Odili's "Perpetual Injuction"

[Auspicious]

(Intro Drums..)

Arise O'Compatriooots! It's time to Celebrate

To Pray for O-Di-Li,

With Love and Strenght and Faith

The Labor of our Ooo-Di-Li, shall ne-ver be in vaaaain!

To hail Pe-to-di-leeeeeeeeeee,

One nation bound in Fieeeefdom, Theft and Eeen-justice!

(Aaaaah, what a relieving rendition! Damn the BBC and it's "negative" reports on Nigeria! Yes, I blame the messenger and excuse the perpetrator!...)

I am Auspicious...and I approve this Message!

Nigeria ex-governor halts probe

[EezeeBee]

I have awoken to hear this RIDICULOUS news!

Oya Lawyers amongst us, please help me explain how if I commit a crime (say murder), I can in advance, go and get an injunction PREVENTING me from being investigated? In perpetuity?

Is this another instance where the Law portrays it's most ASSinine form?

[elgaxton]

Originally Posted by EezeeBee

I have awoken to hear this RIDICULOUS news!

Oya Lawyers amongst us, please help me explain how if I commit a crime (say murder), I can in advance, go and get an injunction PREVENTING me from being investigated? In perpetuity?

Is this another instance where the Law portrays it's most ASSinine form?

Bros I tire for this kind groove o.

God help us for this country abeg

[Ochi Dabari]

The Nigerian judiciary used to be like a Den of Bribe takers. In the last 2-3 years, we thought they were redeeming themselves but not so. Now we are hearing about a judge giving verdict on an election that did not hold in Anambra, and lately of the Ogebe case. Now, it is Odili that is able to prevent being tried for crimes he has committed. Whatever happened to an innocent man having his day in court and getting acquitted? This Odili man, is his injunction applicable only in Nigeria or is it worldwide or universal? Someone said that it is possible to get God's signature in Nigeria; I am sure that Odili will even be able to place an injunction on God, so that he will not suffer for his sins. Na waooo.

Below is what Steve Nwosu of the Sun thinks about current judgement in Nigeria.

ochi

As your lordship pleases
By Steve Nwosu (steve@sunnewsonline.com )
Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Please, dear readers, do not make anything of this illustration. It is not a representation of anybody you know. In fact, it has no bearing with the article of today.
It is just that my page planner recently complained that my page is becoming too grey and that I should begin to use photographs and illustrations to brighten the page.

I stumbled on this mischievous illustration by our Chief Cartoonist, Albert Ohams. He had done it, about two years ago, at a BBC training for cartoonists in Lagos.
As I said earlier, it is of nobody that Nigerians know of – either in Abeokuta or Aso Rock or even the PDP board of trustees. In fact, I suspect that it is actually a hybrid of dog, he-goat, ape and pig. The cap and the scratch lines on the side of the face are only a deception.
I think the objective of the illustration was to bring out, in sharp relief, the missing link between man and animal. So, anybody who thinks that such a creature actually exists needs to have his head examined – either in Germany or China.

As I said, the illustration really has nothing to do with the topic of today which is, again, on the judgments that have been tumbling out of the revered chambers of their lordships, as they attempt to make water flow upstream with dizzying election tribunal verdicts.

Painfully, the onus has again fallen on we ‘unlearned’ journalists to point out the ‘errors’, since the lawyers are being too careful with the issues. Somehow, everybody is afraid to bare his mind on the mind-boggling verdicts, or give it to the delinquent jurists the way they feel. So, even as much as you feel like crossing over to the bench and slapping someone – and literally de-robing another – you still have to indulge their lordships, by saying: I still have unwavering belief in the judiciary (as the last hope of the common man). It is another way of being politically (or is it legally, now?) correct.

Saying otherwise could land you in trouble. Yes, the lawyers and all the ‘book people’ can deny as much as they want, but those of us illiterates who do not know anything about court procedures think that judges can actually gang up against any particularly ‘troublesome’ plaintiff or respondent and you’d always end up on the wrong side of the law – no matter how brilliant your lawyer is or how straightforward your case is.

And so, when their lordships have finished giving the most curious conclusions to otherwise, straightforward arguments you’d ever seen in your many years of legal practice, our poor lawyers still have to swallow it with a mechanical “as the court pleases”. And woe betide any of them if he did not put up a stupid smile of satisfaction to go with it; the judge could just order that he be detained for disrespecting the court.

Of course, one would not be saying the whole truth if one were to argue that the Judiciary has not bequeathed itself very well in the last two years. In fact, if there is any estate of the realm (by which case I even join the media) that has scored excellent in our march to stable democracy in the last two years, that arm is the judiciary.

