#Kogi election petition: A most perverse judgement

Augustine, the ancient philosopher and theologian once said: “[t]he ignorance of the judge is the calamity of the innocent.” G.F.G. Mathison expatiated upon this immortal statement by saying that “an ignorant judge brings the law into contempt and will press and hurry on to judgment, so as to stifle all fair inquiry; but an able judge will detect the sophistry of advocates, and prevent its being made the cause of oppression”. Nothing validates these statements better than the judgment of the Kogi State Election Petition Tribunal in the case of James Abiodun Faleke v. INEC & Anor. (2016, unreported).
On Monday, 6th June, 2016, the tribunal gave its much awaited judgment in the case. With a bang, the tribunal surprisingly upheld the election of Alhaji Yahaya Bello as Governor of Kogi State. Not a few Nigerians were shocked by the judgment.
Indeed, the judgment of the tribunal can best be described as a judicial coup d’état as it has subverted some fundamental elements of our Constitution and principles of law.

The judgment of the tribunal brings to light, once again, issues relating to the quality and capacity of some men and women who now adorn the sacred temples of justice in this country. The 1999 Constitution of Nigeria (as amended) is an organic document. It is necessarily dynamic and has the ingredient of a document that shows progressive tendencies. Therefore, it is expected that judges should be seen to be in the vanguard in expounding the horizon of the contents of the Grundnorm to give meaning and life into it without fear or favour. It is expected that the judges should use their awesome power to assuage the yearnings of the people who hope for a society where no one is oppressed or unjustly treated by the powers that be.  Such conceptualization envisages a judiciary that galvanizes brilliant minds  minds that are open to reasonable application of intellect to exploring or finding a remedy or solution to a problem that besets anyone who comes to seek refuge before them. Judges are to adjudicate based on the tenets of the constitution as epitomised in the nature of their oath of office. The judiciary, as established by the constitution, is to exercise its judicial powers to give strength and teeth to the notion and prescription that it alone is to state what the law is.

The judgment of the Kogi State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal headed by Justice Halima S. Mohammed exemplifies clearly the decline in the intellectual quality of our judges. The direct effect of this trend is the inevitable calamitous tendency of witnessing a spectacle of miscarriage of justice in many instances. After reading the judgment, an objective mind is bound to go away with a lingering question: “Did the tribunal really understand the case that was brought before it?” There is nothing to indicate that the tribunal understood the facts and issues presented before it. To put the matter most gently, the judgment is simply flabbergasting. The judgment is lacking in depth of knowledge, robust consideration of issues, scholarship, courage and independence of mind. It is, with due respect, an advertisement of gross ignorance and incompetence. In a most horrifying and disgusting manner, the tribunal adopted hook, line and sinker, the submissions of the respondents’ counsel and transformed same as its judgment. It did this at the expense of the dexterous submissions of the petitioner’s counsel. What can be seen is nothing short of a voyage in judicial adventurism where the substance of the case brought before the tribunal was deliberately ignored and the tribunal chose to pursue shadows.

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