After the Nwogu J Judgement, two prominent APC members who are pro the minister of Transportation issued various public statements in which they stated, amongst others, that they were not surprised at the Judgment, that it was expected, that they saw it coming. The innuendo was palpable.
Now, since the Supreme Court Judgment that wholly validated the position of Nwogu J with respect to those interlocutory matters, I have been searching for their views whether they also expected it coming, whether it came to them as a surprise.
To me, I expected the Supreme Court to go exactly the way it did and this is why:
In law, there is a maxim that “facts are the fountain head of the law”.
Fact 1:
The APC issued guidelines which asked party members interested in serving to pay and obtain forms to contest various offices in scheduled congresses.
Fact 2:
They named the various banks and provided account details of the party into which interested aspirants could pay in and obtain tellers to present to obtain the forms to participate in the congresses.
Fact 3:
Interested party members, numbering in their thousands, not knowing or even suspecting that the party leadership was not acting in good faith, paid for the forms and obtained bank tellers and upon presenting the tellers to the party officials to enable obtain the forms, found out for the first time that they were in for fraud as the party leadership not only declined to issue them with the forms, but set the police to harass them as they milled around the party secretariat to demand for the forms having paid for them as requested by the party guideline.
Fact 4:
No one talked to them, no one called to address them, not one single attempt was made to even talk about a refund. The party, took their cash and couldn’t care less. PDP arrogance, show of power, the type unleashed on Rotimi Amaechi was unleashed on them.
With no other place to go, they went to the only place where civilised, oppressed people go for redress: the court of Justice. The court made several interlocutory orders and the party, or more appropriately, the leadership, announced to a bewildered world, that they would not obey those Orders. In defence of their one man sacred position and in defiance of the court, they carried on in continued exclusion of those members and still keeping the money the members paid into its account.
Tell me please, which Judge or Court, properly so called, will decide otherwise? Only bribery and corruption can bring out a contrary judgement to the Nwogu J judgement.
And then at the Supreme Court, I have always known, even as a Sophomore lawyer, that courts not only guard their powers and jurisdiction, they do so jealously. This statement is in the Law Reports. To disobey a court and go back to court to ask for a reprieve is a dangerous adventure. Time and time again, the court has said that it amounts to taunting it, when, after you finish disobeying it, you come back to it to apply for a reprieve. At least this is the statement of the law in the Ojukwu V Lagos case.
The day that the Court of Appeal in PHC granted a stay to the party that did not respect the Orders of the Court was one of the most surprising experiences I had as a lawyer and I instantly knew something was fundamentally wrong. I told my marriage mate that I could bet anything that the Supreme Court would not allow it because if it did, our law would be polluted, destroyed beyond repair.
This was why the Supreme Court judgment did not come to me as a surprise.