Like in a class of dullards, the judiciary has stood out as a very bright student. But being a good student comes with enormous headaches. For one, it pushes up people’s expectations – from both your teachers and fellow students. It, therefore, makes failure unacceptable. That is why the few ‘failures’ we have recorded in the past few days have come as a huge disappointment to an expectant nation. And I am not just talking about the presidential election tribunal.
Today, there is hardly any vice we can put beyond our politicians, whether in the legislature or in the executive arm. We know many of them are scandals waiting to be exposed. But, somehow, we seem to have this feeling that the judiciary should be above the fray. And that is why we feel most hurt when their Lordships falter, as many believe they did in Abuja last Tuesday and in 24 hours earlier in Abia.

Much as I would not want to go into details in any of the instances, I make bold to say that the Abia situation was particularly shocking.
I have listened to, and read the submissions of, both sides to the Abia case, and at the end of every submission, I became even more confused as to how the tribunal arrived at the verdict. Definitely not from the stockpile of evidence before it! Nor from any of the tricks they teach at the law school.
I have heard talks that the tribunal had every evidence concerning the resignations of Gov. T.A Orji and his deputy, Chris Akomas. I have heard that the star witness, on whose oral evidence the tribunal relied in arriving at its position on the Okija shrine angle, was not even a listed witness and had no documentary evidence to back his claims.

I have heard that Okija is only a shrine and not a cult, I have heard that attending an Amorc marriage ceremony, for instance, does not make you a Rosicrucian, just as visiting Rome does not make you a Catholic. It is even worse when the man at the centre of it all insists he never even visited the place, and the judges insist the onus is not on his accuser to prove that he did visit.

The story is also told of how, after the star witness had submitted that every one who served in the administration of former governor Orji Uzor Kalu was a member of the cult, he was unable to recognize the administration’s attorney-general who, incidentally, was the counsel to T.A. Orji. It was curious.
But even more curious was the story that, about 24 hours to the verdict of the tribunal, one of the parties to the suit had rented a few canopies and hoisted them up in his country home. He had sent word round to many of his followers and friend to assemble in his house later in the day to begin the celebration of their coming into government. He had boasted to them that the PPA victory would not only be overturned, but that it would be accompanied by an order directing that his principal be sworn in as governor.

They had even cooked and bought drinks. Unfortunately, the second part of the verdict never came. But it was too late; one overzealous TV station began to flash the news of the ‘swearing-in’ which, for some reason, was left out of the final verdict that was read out.
But like Akomas said in Lagos last weekend, his joy in all that has transpired at the Abia governorship election tribunal is that even the tribunal was fair enough to confirm that, unlike in several other states, there was an election in Abia, it was free and fair; and that the candidates of the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) won about 80 per cent of the total votes cast.

“Now, the problem is, considering that there were also other parties like APGA and ANPP which gave PDP a serious run for the remaining 20 per cent (or less), why is the tribunal so desperate in giving victory to a party that probably did not get up to 15 per cent of the total votes cast in an election? Is this democracy?”, he queried.

Unfortunately, I am not in a position to answer that question, especially when the PDP petitioner’s lawyer is insisting that the tribunal made no such pronouncement.
Incidentally, Abia is only one of the three or so talking points in the recent deviations of their lordships.

We are also closely monitoring the situation in Delta (which gubernatorial election seems to have so much material details in common with those of Kogi and Adamawa, but which verdict sharply contradicts the verdicts from the other states) and Osun, where the tribunal has bluntly refused to consider shocking evidences brought in by forensic experts who analyzed the votes for the governorship election there.
In the two states of Osun and Abia, we are increasingly seeing a situation where tribunals have carried on as though they are a part of the INEC and PDP defence teams.

Before our very eyes, they have made nonsense of the fingerprint concept, by refusing outright to look at what the fingerprint experts found out.
I am told that the fear is that of the sample studied by the British experts, 60 per cent were products of multiple thumb-printing. While a further computer analysis of what transpired in the state on election day showed that almost 400,000 of the actually counted votes came in through the back door. And to make matters worse, what was eventually declared as total votes scored by the parties was at variance with the total of physical votes (including those that came as a result of multiple thumb-printing.

The AC, known for its ability to make all the noise, is screaming blue murder. Its opponents – a dizzying gang-up of PDP, INEC and to some extent, the tribunal – insist the party is crying wolf where there is none. But curiously, they would not let us put the matter to rest by allowing the forensic experts present their findings.
Our prayer now is that latter-day recklessness does not stain the otherwise stainless image the judiciary has managed to hone out for itself over the past two or so years.

Our prayer is that we do not hoist up a dictatorship of the judiciary, so soon after our deliverance from the dictatorship of the farmer soldier.

[Ranter]

Just like a serial murderer in the west would gladly inform the judge that his father never bought him toy trucks when he was a kid,was the reason he killed all those spoilt college kids.
I pray that one day some brave Nigerian would stand in a law court and tell the whole world that he killed all out past leaders in the executive,legislative and judiciary branches of government that blatantly refused to do anything right.
Someday it will take these evil doers to bribe 140 million individuals to be discharged and acquitted or be put to the sword.

Amen.