A civil society organization (CSO), Guardians of Democracy and Development Initiative, has faulted the National Justice Council (NJC) silence over the miscarriage of justice by the Appeal Court judges who sacked all the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lawmakers in Plateau State.
It said since the Supreme Court had corrected the anomalies in the appellate court judgement by ruling in favour of the state governor, the erring justice should be punished.
The group therefore called for the immediate sack of the president of the Appeal Court and all the justices that participated in the p Plateau State case and others following the 2023 general elections.
At a press conference in Abuja yesterday, the group’s national convener, Comrade Igwe Ude-Umanta charged the NJC to immediately sack those involved in the judicial error and assault on democracy to prevent a repeat of “such nuisance.”
Ude-Umanta said it was clear that the Election Petitions Tribunal and the Appeal Court in Plateau State intentionally set aside judicial precedents and material evidence before them to nullify the elections of all the candidates of the PDP over a matter outside their jurisdictions.
He said, “Our democracy has been punched in the face by a set of judges who abandoned the law, judicial precedents and sound legal reasoning to pursue interests suspected to be pecuniary. Across the country, many elected officials lost their freely given mandate in controversial judgements in which the lower tribunal and appellate court assumed jurisdiction over matters they had none.
“More disastrous is the monumental error which swept off nearly all the mandates given to the PDP in Plateau. The brazen judicial heist by the justices of the Court of Appeal led by Justice Elfrieda Williams-Dawodu who presided over the cases emanating from Plateau State was horrendous to say the least. It remains one of the greatest assaults on democracy in Nigeria,” he lamented.
The rights group insisted that the judiciary which has always been the final refuge of the common man must have no place for compromised misfits, shuddering at the possibility of such Judges finding their way to the Supreme court and the damage it will wrought on our judicial system and democracy.
While lauding the thorough and professional intervention of the Supreme Court justices in the governorship election cases of Plateau, Kano and Zamfara which were earlier truncated, the group warned that the era of vexatious and perverse judgements must come to end in Nigeria.
“Save for the Supreme Court, the crisis that would have been ravaging Plateau State now if the case of Governor Caleb Mutfwang were to be terminated at the Court of Appeal like those of the House of Assembly and National Assembly would have been unimaginable. Same for Kano and Zamfara. The country would have gone up in flames because of these judges or justices at the election tribunal and the Court of Appeal,” Ude-Umanta said.
