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S’Court verdicts on Zamfara, Rivers, a national tragedy, should be reversed – Sagay

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We have recovered over N1tn looted funds - Sagay

A professor of law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Itse Sagay, has described as a national tragedy the judgments of the Supreme Court, that failed to favour the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers and Zamfara State.

He said the two rulings should be reversed and called on APC legal team to immediately apply to the apex court for a review of those judgments.

Recall that following a Supreme Court judgment, APC was ordered not to field any candidate for all elective positions during this year’s general elections in Rivers State.

Recently also, the apex court nullified all APC’s victory during the general elections (National Assembly, governorship and state House of Assembly) in Zamfara State and ordered that the candidates from other parties, mostly of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who came second in those elections be declared winners.

The rulings were hinged on irregularities that marred APC’s primaries in the two states.

But in a statement on Thursday, Sagay frowned at those verdicts describing them as a travesty of justice.

“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 names of Supreme Court and Court of Appeal Judges is significant, for it prescribes what they stand for and what they represent: Justice!” Sagay said.

In Zamfara State governorship election, the APC candidate had scored well over 500,000 votes whilst the PDP candidate scored just over 100,000 votes. APC also won all three Senate seats in the state, seven House of Representative seats and 24 State House of Assembly seats.

Looking at that result Sagay said, “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?

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“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.”

According to Sagay, 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,” he added.

 

 

 

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