Abia APGA And Denigration Of The Judiciary

THE judiciary is sacred. It is to democracy what the vestry is to the holy temple. Somebody must volunteer to teach this freshman course to the leaders of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) party in Abia State. Ignorance could be a valid claim to innocence in these matters. We forget that, as Amos Alcott noted, to be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

The ability to interpret the law and dispense justice accordingly remains the responsibility of the judiciary and that is why it is the last bastion of hope of the common man. The judiciary exists to control and direct the activities of man and, in that spirit, we avoid acting in contempt of the court.

From this premise, every well meaning Nigerian must decry the campaign of calumny mounted by APGA against the chairman and members of the Abia State Election Petition Tribunal. Since the judgment of the tribunal in the petitions of the National and House of Assembly elections and the verdict of the Owerri Appeal Court where APGA had gone to seek for extension of time to present more witnesses, the party literarily went gaga against the honourable jurists of the Abia tribunal. In a well-orchestrated media campaign, the party has accused the jurists of having been bribed and compromised to divert justice in favour of the PDP.

The height of this campaign of character assassination was the call by APGA for the jailing and possible execution of the judges of the Abia Election Tribunal. It is sheer irony for a party which had earlier expressed an unflinching faith in the judiciary as a citadel of justice to turn around and launch such disparaging campaign not just against the jurists but against the institution of the judiciary, simply because their canvassed wheel of justice (which they have been waiting for) doesn’t seem to be swinging in their favour.

In a full page advertorial published on page 41 of the Nation newspaper of Friday, October 16, 2015, and personally signed by Reverend Ehiemere as the chairman of APGA, he declared as follows: “Huge sums of money in form of gratification have exchanged hands between the PDP leadership in the state and cronies of the justices.

Consequently, some of the judges have been responding in line with the dictate of the lucre as evidenced in the current dismissing of all petitions filed by our party against the PDP candidates. The bribe funds, we understood, were delivered to the judges outside the country and through proxies in order to leave no traces.”

In another advertorial titled: Abia Election Petition Tribunals; The Height of Travesty of Justice, published on the same date. APGA stated: “There should be no space for corrupt judges in the present Nigeria. It is not enough to just retire them, they must be tried and if found guilty, jailed or even shot to death as the people of Ghana are asking their president to do.”

The party subsequently made other similar publications. Their language is, derogatory and abusive and only projects a picture of a desperate people. Considering that there is still a window for APGA to seek further redress in the Appeal Court, if it thinks that its petition has not be judiciously addressed, their action is a meditated intentional to ridicule the hallowed institution of the Nigerian judiciary. If the party is convinced that it still has some claim to make, the right action should have been to proceed to the higher court, which has the jurisdiction to vacate the judgment of the lower court.

The whole aim is to tarnish the coveted image and reputation of the honourable jurists and cast aspersion on the credibility of the Nigerian judiciary. This amounts to taking election gangsterism too far, and does not portray us positively before the civilised global community. Politics should not be this dirty and filthy and politicians should play it with some conscience.

There is need for the members of the Nigerian judiciary both the bar and the bench to rise up in condemnation of the attack that has been unleashed on members of the Abia tribunal and the denigration that has come to the way of the judiciary, no thanks to the Abia branch of APGA. There is a sense in which this smear against the Abia tribunal has a spiral link to how every other tribunal should or should not be treated. And this statement must be made unequivocally as a lesson to the Abia APGA. The court is a hollowed entity that should not be treated with disdain or held in such contemptuous manner that cast a bad image on our total outlook as a country. Somebody must call the party to order and reverse this flagrant descent to indecency. Nigerians owe a duty to uphold the sanctity of the judiciary.

• Adindu is the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Ikpeazu.