Ebere Osuji
Soon and very soon, the long drawn battle for the soul of Imo North would be over. The battle is in its terminal stage at the Appeal Court where the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, is intent on snatching victory in the December 2020 senatorial by-election in Imo North through the back door.
As a matter of fact, the PDP is only trying to take advantage of internal crisis within the fold of the All Progressives Party, APC, where vaulting ambition has put the otherwise winning party in a seeming precarious position.
All contending issues have been resolved anyway and the apex court of the land has since declared that Distinguished Senator Frank Ibezim is the authentic candidate of the APC in the that by-election. Ibezim has also taken his seat in the hallowed chambrer of the Red Chamber of the National Assembly.
The declaration of the APC by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, as winner of the election without naming a substantive candidate due to internecine conflict between Senator Frank Ifeanyi Araraume and now Distinguished Senator Frank Ibezim is actually what gave the PDP and its candidate Chief Emmanuel Okewulonu the futile hope of clinching the seat, as in their weird opinion, the APC had no candidate in the election.
Well, the Supreme Court has laid that to rest and ruled that APC indeed had a candidate in the person of Ibezim. Instead of going home to sulk and wait for another opportunity, the PDP and their candidate rushed to the Election Tribunal with a hasty wishy-washy petition that has since been dismissed. However, they still proceeded on appeal though. Their highly defective case should have been consigned to the dustbin of history by now if not their desire to soldier on in self-deceit and confusion. It is only receiving little attention because of smal talk that something sneaky is being plotted behind the scene to thwart the course of justice. This is highly improbable, sonsidering the calibre of the judges on the bench of the appeal court and especially the fact that the Supreme Court had already ruled on the matter and such eminent Lordships would not stain their age-long reputation by overruling the apex court of the land.
However, this article is actually devoted to the still raging war in the fold of the APC rather than PDP’s deadbeat attempt to reap where it did not sow.
It is instructive to recall that this protracted contest began with the desire to get replacement for Ben Uwajumogu, the then senator, representing Imo north who died in 2019, unfortunately.
The choice of this replacement was long and bitter. case is dead on arrival regardless of telltales that there are subterranean moves to sway the Appeal Court ruling. The battle for who takes up the seat vacated by the late Distinguished Senator Benjamin Uwajumogu has been intense and acrimonious.
Strangely, the real animus is within the fold of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC; a dog fight that almost cost the party the seat, as the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its candidate, Chief Emmanuel Okewulonu, are lurking in the wings expecting to nick the coveted seat by default.
At the centre of the faux pas is Senator Ifeanyi Araraume, an old political warhorse, who refuses to believe that Distinguished Senator Frank Ibezim, a ‘greenhorn and newcomer’, could upstage him.
Well, that is exactly what happened. Ibezim emerged after trouncing over ten other contestants, including Araraume. His rejection by some of the contestants was loud but while others have now thrown their weight behind the former Imo State commissioner of agriculture and natural resources, enigmatic Araraume, a former two-term senator, would have none of that. His undying resolve to return to the Red Chamber by all means had set tongues wagging as to whether there was anything he forgot there that he must go back to collect, even when most analysts see his eight years in the senate as lacklustre.
A plethora of court cases flew across the political landscape to stop Ibezim. It was either Ibezim won or lost or vice versa; the ding dong continued. Nevertheless, like a cat with nine lives, Ibezim scaled over all trumped up allegations against him, the most vicious being certificate forgery, amounting to perjury that could have ruined his blossoming political career for life.
It is noteworthy that the courts share a great deal of the blames through conflicting and controversial judgments, some even countermanding the Supreme Court.
Anyway, Ibezim consistently worsted Araraume, even getting the upper hand where Araraume seemed comfortably victorious. For instance, Araraume almost succeeded in arm-twisting the Independent Electoral Commission, INEC, to declare him the winner of the election, via a March 18 order by Justice Taiwo Taiwo of the Federal High Court, Abuja, ordering the electoral umpire to issue Araraume the Certificate of Return for the election it had declared the party winner instead of an outright declaration of Ibezim, the party’s official candidate. Nothing came of that order that was highly celebrated.
The certificate forgery allegation really rattled Ibezim, as both the Federal High court, Abuja, and Appeal Court, also in Abuja, hold that Ibezim was culpable and consequently disqualified him.
Delivering judgment on a suit filed by Asomugha Tony Elebeke, on December 4, 2020, Justice Inyang Ekwo held that the West African School Certificate, WASC, Ibezim submitted to his party, which the APC also submitted to INEC, bore different and irreconcilable names and scores.
The judge ruled that Ibezim had not successfully proved that the different names belonged to one and the same person, also dismissing the affidavit and newspaper publication Ibezim tendered in support of his claim that the names were all his.
The learned judge held that Ibezim could not use affidavit to correct errors in his name, saying only the issuing authorities, which in this instance were Uboma Secondary School, Ikperejere Etiti, and West African Examination Council, WAEC, could duly do so. Curiously, he did not see the anomaly in the petitioners not subpoenaing the institutions to come and testify and deny or affirm the certificates as theirs.
However, much to the relief of Ibezim, his party and supporters, the Supreme Court set aside the concurrent judgments of the Abuja Federal High Court and Court of Appeal that nullified his candidacy on the grounds of perjury and affirmed Ibezim as the authentic candidate of the APC in the December 5, 2020, Imo North Senatorial election.
The apex court held that the disqualification of Ibezim for allegedly giving false information to secure nomination was statute-barred and contravened Section 285 of the 1999, which stipulates that being a pre-election case,the suit ought to have been filed within mandatory 14 days.
