A reflection on Justice Salami and Sokoto debacle
Without prejudice, let me go down memory lane to enable the readers appreciate the controversy surrounding the Sokoto State Election Petition brouhaha. In 2007, Aliyu Wammakko was declared winner by INEC. After the election, DPP went to the Election Petition Tribunal with only one complaint. Suffice it to say that Dingyadi never challenged the votes […]
Without prejudice, let me go down memory lane to enable the readers appreciate the controversy surrounding the Sokoto State Election Petition brouhaha. In 2007, Aliyu Wammakko was declared winner by INEC. After the election, DPP went to the Election Petition Tribunal with only one complaint. Suffice it to say that Dingyadi never challenged the votes scored by Governor Wamakko. This is incontrovertible. However, DPP said the election was wrong because Wamakko was an ANPP candidate who contested on the PDP platform. The lower tribunal adjudged that Wamakko resigned as an ANPP man and there was nothing wrong with that. The DPP petition was accordingly dismissed. Dingyadi used his constitutional right to ventilate his right of appeal and appealed to the Appeal court in Kaduna. The Appeal Court in Kaduna delivered its judgement and ordered for a re-run election within 90 days between the parties that participated in the main election. A winner emerged in the person of Governor Wamakko who was handed a certificate of return by INEC.
True to his character, Dingyadi rushed to the Federal High Court in Abuja to seek for various declarative and injunctive orders principally against Wamakko. Before the Federal High Court could deliver its verdict, Dingyadi dashed back to election petition tribunal in Sokoto with a principal relief declaring him a winner. While the same matter was subsisting at the election tribunal, the Federal High Court in Abuja gave its ruling declining jurisdiction. Immediately Dingyadi appealed to the Court of Appeal in Abuja. Within this span, the Sokoto election petition tribunal deservedly dismissed the suit and Dingaydi rushed to Appeal Court in Sokoto to file an appeal against the verdict of the lower tribunal. For emphasis ,his appeal at the Abuja division of the Appeal Court was still subsisting when he filed the matter at Sokoto Division of the Appeal Court. Dingyadi, at a later stage, deemed it fit to head to the Supreme Court on an interlocutory appeal.
At a certain stage, one of the wise men, Justice Mustapha had to complain about multiplicity of cases filed by Dingyadi in our various court rooms on the same subject matter. Consequent upon this the Supreme Court on the 26 November, 2010 led by Justice Chukwuma-Eneh, in their unanimous decision, held that the Sokoto case was an abuse of court process, as it was instituted later than another appeal filed before the Abuja division of the Court of Appeal by the same appellant and involving same parties over the same subject matter. Justice Chukwuma described Dingyadi‘s act of multiplicity of court action as vexatious which the apex court must step in to stem the drift in our legal process, according to him. The Supreme Court is bound to intervene in the process in the interest of justice, the pending appeal in Sokoto should be dismissed as constituting an abuse of court process.
Consequentially, the appellant was left with an option of prosecuting his appeal at the Abuja division of the Appeal Court. Is there any cogent reason for Justice Salami to pour venom on the CJN over what you have just read?
One of the intriguing things about justice is its extraordinary patience, it gives crooks enough time to fool themselves. In the same vein, it is endowed with a devastating capacity to ultimately expose their culpability, hypocrisy, ill-intent and inevitably lay the fact bare before the aggrieved for justice to take its cause. In an earlier write up I boldly stated thus;‘ I wish to humbly submit that the leaked Sokoto Appeal Court judgement should not only be arrested and docked but be prosecuted and sentenced to death by the wise men upstairs to protect our jurisprudence from anarchy. The wise men upstairs should impose this uncommon air of honour to our judicial system for they have the vast and undefined powers to do so no matter whose ox is to be gored…”
I want to seize this opportunity to appeal to the CJN not to keep quiet about this [indictment]It is easy to say we should wave it aside, but I think we should not. A panel should be set up to find out what is going on in the Election Petition/Appeal Tribunals. For the sake of posterity, most of the judges of the Appeal Court are men and women of impeccable integrity. To sum it up, these accusations continue to revolve around 10 -12 judges, therefore, a proper investigation can be carried out on the allegations.
Mrs Suleman is of Usmanu Danfodio University, Sokoto. [email protected]