Ahead of the Supreme Court hearing of his application on Monday, March 2, the former governor of Imo state, Emeka Ihedioha, has told the court that the facts and circumstances of his application are different and distinguishable from the one filed by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its candidate, David Lyon, with respect to the Bayelsa State governorship election.

The apex court had adjourned the hearing of Mr Ihedioha’s application seeking the review of the January 14 judgement which sacked him as Imo State governor and installed Hope Uzodinma as his replacement, to March 2.

The seven-man panel of the Supreme Court led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Tanko Muhammad, adjourned the hearing after Ihedioha’s lawyer, Chief Kanu Agabi (SAN), told the court that processes were still being filed.

“My lords, processes are still coming in. Up till this morning, we were still receiving processes. We, therefore, apply for an adjournment to enable all the processes to come in,” Agabi had said.

The lawyer representing Uzodinma and his party, the APC, Damian Dodo (SAN), and that of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Taminu Inuwa (SAN), did not oppose the application for adjournment.
The panel subsequently adjourned till March 2 for hearing.

However, in between the adjourned date, a similar application brought by the APC and its sacked governor-elect for Bayelsa State, David Lyon, and his deputy, Degi-Eremienyo, for a reversal of its judgment was dismissed by the court.

In a unanimous judgment, a seven-man panel of justices of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Sylvester Ngwuta dismissed the two different applications that sought the setting aside of the February 13 judgment that went against Lyon and his deputy.

Justice Amina Augie, who delivered the lead judgment, described the fresh applications that were filed by Lyon and his deputy, as well as the APC, as “highly vexatious, frivolous and gross abuse of the judicial process.”

It held that the applications were aimed at “desecrating the sanctity of the court,” stressing that it was an invitation for the Supreme Court to sit on appeal over its final judgment in violation of the Constitution.

But in his further and better affidavit in support of his application dated February 28, Ihedioha insisted that his action is not an invitation of the apex court to sit on appeal over its judgment.Rather, he explained that his application is seeking the court to set aside its January 14 judgement that removed him from office for being a nullity.

He argued through his lead counsel and former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Kanu Agabi (SAN) that, “the application is not an academic exercise or an invitation to this honourable Court to answer hypothetical questions as the issue of nullity of the judgment of January 14, 2020, is neither academic nor hypothetical.

The former governor added that “contrary to the deposition by Governor Hope Uzodinma, he (Uzodinma) never stated the results of the other 68 candidates that participated in the election at the 388 polling units, as their scores were not indicated anywhere by the appellants.

[b]“Contrary to the depositions by the respondents, there is nowhere in the judgment of this honourable Court delivered on January 14, 2020, in which the decision of the lower court striking out the petition for incompetence was set aside or upturned.

“On the contrary, the judgment of this honourable Court only set aside the judgment of the lower court affirming the judgment of the Governorship election tribunal. The order of the lower court striking out the petition was not an affirmation of any decision of the Governorship election tribunal.

“That the failure to state the results of the other 68 candidates that participated in the election in the disputed 388 polling units while the 1st appellant/ respondent’s (Uzodinma) admission under cross-examination of allocating to himself more votes than the total registered voters in the identified units are all manifest on the face of the record of the Supreme Court.

“That no evidence was led as to how governor Uzodinma satisfied the mandatory spread required under section 179(2) of the 1999 constitution.

“That while Uzodinma and his APC claimed that “results from 388 polling units were excluded which this court ordered to be added to him, PW54, whose evidence they relied upon, testified that he came to tender results of only 366 polling units.

“Under cross-examination, PW54 admitted that the result he tendered was even less than the number (366) he alleged he had come to tender.

“Even going by the number of 366 polling units stated by PW54, nothing in the judgment of this court explained the difference, particularly the number of votes in 22 polling units that the appellant/respondents misled this court to add to the 366 polling units to make up the 388 polling units.”

A seven-man panel of the apex court led by the CJN had in the January 14 judgment removed Ihedioha as the Imo State governor and declared Uzodinma as the winner of the last governorship election in the state.

Justice Kekere-Ekun, who read the lead judgment, had upheld Uzodinma’s appeal, ruling that the votes polled in 388 out of the 3,523 polling units were excluded in the final results declared by the INEC in the state.The apex court held that Uzodinma emerged winner of the election after the addition of the excluded votes.

