As the Supreme Court was settling the disputes over the governorship elections in eight states on Friday, it zoomed in on Plateau State to point out sweeping electoral injustice fostered in the state by the Court of Appeal‘s decisions on the cases arising from the 2023 general elections.
In the decisions condemned by the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal ordered the sack of Governor Caleb Muftwang of Plateau, and 23 federal and state legislators in the state.
The affected lawmakers are, like the governor, members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). They are two out of the three senators representing the state in Nigeria’s Senate, five out of the eight House of Representatives members from the state, and 16 out of the 25 members of the state House of Assembly.
All of them had won their seats on the ticket of the PDP but had their victories upturned in last year’s decisions of the Court of Appeal.
Controversial decisions
In the reasoning that ran through the Court of Appeal’s decisions on all the cases, it held that the PDP ought not to have been allowed to field candidates for last year’s general elections.
This, it said, was because the party allegedly shunned a judgement of the Plateau State High Court ordering it to conduct lawful congresses to elect its executives at various levels before holding the primary elections to pick its candidates for last year’s general elections. As a result of the party’s alleged disobedience to the court order, the court said all the votes polled by its candidates in the general elections were wasted votes.
Among the beneficiaries of the judgements was Nentawe Yilwatda of the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate, whose case the Court of Appeal upheld by declaring him as the validly elected governor of the state instead of Governor Muftwang.
Another beneficiary is Simon Lalong of the APC, who the Court of Appeal declared the winner of the Plateau South senatorial seat, and removed Napoleon Bali of the PDP. In the results of the 25 February 2023 senatorial election declared by INEC, Mr Bali had won the poll with 148,844 votes with Mr Lalong, then the sitting governor of the state, trailing distantly with 91,674 votes.
Other 22 candidates, who had come second in the various elections, were either declared by the Court of Appeal as the winners of the state and National Assembly elections or given an opportunity of a rerun after the PDP candidates were sacked outright, or their elections declared inconclusive.
But the court victory of Nentawe Yilwatda, the APC governorship candidate in Plateau, was short-lived, as the Supreme Court, on Friday, dismissed the faulty reasoning behind the judgement given in his favour last November.
The rest of the beneficiaries of the controversial lower court’s decisions, including Mr Lalong, got away because the disputes over state and National Assembly elections terminated at the Court of Appeal.
While delivering its decision on Muftwang’s appeal on Friday, the Supreme Court rebuked and shot down the reasoning behind the controversial verdicts.
Emmanuel Agim, who delivered the lead decision of the five-member panel of the Supreme Court, held that “We have held in a plethora of cases that the sponsorship of a candidate for election is an internal affair of a political party.”
He ruled that the Court of Appeal lacked jurisdiction to determine the validity of the candidacy of the PDP.
He also said Yalwatda and his APC had no right to challenge the emergence of Governor Mutfwang as the candidate of the PDP.
The Supreme Court justice said the order of the High Court had nothing to do with the party’s power to conduct a primary election as it did to nominate Governor Mutfwang as its candidate for the governorship election.
“The legal profession should wake up,” Agim said, indicating his worry about the shallowness of a trend of legal arguments raised by lawyers and getting upheld by courts.
He restored the decision of the election tribunal and affirmed Governor Mutfwang’s victory at the March 2023 polls.
The head of the five-member panel, Inyang Okoro, took the opportunity of his consenting opinion to sympathise with other victims of the Court of Appeal’s decision who were not entitled to a third-level review of their cases by the Supreme Court due to statutory limitation.
“My only worry is that a lot of people have suffered as a result of the Court of Appeal’s decision. It was absolutely wrong. The appeal is allowed,” Okoro said.
Also consenting, another member of the panel, Helen Ogunwunmiju, said, “It was very wrong for the Court of Appeal to go into the issue of party congresses. To make matters worse, the party challenging the issue is another political party.”
The rest of the members of the panel – Uwani Abba-Aji and Adamu Jauro also agreed with the lead judgement.
Apart from Plateau State, other states whose governorship election disputes were resolved with the victories of the sitting governors affirmed by the Supreme Court on Friday were Lagos, Abia, Zamfara, Kano, Cross River and Ebonyi.
For Zamfara, the Supreme Court affirmed PDP’s Governor Dauda Lawal’s election after reversing the Court of Appeal’s decision which had ordered a rerun in three local government areas in favour of APC’s candidate, Bello Matawalle.
