Adewole Adebayo, the Social Democratic Party SDP in the just concluded general election, explains, in this interview, why the petitions of the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP and his counterpart in the Labour Party, Peter Obi couldn’t have made any impact on the Justices of the Supreme Court.
We can only have aspirational reasons to plan for a system where litigation will be concluded before the inauguration, and that is doable by adjustment of the calendar, which requires the amendment of the law. Once we do that, we can expect that next time, all litigation will be completed before the winner is sworn on.
Presently, the burden is on the petitioners. But if it is the other way round,it is easier because the petitioners won’t have to prove anything. It is closer to justice if the court actually gets to know how the winner became the winner because the errors of the petitioners are enough to throw the petitions away. Like the petitions filed by the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Governor of Anambra State Mr Peter Obi, as a lawyer, those petitions of theirs make no sense.
A. As a lawyer, I know what legal proceedings are. I am a politician. I know what political attacks are. Politcal attacks have no place in legal proceedings. You can say during campaign that your opponents have two mothers, three fathers, you can say whatever you like but when you go to court, all of that has no business inside the court because the court deals with fact, legal and implications of the fact only.
A. I agree that if you are going for the highest office in the land, there should be scrutiny, but the scrutiny in quote has a legal limit or prescription. If you had a candidate whose parents didn’t marry each other and he was born by the roadside as a product of infidelity, you can use it to campaign. It is a form of scrutiny. If the president was fired from his job, you could use it to campaign. It is a form of scrutiny.