A Senior Advocate of Nigeria has commended the Supreme Court on the judgment that upheld Nyesom Wike as the Governor of Rivers State.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, Mr Arthur Okafor said that:”The Supreme Court has restored hope to lawyers in Nigeria because the judgment came at a time when we were consolidating against democracy.
“Law should be certain and when it is no longer certain, there is no confidence in the judicial process”, he said.
Talking further about the precedence of the ruling, the lawyer said that “this judgment constitutes precedence, but before then, there are judgments that had been delivered by the Supreme Court, which should have guided the matter.
If these judgment had been looked into and applied, both the Tribunal and the Court of Appeal would not have arrived at the decision that was nullified by the Supreme Court”, he said.
Answering a question on how the Apex Court arrived at the judgment, Mr Okafor said that ” the time frame is a major factor because the Supreme Court must hear the matter between 60 days from the date of the judgment of the Appellate Court.
“This is because there is no further appeal after the decision of the Apex Court, their reasons can come later”, he said.
Mr Okafor, who is also the council to the Governor of Ebonyi State, David Umahi, gave reasons why the judgment of the Supreme Court went in their favour.
“Some of the court’s decision could be that those results could be looked into and used to intervene the matter when the people, who knew the truth of the content were not called to give evidence.
“The issue of card reader could be one of the reasons. Before now, the Court of Appeal had given judgment that the card reader is not a part of the electoral act and should not constitute a ground for nullifying our election”, he explained.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday, upheld the election of Nyesom Wike as the Governor of Rivers State.
The reason for the judgment is to be listed on February 12.
Giving the ruling, Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, set aside the judgement of the Appeal Court which nullified the election of Governor Wike.
