Why APC Must Reject Supreme Court Ruling On Zamfara, Rivers – Sagay

Professor Itse Sagay (SAN) has described the Supreme Court ruling on RIvers and Zamfara States as a travesty of Justice.

The Apex Court had stopped the All Progressives Congress (APC) from fielding candidates for the general elections in Rivers State and also nullified APC’s victory in Zamfara and declared Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) the winner.

Reacting in a statement on Thursday, Sagay called on the ruling party not to accept the rulings.

He urged the APC legal team to apply to the Supreme Court for a review of its judgments on the States.

Sagay’s statement reads: “The Zamfara and Rivers State judgments are a national tragedy. We should not allow our legal system to throw up such unimaginable injustice.

“This major judicial disenfranchisement of the Zamfara and Rivers electorate should be reversed. I advise the APC legal team to apply for a review of the two judgments.

“Their Lordships ought to be given an opportunity to reverse this unprecedented tragedy.

“The prefix ‘Justice’ preceding the names of Supreme Court and Court of Appeal Judges is significant, for it prescribes what they stand for and what they represent: Justice!

“By this judgment, the landslide APC victories in the governorship, Senate, House of Representative and State House of Assembly are transferred to the PDP.

“If the APC primaries were defective, should the electorate be deprived of their democratic and Constitutional rights to vote? Is the electorate to be punished for the transgressions of party officials?

“Should the Judiciary replace the electorate’s decision and install losers in office? Could the Judiciary not have drawn on the deep recesses of its intellectual capacity, authority and its inexorable commitment to justice, to prevent this undemocratic calamity?

“Can the APC officials not be punished, for their lapses without denying the electorate their democratic rights? Should the Judiciary take over the electoral rights of the electorate? Is this not a clear case of technical law completely overthrowing justice?

“Have the members of the Supreme Court not achieved a level of creativity and authority to provide a solution without burying democracy and taking over from the registered voters as the judicial electorate?

“If this judgment had been an international one, it could have been described as ‘shocking the conscience of humanity’. In this case, it shocks the conscience of Nigerian humanity.”

“Now, has justice been served in Rivers and Zamfara states? No! In one case innocent electorate in their hundreds of thousands were prevented from voting for their party by judicial order.

“In Zamfara, where voting took place, the verdict of the electorate was taken away from the victorious party and awarded by the Judiciary to the woeful losers.

“In the next four years, Zamfara State will be governed by a party and politicians rejected by the electorate. This indeed shocks the conscience of Nigerian humanity,” the statement added.