As reactions continue to trail the Supreme Court judgement which sacked all elected APC candidates in Zamfara state on Friday, Barrister Jibrin Okutepa SAN, has said that Nigerian politicians would learn a bitter lesson from the development.
Speaking with DAILY POST in Abuja on Sunday, the lawyer explained that Nigerian politicians lack respect for the feeling of others, a situation, he said, made them to twist due process to their favours.
He added that the judiciary would always intervene in disputes arising from elections, warning if such intervention was abdicated, there would be anarchy in the country.
“It’s fantastic. It will impute sanities into insanities of the Nigerian political class who do not believe in the rule of law and due process. Even those who want to eat their cake and still have it which is impossible.
“When the rule of law is sent to the graveyard, then anarchy will take over.
“When politicians refuse justice to prevail, those of us who are trained in dispute resolution will have to take over.
“The legal profession is the only profession with divine qualification. When you leave politics in the hands of people who don’t have respect for other people’s feelings, that is what you will have.
“So, I Congratulate the Nigerian judiciary and the Supreme Court.”
“I’m sure politicians will learn from the Zamfara case, if at all they will learn because this is not the first time that it is happening.”
Okutepa also said the electoral umpire was culpable as some electoral officials compromise with politicians to perpetuate illegality.
“They should also put a check on INEC properly because those of us who are legal practitioners, you will see two or three different sets of certified true copies of the same documents coming from the same institution.
“So, a time has come when we should use the necessary process and avoid the rigmarole of what they call due process. All things are being compromised in this country.
“We compromise criminality, we compromised iniquity and so on and so forth.”
DAILY POST reports that following the Supreme Court judgement, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, on Saturday acted in line with the apex court’s position.
All the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidates who were the first runners-up numbering about 37, including the Governor-elect, would be issued with certificates of return on Monday.