But Ihedioha, through his lead counsel, Chief Kanu Agabi (SAN), a former Attorney General of the Federation, had on February 5, filed an application before the court seeking “an order setting aside as a nullity” the January 14 judgment.

“That the failure to state the results of the other 68 candidates that participated in the election in the disputed 388 polling units while the 1st appellant/ respondent’s (Uzodinma) admission under cross-examination of allocating to himself more votes than the total registered voters in the identified units are all manifest on the face of the record of the Supreme Court.

Racoon:
The Imo case is clear case of judicial injustice hence a culdesac the supreme court must redeem itself from.

kahal29:


Redeem what? Just package 100 million for Hope tomorrow.

CanadaOrBust:


Here is what I don’t understand about people like u: Can’t u forget having a sentimental favorite for a second, and just step back and broadly look at what it is u r supporting??
Can’t u see that if this embarrassment of a judgement is let stand it diminishes every Nigerian including you yourself? Because it blatantly rewards clear cheating and forgery that even kids can tell is cheating and forgery. How can u teach children about not cheating when they can see for themselves that the final court in the land rewards cheating and forgery?? Also, at the very least, it greatly reduces your ability to have a say in who governs u because it allows for any ruling party to “win” any election it wishes, which will inevitably lead to a one-party country.

A Supreme Court overrules all lower courts plus INEC in order to replace an 8-month gov with a 4th place finisher, all based on clearly fraudulent documents. And here u are, gloating about it!

Anyway, whatever happens, the leaders of thought in the country and international community are watching the case. They understand what is at stake and have made their positions clear.
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Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Prof. Pat Utomi, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association, others, to monitor Supreme Court Imo judgement review.

Ihedioha Vs Uzodinma: Civil Society Leaders Urge Supreme Court To Reverse Judgment

BY SAHARAREPORTERS, FEB 11, 2020

Leaders of civil society in Nigeria have asked the Supreme Court to set aside its judgment pronouncing Hope Uzodinma as duly elected governor of Imo State...

The group posited that the court erred in its judgment and faulted the process through which the apex court arrived at the decision.
In the statement signed by Dr Olusegun Awe Obe, the Concerned Leaders of Thought and Conscience in Project Nigeria, highlighted reasons the court should not have pronounced Uzodinma as winner of the election...

J111333:
Ihedioha has a good case if presented well.
I wish him good luck.

kahal29:






Oga no need for plenty talk........ Just dey arrange the 100 million fine una go pay tomorrow

CanadaOrBust:


All newspapers in the country are also watching and many have noted what a travesty Imo is. I don’t see how the SC can let the judgment stand and still look Nigerians in the eye:

The following is from the actual summary of trial materials as presented in a major reputable newspaper.
Pay special attention to the bolded.
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That Supreme Court Magic Judgment
This Day (Lagos) 17 FEBRUARY 2020

... According to summary of trial materials, no ward collation agent was called to show that at the collation center results were brought from the 388 polling units where the alleged exclusion took place...

The petitioner, rather called 28 polling unit agents who came to identify some of the results tendered by the petitioner from the bar. All the electoral documents were tendered from the bar and thus dumped on the court without anybody giving evidence correlating the contents of the result forms with the tabulation done by the petitioner himself.

Each of the 18 polling unit agents under cross-examination, manifested ignorance of the contents of the documents and never convinced anybody of being present in their claimed polling units...

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had in their reply to the petition disowned those result sheets and averred emphatically that NO RESULTS WERE GENERATED from those polling units as elections in those polling units were cancelled by presiding officers as a result of violence, over voting, snatching of electoral materials, etc. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) stated that any result from those polling units presented by any of the candidates, in this case, the petitioners, must be fake.

When confronted with the purported result sheets tendered by the petitioners, each of the witnesses admitted as follows:
i. The names and signatures of the Presiding Officers are not well found on those results.
ii. The names and signatures of other party agents did not appear on the result sheets, neither could they mention even one party agent of the other political parties in those booths.
iii. The result sheets do not contain the total number of ballot papers used and number of ballot papers unused or invalid. The scores of political parties are not clear on the face of the documents.

