AS Rivers State political battle continues, Professor of law, Mr Chidi Odinkalu, says the Supreme Court issued dispositions (delivered judgment) on a case that is still pending at the federal high court.

Prof Odinkalu reacted to the judgment of the Supreme Court last week which ordered the Rivers State Governor, Mr Siminalayi Fubara, to pay a legal cost of N5 million to the 27 members of the Rivers State House of Assembly loyal to the Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Mr Nyesom Wike.

This was sequel to the resignation of the 27 members of the Rivers State House of Assembly from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) on which they were elected to the All Progressives Congress (APC), following a dispute between Governor Sim Fubara and their godfather, Mr Nyesom Wike.

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The apex court had ruled that the concurrent findings of the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal proved that Governor Fubara engaged in several illegal and unconstitutional activities to subvert the state assembly, the Nigerian constitution, and to avert his assumed impeachment plans by opposition lawmakers.

However, Prof Odinkalu, who had earlier headed Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), faulted the judgment, saying that the highest court of the land erred in its judgment.

“Being aware of of the pending Federal High Court case on the lagal consequences of the defection of the Amaewhule faction of the Rivers House of Assembly , the Supreme Court short-circuited a contingent appellate process and issued dispositions on a dispute that was not before it.”

In his article entitled, “In Rivers State, A Supreme Iniquity?”, released on Monday, Prof Odinkalu identified four glaring problems with the Supreme Court judgment.

“The first is not what is in it but what is missing. Lawyers claim that ‘equity does not act in vain.’ The Supreme Court did not bother to provide any reasoning or justification for its orders, leaving it open to legitimate accusations of having acted in vain or in a transaction. Granting the court every latitude on the violations that it found, its orders are an unreasoned overreach.

“Second, ordering the Central Bank to withhold Rivers state’s share of the Federation Account is at best a rogue order that punishes the people for a dispute between politicians. It violates the maxim that ‘equity regards the beneficiary (in this case the people of Rivers State) as the true owner.’ Their right to their share of the Federation Account is antecedent to, independent of, and unconnected with the dispute in this case.

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“Third, being aware of the ongoing litigation on the legal consequences of the defection of the Amaewhule faction of the State House of Assembly, the Supreme Court short-circuited a contingent appellate process and issued dispositions on a dispute that was neither before it nor necessary for the determination of the issues it was called upon to decide. In doing so, the court chose with a touch of injudicious shamelessness to accept the invitation to take sides in the underlying political dispute in Rivers State.

“The Supreme Court announced revolutionary jurisprudence on the judicial fly, claiming that, in cases where there is a disputed defection, “[o]nly the [legislature] can declare a seat vacant for defection and not the Governor of a State. Not even the Courts can do so.” It takes heedless audacity for an apex court to castrate the judiciary. That is exactly what the court did with this line in italics. When the Supreme Court laid down the contrary principle in 2015, it was by a panel of seven Justices. This Supreme Court purports to overrule that principle without even citing, acknowledging, or considering its earlier decisions on the same point. Moreover, a five-person panel of the Supreme Court cannot overrule a seven-person panel.”

Porf Odinkalu said when Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, showed up reportedly to turn the sod on proposed judicial digs with Nyesom Wike last October, there were unheeded warnings then concerning the prohibitive institutional costs of such dalliance with a notorious political litigant who has a reputation for instrumentalising the courts.

He noted that many would look at this recent decision from the Supreme Court and say ‘we told you so.’

“For the CJN, it will be argued that she was not on the panel; to which the response will be, she chose the judges and constituted the panel.”

He likened the case to the incident involving King Jaja of Opobo in Rivers State and the British colonialists. “On 1 December 1887, the Kangaroo court of Rear Admiral Walter Hunt-Grubbe ruled that the presence of King Jaja in Opobo ‘would be fatal’ to British commercial interests and authorised his eventual exile to West Indies.

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“The judgment was widely seen as a transactional travesty and its effect, it was said, was ‘to haunt the British colonial administration in West Africa for a long time.’ It may similarly be said of what the courts of post-colonial Nigeria did in the 137th year of that iniquity that they sought in another transactional travesty to exile another figure from Opobo from his position because his presence would be fatal to the interests of Nigeria’s most prolific political litigant.”