Professor of law and Harvard-trained legal scholar, Sam Amadi had called for the probe and prosecution of any Supreme Court Justice or staff involved in the ‘corrupt and shabby’ handling of an appeal by Emeka Ihedioha of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Uche Nwosu of Action Alliance, challenging the declaration of Hope Uzodinma by the apex court as the rightful winner of the 2019 Imo State governorship election.
Speaking on Arise TV Newsnight on Monday, Prof Amadi said the refusal of the Supreme Court to hear the appeals three years after they were filed in 2020 is “corruption and crass criminality.”
He therefore called for a probe of the apex court to fish out any administrative staff or justice, who played a part in putting such a case of top priority on ice.
“This is the lowest in our judicial history,” he added.
According to him there is nothing in law that empowers a supreme court not to hear an appeal.
“Once an appeal is filed, the supreme court is obligated to fix a date for hearing.
“Either it admits or dismisses it,” Prof Amadi explained. But not to refuse to hear it.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the apex would decide whether Mr. Uzodinma should have been governor in the first place, since the same court had earlier held that his party, APC, did not have a valid candidate for the election he purportedly won.
The PDP and AA are simply calling on the court to order an enforcement of that judgement, and if the relief sought is granted Mr. Uzodinma, who had won a controversial reelection in November, would cease to be governor and Ihedioha could return to the Government House as governor. Unless the apex court chooses to order a new election.
– BACKGROUND –
The PDP and its candidate Ihedioha and Uche Nwosu of the AA had instituted two separate appeals, asking the Supreme Court to enforce its own judgement in 2019, in which it held that APC had no valid governorship candidate for the Imo 2019 governorship election, after it emerged that Mr. Nwosu was doubly nominated by both the APC and the AA.
That was after Mr. Ihedioha was sacked as Imo governor in a shocking decision on January 14, 2020, and after he had unsuccessfully summoned the learned justices to reverse themselves in an appeal later.
Now, it seems that bizarre decision of the Supreme Court is still haunting the apex court as late Justice Centus Nweze had predicted.
“The decision of the Supreme Court in the instant matter will continue to haunt our electoral jurisprudence for a long time to come,” Nweze had said in a dissenting judgement in a case brought by Ihedioha asking the court to overrule itself – by setting aside the January judgement that absurdly declared Hope Uzodinma as governor-elect, despite the fact that the same court in sacking Mr. Nwosu ruled that the APC had no valid candidate for the 2019 Imo Governorship election.
A disappointed Nweze had added that without evidence of meeting other constitutional provisions, the court misled itself into declaring Mr Uzodinma as governor.
For three years the Supreme Court seemed to have been dodging the legal mess it created by ‘erroneously’ declaring Uzodinma governor.
Finally, it appears that the justices are now ready to confront the legal dilemma they had plunged themselves into with the Imo governorship decision as they hear the appeals tomorrow.
Both Ihedioha and Nwosu are asking the court to enforce its own judgement – that the APC had no candidate in the Imo 2019 governorship election.
They are urging the court to give effect to its own judgment, disqualifying Mr. Nwosu in 2019 as the APC Imo governorship, which if upheld would lead to the sacking of Mr. Uzodinma as governor – because according to the legal principle, you cannot build something on nothing. It would then mean in the eyes of the law that Uzodinma either did not take part in that election, or illegally participated in it.
The PDP is further asking the court to return its candidate Ihedioha, who many legal scholars say was wrongly sacked by the apex court in 2020, as the winner of the election. While Mr. Nwosu is urging the Supreme Court justices to order a rerun.
The question both the PDP and AC seem to be asking is: at what point did Uzodinma become the governorship candidate of the APC when the Supreme Court had sacked Nwosu?
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