By Pascal OparadaSocial Media/Tech Reporter
A Nigerian social crusader based in the United States, Emmanuel Ogebe has joined the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to call the Supreme Court verdict which declared Gboyega Oyetola as governor of Osun State as a travesty of justice.
Ogebe, who runs the US Nigeria Law Group, based in Washington said in a release sent to TheNiche the judgment does not measure up.
He said the court erred on side of justice and democracy to order a retrial and deem it to be in order as all necessary processes were filed timely.
“How does this Osun judgment measure up considering the decision of the Supreme Court in the Saraki case that an incompletely constituted Code of Conduct Tribunal was still competent to sit? Secondly, why not order a retrial if for any reason the justices felt a fair trial was not afforded?
“Regardless of the time limitation set by the constitution, the court could have erred on the side of justice and democracy to order a retrial and deem it to be in order as all necessary processes were filed timeously,” Ogebe said.
Ogebe said a ghost code of conduct tribunal can sit and write a mysterious judgment which Buhari quickly obeyed. According to them, dissenting opinion of one judge cannot supersede the verdict of a panel, therefore questions regarding the verdict of one judge cannot and should not vitiate that of the panel.
“We now have a country where a ghost code of conduct tribunal can sit and write a mysterious judgment which Buhari quickly obeyed. Now we have a judgment by a real election tribunal which has discarded on speculation that a judge was absent. It is one thing when the executive violates their own constitution but when courts begin to doubt their own records, we are truly finished,” the statement said.
He said the people of Osun, the Nigerian legal system and democracy has been ill-served by ‘this terrible travesty.’
