Ihedioha still has a good case by Odilim Enwegbara

Yes I’m not a lawyer but from commonsense I can say that Ihedioha’s motion asking the apex court to reverse itself has merit.

Let’s briefly hear why Lyon’s motion failed.

“This court is not authorised and indeed lacked jurisdiction to review any judgment delivered on merit, more so when the applicants have not pointed out any accidental error or slip in the judgement.”


These were the words of the Supreme Court while delivering judgment on Lyon’s petition to reverse its earlier ruling. The three important words here are “merit” and “accidental error.” So if we look at Ihedioha’s motion asking the apex court to reverse itself, the word merit is justified. This is because the facts and figures on the basis of the Supreme Court were not adding up.


The votes brought from the 388 polling units in justification were higher that the registered votes in those 388 polling units. Besides rather than they coming from INEC, they were simply from a police officer who did not have the legal power to either conduct elections nor collect election results.


For these reasons, the results were not only legally unacceptable but without emanating from INEC the results are forged. So argument for forgery can be made and sustained.


But in Lyon’s motion against Diri, the motion was completely recklessly and incompetent especially when it was brought with the assumption that notwithstanding the facts of forgery, the Supreme Court could just reverse itself.


This brings one to ask: on what grounds are Lyon’s and APC’s lawyers basing their reversal petition? But also there was this case of APC ptotesters going to Hon Justice Mary Odili’s residence to threaten for doing her job as the justice of the apex court.


Did that not amount to self help by APC especially since the party did neither distance itself from the protest nor condemn it. Understandably, protesting the protest against one of theirs was possible way to send a stern warning to APC. So, their motion against the ruling was a kind of dead on arrival.


Shouldn’t that have been the reason for not wasting any time on what the seven justices ruled as a frivolous petition for the apex court to reverse itself by setting aside its earlier decision? The fact that it was given more urgent attention in terms of hearing date was a kind of signal that the apex court was eager to hear it and dismiss it expressly.


“The two applications brought before us today lacked merit and constituted abuse of this court and they are liable to dismissal and are hereby dismissed,”


Once again the word “merit” was reemphasized as the main reason for the petition’s dismissal.


But can the court next week say that Ihedioha’s motion lacks merit? Of course, the seven man justices will have difficulty justifying that that petition lacks merit especially without having to justify the results submitted by Uzodinma in support of his demand that the apex court ruled in his favor.


Can the seven man justices say that it too lacked merit especially with INEC continuing to dismiss the legality of the results for not emanating from INEC? If the apex court should refuse to reverse itself it means that in future politicians can just ask police to come to court with whatever results that never emanated from INEC and tender them and expect the court to validate them as authentic.


In the case of Zamfara, it should be one of the most bizarre of abuses of court processes by APC. This is because the Supreme Court heard and ruled on the case close to a year now; and from nowhere APC just woke up and wanted the apex court to reverse itself without any known reasons to support the motion for reversal.


So, certainly the apex court will on Monday dismiss the Zamfara case with some stern warnings to APC to stop abusing the court processes simply because it is the party in power.


So one of these two possibilities would expected to happen in the Ihedioha v Uzodinma. Either that Ihedioha is declared the rightful winner or the apex court compels itself to declare a rerun in the 388 polling units. This way, finality is given to who really won votes from 388 polling units.


That would have been what the Appeal Court ought to have done so that when the case finally got to the apex court, the apex court would have validated the Appeal Court ruling.


Please bear in mind that I’m not not a lawyer. I only write from a layman’s commonsense position.