Imo, the heartland state, has been unfortunate in the recent past. It has become a bad example in matters that border on judicial rascality. It did not used to be so until it was visited with the infamy of January 14, 2020. The date remains a classical moment of peripeteia for the people of the state.
That unfortunate fall has been one jinx that the state has been unable kick out.
The state is, at moment, caught between two stools. On one hand, it is almost set to hold a new election in which a new governor is expected to emerge. On the other, it is still grappling with the fallout of its last governorship election held in 2019. The two tendencies are struggling for space. But there is a discernible disequilibrium here. The second tendency, that is, the 2019 exercise, appears to have taken the centre stage. It is not yielding any space to the first unless matters arising from it are resolved. In other words, the prospect of a new election in the state is subdued. The people are not as excited and expectant as they ought to be for the simple reason that matters arising from the 2019 exercise are still alive and breathing.
At issue here is the failure of the Supreme Court of Nigeria to put paid to the litigations that arose from the election. For nearly four years, matters arising from the March 9, 2019, governorship election in the state have been in limbo, with no one eager or ready to activate them. But a promising, new day appears to be in the offing. Whatever disability that held the Supreme Court down for four harrowing years is beginning to break loose. The court is beginning to free itself from self-imposed constraints. That is what its decision to revisit the Imo State gubernatorial case of 2019 amounts to.
The point must be made that the issue before us is by no means new. The Supreme Court had, long before now, broached it and taken a decision on it, but failed, curiously, to give effect to its judgment. The result was that the entire legal processes that eventuated in the judgment came away as an exercise in futility. It is, however, gratifying that the Supreme Court has seen reason to give meaning to its judgment. It is about to continue from where it left off.
For a court that has been buffeted to no end in recent times for reasons bordering on inconclusive or questionable judgments, its decision to return to the Imo State governorship imbroglio is long overdue. Judgments, if they must be of any consequence, must be conclusive and seen by one and all to be so. That is the only way litigants can bow out of the courts with a sense of conviction.
As we have already noted, the issue at stake is the failure by the Supreme Court to enforce the judgment it delivered on 20th December, 2019. The judgment had disqualified one of the candidates, Uche Nwosu, from the election on grounds of double nomination. Nwosu held the tickets of both the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Action Alliance (AA). This was in clear violation of the electoral laws as no one candidate can be nominated by two political parties for the same election. For this reason, the court disqualified Nwosu and the parties he held their tickets from the election.
Curiously, however, the court failed to take this judgment to a logical conclusion when it ruled again on 14th January, 2020, on an appeal brought before it by Hope Uzodinma, another candidate in that election. In the succeeding judgment, the court contradicted its earlier judgment of 20th December, 2019, when it ruled that Uzodinma who came to the court as the candidate of the APC won the March 9 governorship election in Imo State. The question that arose then was: how can both Uche Nwosu and Hope Uzodinma hold the same ticket for the same election? If the Supreme Court has ruled (as it actually did) that Nwosu held the ticket of APC, it then follows that no other candidate, including Uzodinma, can hold the same ticket for the same election. This was the argument. It remains the sore point of the January 14, 2020, judgment. Since this judgment was delivered, the Supreme Court has not been able to extricate itself from the absurdity that it is. There is no logical connection between the judgments of December 20, 2019, and that of 14th January, 2020. One contradicted each other. And this should not have been so given the fact that both do not just deal with the same subject matter, they were adjudicated upon by the same court.
This contradictory rendering by the Supreme Court has been like a sore thumb. It was in the bid to draw attention to this anomaly that the Action Peoples Party (APP) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) approached the Supreme Court, asking it to enforce its judgment of 20th December, 2019. After leaving the matter hanging for nearly four years, the Supreme Court has decided to rise to the occasion. It is set now to take the bull by the horns.
For a court that has the last say on issues of litigation, the Supreme Court is always looked up to by litigants to deliver judgments that will not only be just but also seen to be just. What is just in this case is what can be supported by the law. When the contrary is done, the integrity of the court is called to question. To ensure that the judgment of 20th December, 2019, survives logical scrutiny, interested parties in the dispute are simply asking the Supreme Court to give effect to its declaration that “a political party is not capable of sponsoring two candidates for the same office in the same election”. The logical consequence of this is that the APC and the AA did not field any candidate in the March 9 governorship election in Imo State. It further means that it was wrong for the court to have returned the APC, which fielded no candidate, as the winner of that election.
It is bad enough that it took the court almost a full governorship tenure to resolve a simple and straightforward issue. But what is cheering here is that the court will be redeeming itself from eternal damnation if it demonstrates now that even though justice was delayed it cannot be denied in this case. If the Supreme Court does this, all concerned will appreciate the fact that Imo can only hold a legitimate election if the ghost of the preceding one is laid to rest. In fact, the Supreme Court, battered on all fronts by infamous judgments, may well begin the process of self-cleansing and redemption by putting Imo State on the right legal pedestal for democratic governance.