The court also affirmed the election of Kano State Governor Abba Yusuf of the New Nigeria People’s Parry (NNPP) after reversing the Court of Appeal which sacked and replaced the APC candidate, Nasiru Gawuna.
None of the states in which the Court of Appeal’s judgements on the outcomes of the general elections were as sweeping as in Plateau.
The controversial decisions of the Court of Appeal regarding the Plateau State legislative elections were delivered by three-member panels of the Court of Appeal, including the ones led by Elfrieda Williams-Dawodu, and Teni Hassan. The Williams-Dawodu panel comprised Muhammed Mustapha and Okon Abang.
The panel nullified the election of Simon Mwadkwon of the PDP, who the electoral commission, INEC, had declared winner of the Plateau North Senatorial seat at the 25 February 2023, election.
In Mwadkwon’s place, the court handed the poll victory to Chris Giwa of the APC, who has since been sworn in at the Nigerian Senate.
About a couple of weeks later, the same appellate court panel led by Ms Williams-Dawodu pulled the rug off the feet of Napoleon Bali of the PDP who had won the Plateau South senatorial district poll.
Consequently, the panel declared the state’s former governor and labour minister, Simon Lalong winner.
Not done yet, the appellate court voided the election victory of five members of the House of Representatives from Plateau State who were elected on the platform of the PDP.
They are: Dachung Bagos (Jos South Jos East); Peter Gyendeng (Riyom/Barkin Ladi; Musa Agah (Jos North/Bassa); Beni Lar (Langtang North and South); and Isaac Kwalu (Shendam, Mikang and Quanpan) federal constituencies, respectively.
A panel of justices handed the victories for the House of Representatives seat to Dalyop Chollom of the APC for Barkin-Ladi/Riyom, Ajang Iliya of the Labour Party for the Jos South/Jos East seat, Vincent Venman of the APC for Langtang North/Langtang South seat.
Another panel of the Court of Appeal led by Teni Hassan announced Muhammad Alkali of the Peoples Redemption Party winner of the Jos North/Bassa federal constituency election.
Abang declared John Dafa’an of the APC the rightful representative of the Shendam/Quaapan/Mikang constituency.
Other victims of the appellate court pronouncements were 16 PDP members of the Plateau State House of Assembly, whose election victories were voided and their APC rivals were declared winners instead.
With the decisions, the majority of the 24-member assembly went to the APC.
The casualties of the decisions at the Plateau State House of Assembly are Timothy Datong (Riyom); Rimyat Nanbol (Langtang); Moses Sule (Mikang); Salome Waklek (Pankshin); Bala Fwangje (Mangu South); Maren Ishaku (Bokkos); Dagogot (Quaanpan North); Nannim Langyi (Langtang North); Nimchak Rims (Langtang South); Danjuma Azi (Jos North-West); Gwottson Fom (Jos South); Abubakar Sani Idris (Mangu North); Happiness Akawu (Pengana); Ibrahim Abalak (Rukuba/Irigwe); Philip Jwe (Barkin Ladi); and Cornelius Deyok (Qua’apan South).
But the Court of Appeal sacked the Plateau State Governor, Caleb Mutfwang, on similar grounds that the PDP had no structure, and could not have fielded candidates for the 2023 elections in the state.
But he was saved by the Supreme Court which is the final court of governorship election disputes, unlike state and federal legislative post-election disputes that must terminate at the Court of Appeal.
Judgement reignites calls for more cases to proceed to the Supreme Court
The Plateau case has raised questions about trusting the Court of Appeal with final decisions on matters, amid popular calls for an amendment of the law to limit the volume of cases that get to the Supreme Court.
Speaking with journalists, Jibrin Okutepa, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), asked if it was “advisable to make the Court of Appeal the final Court in electoral matters concerning elections to parliament at both the Federal and state levels.”
The lawyer agreed with the Supreme Court that the judiciary has to be circumspect in the way it “treats the concept of judicial precedents.”
He said respect for judicial precedents “is crucial for the stability and predictable outcome of litigation.”
Weighing on the issue, a vocal critic of the unpalatable events in the Nigerian judiciary, Chidi Odinkalu, said the Court of Appeal toppled all members of the PDP in Plateau who were elected into the legislature.
Mr Odinkalu, a former chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), referencing the decision of the Supreme Court, noted that the appellate court decisions that sacked the lawmakers were “crooked.”
But, Alphonsus Alubo, a law professor at the University of Jos, Plateau State, blamed lawyers for filing frivolous suits, calling for stiffer sanctions against such conduct.
