Enugu Polls: Lawyers Demand Punishment For Erring Judges, Attorneys

Four days after it requested the Supreme Court to deliver justice, rather than a mere judgment, on the Enugu State gubernatorial election held last March 18, a leading civil society organisation in the Southeast geopolitical zone, Oriental Lawyers for Justice (OLJ) has requested the nation’s highest court to punish both lawyers and judicial officers involved in what it described as the conspicuous perversion of justice by both the state Election Petitions Tribunal and the Court of Appeal in their decisions on the governorship election dispute.

The tribunal and the appeal court decided in favour of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Peter Mbah, who was sued by the Labour Party (LP) candidate, Jonathan Chijioke Edeoga, a lawyer and journalist, for being declared the winner of the polls by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The rulings have apparently not gone down with many people in Enugu State.

“It is conspicuous to even blind laymen and women that only legal professionals who do not see themselves as operating in the temple of justice could partake directly or indirectly in the judgments that lower the integrity of both the courts and the legal profession in public perception”, the attorneys stated in a statement in Enugu today signed by its president, John Bosco Aninwede , and the publicity secretary, Mrs Ifeoma Ejike.

“Whoever reads the written address of Chief Adegboyega Awomolo, SAN, who heads the Edeoga legal team, submitted on August 16, 2023, and that of Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, the head of Mbah’s team, even if the person is not a legally trained mind, knows automatically which of the gubernatorial candidates has a case”.

The lawyers said, “It is instructive that INEC couldn’t call even a single witness”

They also said that it is unprofessional for a senior lawyer to approach a state high court like the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court to order a federal organisation like the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) not to testify against a gubernatorial candidate who submitted a forged NYSC discharge certificate to INEC.

“Only desperation can make any lawyer, let alone a senior one, make this unprofessional move”, they remarked, adding that “it is the non-compliance with professional ethics that can make a judge entertain and even grant the request”.

“The senior lawyer in question resorted to gagging the NYSC because the NYSC Director General, the NYSC Director of Certification, and the NYSC Assistant Director of Certification have at different times demonstrated, even before the courts, with incontrovertible evidence that the NYSC discharge certificate paraded by the PDP candidate did not emanate from the NYSC”.

The Supreme Court, the Oriental Lawyers for Justice, declared, is bound by duty and morality to start the process of raising public confidence in the judicial process and the legal profession in Enugu and elsewhere.

“The Supreme Court is expected to not only dispense justice in the legal dispute over the Enugu State governorship election but in the judgment advise the Disciplinary Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and the National Judicial Council (NJC) to take appropriate actions against legal professionals who have misbehaved in the case Enugu State governorship case”.