Sagay seeks review of Supreme Court verdicts on Zamfara, Rivers

Eminent Professor of Law Itse Sagay (SAN) has urged the All
Progressives Congress (APC) legal team to apply to the Supreme
Court for a review of its judgments on Zamfara and Rivers
States.

In Rivers, the APC was excluded from fielding candidates during
the general elections following a Supreme Court judgment.

In the case of Zamfara, the Supreme Court on April 24 nullified
APC’s victory in the election and transferred it to the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) due to alleged irregularities in APC’s
primaries.

To Sagay, the verdicts are a travesty of justice.

He said in a statement: “The Zamfara and Rivers State judgments
are a national tragedy. We should not allow our legal system to
throw up such unimaginable injustice.

“This major judicial disenfranchisement of the Zamfara and
Rivers electorate should be reversed. I advise the APC legal team
to apply for a review of the two judgments.

“Their Lordships ought to be given an opportunity to reverse
this unprecedented tragedy.

“The prefix ‘Justice’ preceding he names of Supreme Court and
Court of Appeal Judges is significant, for it prescribes what they
stand for and what they represent: Justice!”

Sagay pointed out that in the governorship election in Zamfara,
the APC candidate scored well over 500,000 votes whilst the PDP
candidate scored just over 100,000 votes.

He noted the APC won all three Senate seats in the state, seven
House of Representative seats and 24 State House of Assembly
seats.

The statement reads in part: “By this judgment, the landslide
APC victories in the governorship, Senate, House of Representative
and State House of Assembly are transferred to the PDP.

“If the APC primaries were defective, should the electorate be
deprived of their democratic and Constitutional rights to vote? Is
the electorate to be punished for the transgressions of party
officials?

“Should the Judiciary replace the electorate’s decision and
install losers in office? Could the Judiciary not have drawn on the
deep recesses of its intellectual capacity, authority and its
inexorable commitment to justice, to prevent this undemocratic
calamity?

“Can the APC officials not be punished, for their lapses without
denying the electorate their democratic rights? Should the
Judiciary take over the electoral rights of the electorate? Is this
not a clear case of technical law completely overthrowing
justice?

“Have the members of the Supreme Court not achieved a level of
creativity and authority to provide a solution without burying
democracy and taking over from the registered voters as the
judicial electorate?

“If this judgment had been an international one, it could have
been described as ‘shocking the conscience of humanity’. In this
case, it shocks the conscience of Nigerian humanity.”

Citing several authorities, Sagay said the Supreme Court is
specially endowed with the power and authority to do justice and to
ignore law when it is technical and would create injustice, and to
avoid at all cost a mechanical approach to the interpretation of
the law.

“Now, has justice been served in Rivers and Zamfara states? No!
In one case innocent electorate in their hundreds of thousands were
prevented from voting for their party by judicial order.

“In Zamfara, where voting took place, the verdict of the
electorate was taken away from the victorious party and awarded by
the Judiciary to the woeful losers.

“In the next four years, Zamfara State will be governed by a
party and politicians rejected by the electorate. This indeed
shocks the conscience of Nigerian humanity.”

He also referred to Section 140(1) – (3) of the Electoral Act,
which prohibits any court from declaring a loser of an election
elected even if the person with the highest votes was not validly
elected.

“I am not interested in the provisions of the Electoral Act
2010. I am only deeply concerned and interested in the fundamental
and peremptory principle of Justice.

“No Judge should announce his judgment until he is satisfied
that Justice has been served, no matter how strong the pull of
mechanical and technical law,” Sagay added.

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