Uzodimma’s Mandate: Does Supreme Court Owe The World Any Interpretation?

By Ifeanyi Maduako

The gubernatorial election of 2019 had four strong candidates viz; Distinguished Senator Hope Uzodimma of the All Progressives Congress  (APC), Rt. Hon. Emeka  Ihedioha of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Distinguished  Senator Ifeanyi Araraume of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), and Chief Uche Nwosu of the Action Alliance (AA).

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Ihedioha of the PDP as the winner of the election. He was sworn in on May 29, 2019 as the governor of Imo State. However, Senator Uzodimma  of the APC having argued  his case from the trial court up to the Supreme Court  with credible  facts and evidences at his disposal  which were made available to the  apex court , was pronounced  as the duly elected governor  of the State  on January 14, 2020.

Curiously, the ousted former governor and then candidate of the PDP, Ihedioha, is still agitating to be recalled back to his seat as governor. This essayist is not a lawyer, but the intention of this essay is strictly based on layman’s logic and commonsense without prejudice to the matter already before the apex court for adjudication or interpretation.

From the peripheral information available to me, the PDP is praying the court to return Ihedioha as governor on the premise that Governor Uzodimma was not the valid candidate of the APC since the same court had earlier declared Uche Nwosu as the authentic candidate of the APC but, however, voided his candidacy on the ground of double nomination. Uche Nwosu was also the candidate of Action Alliance.

Since law itself was derived by commonsense and logic, I am making these arguments based on logic.  Before the governorship election in Imo State, there was no court of competent jurisdiction in the land that disqualified Senator Uzodimma as the candidate of APC.

The fate of APC in Rivers and Zamfara States does not apply to Imo State because there was no pre-election disqualification of APC in Imo State before the general election. If Uche Nwosu had not contested the main election on the platform of Action Alliance, he would have been the most legitimate claimant to Governor Uzodimma’s seat since the apex court had declared him as the authentic candidate of the APC, but his double nomination had laid his matter to rest.

Now to the PDP candidate. His contention that he should be returned to his seat as governor is illogical to my own understanding. If he is standing on the argument or premise that both Uzodimma and Uche Nwosu were unqualified for the general election in which he was declared the winner, then his own election or declaration as the winner was equally null and void and of no effect whatsoever because he contested the said election with presumably unqualified and illegal candidates which yielded illegal votes from where his own votes were computed and counted. You cannot cherry pick a few good apples from a basket full of rotten apples. The entire election should have remained voided in the eye of logic because a valid candidate ought not to have contested election with invalid candidates or illegitimate candidates ab initio. You cannot place something on nothing and expects it to stand.

By the way, is the latest litigation a pre-election or post-election matter as obtainable in election matters? If Ihedioha is peradventure recalled to the seat, when does his tenure end? Will he start afresh or continue from where his seven- month old tenure stopped? Governor Uzodimma’s APC candidacy and mandate as declared by the Supreme Court are valid and legitimate regardless of later ruling by the same apex court.

The Supreme Court is made up of human beings who are fallible. The jurists are not infallible, they are not omniscient. Assuming without conceding that a mistake was made on the Supreme Court’s declaration of Governor Uzodimma as the Governor of Imo State on January 14, corrections should be derived and learnt from there for future elections.

It is inappropriate to subject the apex court to continuous interpretation of its judgment on just one case. If the Supreme Court had declared, for instance, one thousand judgments on various cases since its inception, at least a handful of those judgments may have been seen as a miscarriage of justice by the losers, why didn’t the litigants mount further pressure on the apex court for reversal of the judgments? Supreme Court cannot be absolutely right at all times, and if Imo governorship election litigation case was probably one of perceived miscarriage of justice that should be seen as  the way God wanted it.

The Supreme Court is not obligated or should be compelled to interpret a judgment delivered over 18 months ago, particularly a matter that is statute-barred. If the justices of the apex court reverse the judgment on Imo case, don’t be surprised that other litigants from the 36 states of the federation will all approach it for their own interpretations  or reversal even if most of them file frivolous applications. There should be an end to litigations.