi and Ohakim should have been made to vacate their seats since it was ANPP and PPA, respectively, that won the elections and not PDP. The same thing, they state, should have applied to Abia, Bauchi and other states where some governors defected from their original parties after winning elections in their respective states. Perhaps, what Abdulkafarati did not answer, going by his logic was: Can anybody take an oath of office on behalf of another person? Or can an inanimate object (the PDP) take oath of office? In the eyes of the law, shouldn’t Amaechi’s tenure have started counting from the day he was sworn in? This case will really be interesting for the Supreme Court to determine. Amaechi Defence Amaechi, however, contended that the argument by Omehia that the apex court should adopt its reasoning in the case of Peter Obi vs INEC cannot apply. Those in the governor’s camp argue that unlike the case of Omehia and Amaechi, Uba and Obi were never members of the same party. No member of APGA (Obi’s party) that won the election was ever sworn-in before Obi took his oath of office. So, both cases, they argue, do not support each other. They are of the view that the case may end as an academic exercise after all. They cite a similar effort by Omehia in the past. To them, since the court exists to ensure the dispensation of justice and prevention of social disorder, it will refrain from accepting any invitation to chaos in any society.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 16:43:21 +0000
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