In a unanimous judgment, the Supreme Court nullified the February 6, 2021 judgment of the Court of Appeal, Abuja, which affirmed the December 4, 2020 judgment of the Federal High Court, Abuja, disqualifying Ibezim for submitting false information to INEC as regards credentials.
Justice Agim held that since Ibezim was disqualified by the trial court and the Court of Appeal based on a case that was filed out of time, such disqualification amounts to a nullity.
He faulted Justice Ekwo’s findings and ruled the plaintiff failed to discharge the burden of proof of the alleged false information.
It is baffling that despite the ruling of the Supreme Court, affirming Ibezim as the authentic candidate of the APC, Senator Ararume still seeks to prolong the imbroglio by demanding that INEC should issue him Form EC8E and Certificate of Return, insisting that the ruling of a Federal High Court ratified his candidacy.
Araraume also did the unthinkable when irrespective of the Supreme Court ruling, he had audaciously sought in a letter to INEC through his lawyer, Ahmed Raji, to set a precedent and demanded that the apex court ruling be invalidated in favour of that order by a Federal High Court.
According to him, “…It is imperative to note that the appeals which culminated in the aforesaid Supreme Court judgment did not emanate from the judgment of Hon Justice Taiwo O. Taiwo delivered on the 18th day of March 2021 in Suit No: FHC/ABJ/CS/1644/2020 between Senator Ifeanyi Godwin Araraume v
INEC & 3 ors.”
Unfortunately, Distinguished Senator Ifeanyi Araraume has taken his laughable manoeuvring to the Appeal Court sitting over the ruling of the Election Tribunal that threw out the petition of the PDP and its candidate, Chief Emmanuel Okewulonu.
It is this overly ambitious political gerrymandering that gave rise to the notion that Araraume had filed a cross appeal, which has no basis in the first place.
It is not cross appeal per se. Rather, Araraume, who was a respondent in that petition filed by the PDP, turned round to be asking the tribunal to declare him the winner despite not being the petitioner. In fact, he rightly asked the tribunal to dismiss PDP’s petition because it had a lot of defects.The tribunal did all that he asked it to do.
The APC, which was first respondent, and Ibezim objected to the petition, which was granted too. In fact, Araraume aligned with the objection that PDP had no cause of action. The PDP failed to observe the needful, which was that INEC must have declared a winner and issued him with necessary documents like Certificate of Return before any action could be instituted at the tribunal, which PDP did not observe in its haste. Araraume aligned with the APC and the tribunal granted the request.
In law, a respondent who is successful, who is not aggrieved or qualified to be aggrieved in that the court did not grant his request, has no right to appeal because he is a respondent and has got what he wanted. The response is that the PDP did not prove their case; the preliminary objection was granted. They presented three witnesses; two did not have first hand information.
In the first place, Araraume did not appeal against that judgement. This is strange because he did not appeal against the judgment of the lower court. That judgment of the lower court remains binding. That petition was struck out because it contravened the provision of the Electoral Act that required them to wait until a person, not a party, was declared and issued Certificate of Return. You cannot now go on appeal without first asking the Appeal Court to nullify the decision of the lower court.
Araraume just wants to be declared winner based on the controversial judgment of Justice Taiwo Taiwo. He was never at the tribunal to ask for any relief. The court is not Father Christmas and cannot give you what you did not ask for. There is no provision for counter claim at the tribunal. Appeal is continuation of the trial. You cannot come to appeal and change the nature of your case and say you now want to be declared winner.
Is there any claim you were asking at the tribunal? You cannot come and ask to be declared winner simply because you participated in the election. In the first place, there was no time APC nominated Araraume or submitted his name to INEC, as their candidate. It was the Federal High Court that gave such a ruling, but even that has since been nullified by the Appeal Court and the Supreme Court.
It is indeed strange that an INEC lawyer came up with an address, asking that Araraume be declared winner without any ground. INEC has, however, withdrawn the controversial document because as an umpire, it has no business in the matter. They don’t even need to write any brief but wait for the decision of the courts, having already declared the result. It is curious that a lawyer could come and write an address without any basis or witness. Perhaps, this was Nigeria on display.
Another thing is the argument that Ibezim did not participate in all the processes, leading to the election. This was not even pleaded at the tribunal. Nevertheless, it is not for the respondent, Ibezim, to prove whether he participated in the processes or not; this is what the petitioners should be proving, which they are not doing.
Despite disingenuous frustrations, the Ibezim camp has been able to get the Supreme Court judgment and tendered it and good enough the court has taken judicial notice of that.
Araraume’s palpable confusion manifested at the Appeal Court sitting where on the one hand, his lawyer, Raji, supported the PDP that Ibezim did not participate in all the processes and on the other, he also supported APC. Of course, the APC lead counsel,Olusola Oke, objected to the prevarication and mockery of reasonableness and that informs this detailed expose.
Araraume is a highly prized and respectable son of Okigwe. Like the PDP, he should stop this wild goose chase after a senatorial seat he had once occupied for eight years. It would not be good if he squanders his remaining goodwill but should team up with Ibezim,his younger brother maka odi nma Okigwe so that posterity will judge him fairly.
If PDP is pardoned for its sneaky ambition, how would posterity judge Araraume’s desperation? The man is well accomplished already and still has a lot to offer his people. How I wish he could pull back and embrace his kinsman and party man, Ibezim, without this avoidable risk of losing all the respect he had garnered all these years. Certainly like Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler, there is a time to play and a time to walk away. Araraume, even Okewulonu, this is the time 
