 Now, the Independent National Electoral Commission has appealed the judgment of the election petition tribunal that nullified the victory of Ashen State Governor Ademola Adelike in the July 16 governorship poll. In the notice of appeal dated 30 January 2023, filed before the Court of Appeal, Accurate Division, obtained in Ashubo, the commission listed 44 grounds of appeal in the court to set aside the judgment of the tribunal. Now, the upland also asked the Court to dismiss the petition filed by the All Progressives Congress and each candidate at the poll, Adegbu Yigga Oyetola, for lacking in merit. A tribunal panel led by Justice Desiree Kume had nullified Adelike's victory and declared Oyetola as the duly elected governor at the polls in its judgment of January the 27th. The panel said overvoting was established in 74 or 744 polling units and adopted the access vote from the votes garnered by Adelike and Oyetola, but in a minority judgment delivered by another member of the panel, Justice A. O'Wooley, had dismissed AEPC's petition and have held Adelike's victory at the polls. We're now being joined by John Sinago, a legal practitioner with Fidelis Odita and Co. Chambers. Many thanks for joining us on the news now on Clause TV Africa. Thank you so much. All right. This story is just breaking and INEC has actually listed out 44 grounds, which is basing in some appeal on how do you see this grounds? I really think INEC could actually have its time in court. Yeah. It's a basic right of every appellant to be heard in court, expounding the reasons why it is dissatisfied with the judgment that it's appealing. That's the very first basic. So, unless it commits some procedural errors, which are the court considers grievous enough to prevent the court from going to the merits of the case, because in some occasions, despite how beautiful your case may be, you are still expected to come to the court properly. What we call procedural jurisdiction. All right. Let me just quote some things that are disclosed in the notice of appeal. It's said that the verdict cannot be said to be a majority one since the second judge, Rabu Bashir, failed to pronounce his opinion, neither was or her opinion. Neither was her name written on the said judgment. Does that really amount to anything? It's neither here or there. Look at it this way. The law requires every judge that sees in a panel to deliver an opinion. It's expected that they could deliver it orally. If they are absent, they could get someone to read it for them. OK. Yes. But they must see their view of the matter they have heard. So, in this instance, the records show that someone delivered the first one. Justice Tesse wrote the first one, which we are assuming to be the majority view. Another person read the second one, Justice O'Bully, read the second one. So, where is the judgment of Rabu? Rabu, yes. Kume has delivered, we have seen his. Where is that of Kume? Rabu. It is not compulsory that he will write an elaborate sentence. He could just say, I concur. So, being a concurring justice doesn't really need a lot, but you just have to show it. Of course, I must also accept that the Constitution requires the judgments to be in writing. OK. But the question is, must it be in writing on the date it is being pronounced? You still have seven days after the judgment is delivered to receive a written copy of the judgment. So, the question is not that straightforward. It's a question of facts. What actually happened? We still have to listen to the respondent, this time around APC and Oetola, give us their view of what happened on that day. But on the face of it, there is some argument to say that if justice Rabu did not deliver an opinion, then there is no majority view. It will now be a question of what justice Kume said against what justice O'Bully said. But there has to be a tiebreaker. All right. What does justice Rabu say? OK, let more notices here. It stated that the tribunal had in law, having failed to rule on the preliminary objection filed by the force respondent and appellant, challenging the competency of the petition and the restriction of the tribunal to hear the petition only to proceed to rule on the merits of the petition. Yeah, it's expected that every application, whether you call it preliminary objection, any other name you decide to call it must be given a verdict. So, the courts are not allowed to gloss over any application at all. But there is actually something curious about this. I'm not trying to discuss the merit of INX appeal at this stage, but I think if I recollect correctly, some part of the judgment I read used a one-liner or two sentences to dismiss the entire preliminary objection. So, I consider it to be a verdict. The only question now is that they are supposed to give reasons for giving that verdict on those preliminary objections. And if you read further in the grants of appeal, INX also complains that their preliminary objections were dismissed by a one-liner. So, you cannot say it was not decided on. I say it is decided on. At the same time, you have to choose what happened to your preliminary objections. But this is not the stage for us to criticize the case of INX at this time. Maybe at the proper forum, the proper parties will advance proper argument. And probably when they itemize or argue their