Based on the above, it appears the Supreme Court was desperately working to an answer in favour of the ruling party... and the only opening to do that was to accept the fictitious results of the 388 polling units willy-nilly. And instead of doing substantial justice on the matter, it ended up delivering one of judiciary's greatest infamies which even a kid learning arithmetic can see through. The judgment turned logic on its head, rewrote the basic universal laws of arithmetic and did grave and substantial injury to our democracy and the power of the people to choose who governs them. With this judicial precedent, the Supreme Court has inevitably rubber-stamped political rascality and the judgment could shape our democratic future.

The court has widened the opening which politicians exploit and manipulate to get into elective offices. All one needs to do is to stay somewhere, maybe in one's room, probably with one policeman or so, write one's own results, submit to INEC for counting and if it refuses, don't worry, bid your time till you get to the court. With supreme arrogance, the final court of appeal will recognise the results as legitimate, credible and authentic and pronto, you will be declared duly elected.

...Even more perplexing was the fact that in some of the polling units, voter turnout was more than the registered voters. How is this possible?
In Uzodinma's result sheets, there was no voided vote and only two parties, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and APC participated and were reflected in the election results of the 388 polling units. Yet, 70 political parties participated in that election and were all reflected in the INEC declared results of other polling units all over the state. ..,Does it mean that other parties such as All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Action Alliance (AA), etc., did not participate in the election in those 388 polling units contrary to INEC's results in other areas of the state?
Why did the result sheets reflect only two parties when so many parties participated in the said election? Apparently, Senator Uzodinma concocted those results that fly in the face of the basic laws of arithmetic and common sense between the PDP and the APC after the fact that the PDP had won the election and he only scored his party a vote figure higher than the PDP vote. The corollary to that is that if it was any other party that was on the cusp of victory, Uzodinma's results would have been between just the APC and that party! Yet our almighty Supreme Court glossed over all these fundamental anomalies in Uzodinma's result sheets which had been rejected by even INEC... and accepted same as authentic.
A further assessment of the result sheets of the disputed 388 polling units showed that the said units are all in the Orlu Senatorial Zone where Uzodinma and the candidate of the Action Alliance Ugwumba Uche Nwosu come from. So even if the 388 polling units were concentrated mostly in Uzodinma's ancestral home, surely, Nwosu who emerged second in the March 9, 2019 election in Imo State and was backed by the incumbent governor at the time, Rochas Okorocha, his father in-law, must have amassed some votes from the units. But these votes were curiously missing, for the simple reason that they forged the results, and very badly at that.
Furthermore, Uzodinma of the APC scored an average of 98% of the total votes cast in the 388 units, whereas he scored an average of 13% in the remaining polling units in the state. How could this be? Why was it that it was only in these 388 units throughout the state that the voter turnout was either more than the registered voters or achieved 98 to 100 percent of the registered voters? Please note that emphasis is NOT on the number of accredited voters which is usually far less than the number of registered voters. Uzodinma's fake results validated by our Supreme Court defy reason. The pattern of the results from the disputed 388 polling units clearly shows the improbability of such an occurrence. And on the basis of the testimony of one policeman, and 28 discredited polling units' agents who gave contradictory statements at trial, the Supreme Court accepted the results.

In declaring Uzodinma governor of Imo State, the Supreme Court simply annulled a valid mandate freely given to an individual and transferred it to another person who came fourth in the election.

kahal29:
Redeem what? Just package 100 million for Hope tomorrow.

helinues:
The case that's already been thrown in the dustbin.There was possible collusion btw Ihedioha and some INEC officials to deiberately deduct Hope's votes.

Racoon:
And why is no other participating party countering that assertion? Are you not worried that Hope Uzodinma only allocated incongruent unimaginable number of votes to himself alone in all the alleged 388 polling units?

helinues:
Why did INEC intentionally deduct Uzodinma votes in 388 polling units?
The SC judges that sacked Ihedioha are nt drunk.

Furthermore, Uzodinma of the APC scored an average of 98% of the total votes cast in the 388 units, whereas he scored an average of 13% in the remaining polling units in the state. How could this be? Why was it that it was only in these 388 units throughout the state that the voter turnout was either more than the registered voters or achieved 98 to 100 percent of the registered voters?

Please note that emphasis is NOT on the number of accredited voters which is usually far less than the number of registered voters. Uzodinma's fake results validated by our Supreme Court defy reason.

The pattern of the results from the disputed 388 polling units clearly shows the improbability of such an occurrence. And on the basis of the testimony of one policeman, and 28 discredited polling units' agents who gave contradictory statements at trial, the Supreme Court accepted the results.