case in what we call the brief of argument, we'll understand fully what they wanted to say in those grants of appeal. All right, before we'll leave at the Oshun Tribunal issue and INX appeal, INX is also seeking an order of the court dismissing and or striking out the petition for want of competence and jurisdiction and then order dismissing the petition of the first and second respondent in the appeal as lacking in merit with substantial course. There is an issue of competence and jurisdiction here at play. Yes, both of them are often mistaken to be same. The question is, when you bring your case before the court, has it passed through the normal procedures? If it has not passed through the normal procedures, we say it is incompetent. If it's form, if the way it should look, the features it should have are not present, we say it is incompetent. If what you are asking the court to do for you is beyond the powers of the court, we'll say the court has no jurisdiction to entertain it. So these are elements of the same thing, sometimes substantive jurisdiction and sometimes procedural jurisdiction. So what INX is complaining about is that the petition brought by Adelic Oyetola and APC has some features which, if you look at it properly, the court should not have assumed jurisdiction even if it has. Okay. All right, let's just leave the Oshun petition and INX appeal for one second and then talk about some other issue that is on the lips of most Nigerians, which is the old Naira notes validity and the Supreme Court's ruling of today, restraining INX from implementing deadline. It has actually sparked reaction and mixed reactions. A lot of Nigerians are saying that it is a step in the right direction because people are still struggling to really get to meet the transactions as it were. But civil societies today, they protested and they are saying the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction. They just want you to break it down for us. Okay. Actually, this item of jurisdiction is very tricky. The courts is established by law and this law that is established of this cause donates to the courts the powers, the list of items they can hear. So in the case of the Supreme Court, the constitution basically says that it should listen to appeals. That's complaint on the judgments of the Court of Appeal. But in some brave occasions, it says it can hear a matter fresh between the parties. So that's the one they call original jurisdiction. So before you can invoke what we are calling the original jurisdiction of the court, there are certain thresholds that must be met. So in this instance, people are complaining and are saying, is this a proper case where the original jurisdiction of the court should be activated? Can national state, cardinal state and Kogi state ask the courts to hear a matter between its own grievance or the grievance of the citizens of the states against an agency of the federal government? There are, maybe this is not a proper time to discuss it because of the fact that it is pending before the court, but on the face of it, it is easy to point out that the Supreme Court will normally say to litigants of those nature to go to the federal high court and complain against the acts of the federal government agency that you feel dissatisfied with. There are so many examples of such cases, A.G. of final brass state against A.G. of the federation. So many, too many. All right, this temporary ruling as it were is just giving litigants maybe as it were just like extra five days of the meantime because it's not like a complete relief as it were. How do you, what do you really see happening in the coming days? It's quite tricky because normally when a court gives an order, it's expected that everybody will comply. But we've seen situations where people file documents, what we call or appeal if it's a court that has an applet opportunity or an application to set aside that order that has been made. And in the guise of challenging that court order, they will say it is not binding on them and they continue to do what they want to be doing. So in this particular instance, people claim that there is a court of competent jurisdiction that has already made an order compelling CBN and whatever not to stop. There is also an argument that CBN was not even a party to the case between the state's governments and after the general federation. So the question is whether it will be bound by a case that it was not a party to. So it's a lot of arguments surrounding it. So we are looking forward to see if this Buhari administration will at least pretend to be a government of rule of law and say, okay, let's hold on a little and see if by the hearing of the application for real injunction, what we are calling the interlocutory injunction, they caught with discharge this so-called interim injunction or you affirm it. But there's still an opportunity for the parties to present their opinions before the final decision on whether the demonetization policy will go on or not. All right. We must say a very big thank you to you. John Sinago, a lawyer with the Fidelis Auditair and Co-Chimbus, would you appreciate your time and insight that you have provided to these salient issues bordering Nigeria and Nigerians? Thank you so much. Hello. Hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.