Sacked Plateau Lawmakers: PDP’s Petition To Judicial Council Not Viable Because NJC Cannot Reverse Judgement, Says Owonikoko

A lawyer, Abiodun Owonikoko in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Monday, has said that the National Judicial Council does not have the right to review or revise judgement.

Owonikoko said this while reacting to the PDP’s petition to the NJC seeking judicial review over its members sacked by the Court of Appeal last year.

It was reported on Monday that the National Working Committee (NWC) of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had sent petitions to the National Judicial Council (NJC) and Federal Judicial Service Commission over its members in the Senate, House of Representatives, and Plateau State House of Assembly sacked by the Court of Appeal last year.

The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja had in November last year sacked all 16 members of PDP in the Plateau State House of Assembly for pre-election matters bordering on alleged disobedience of court order and lack of political structure. Before then, the appeal court had sacked four PDP members of the House of Representatives from the state and two senators.

Owonikoko said “I hope they are being properly advised by their lawyers, even if the person is a lawyer himself, in the matter which is involved, there is tendency to be a bit emotional. Judicial redress is clearly separate and different from administrative redress. Any approach to NJC is not an approach to supreme court or any court for rebrief. It must be an attempt to revoke the administrative power of NJC.

“Usually, which is disciplinary, the NJC does not review judgement, cannot review judgement and cannot reverse judgement. It does not appear to me as a viable option to pursue, except the whole idea is to simply have the judges affected to be sanctioned and that would not actually address the real issue of justice that the public and the affected people are looking at.

“In that respect, I have never heard it being said that the justices that were involved in those cases were in any way guilty of malpractice or fraud. If it is about the judges getting it wrong, which of course is the implication of the supreme court upholding the plateau governor’s case, that is also one of the prerogatives of judges.

“They can be right and they can be wrong, they can be grossly right and they can be perverse. That also does not impact on the judgement as a valid judgement until it is set aside. It however says a lot on the quality of the judgement and the judicial officers involved, which in any event, reflect on their career progression, especially as they are court of appeal justice, they still have one more ladder to climb.

“Judges who are involved in these kinds of things, especially where the supreme court had to come out heavily to sanction and excoriate them, should by now be reticent. They should be contrite.

“In this kind of thing, what would expect for those who seek other than judiciary recourse, some sort of other mitigations and rebrief to do, is to see how they can make a case why those judges who were involved in this, may have to have their progression delayed so that they can learn better and get more seasoned before they are considered for a more Honorius positions in the hierarchy of our court.

“Its not every case that requires judicial solution. This is already a case of mishap. The entire polity should come together and say look, are there other ways we can address this issue. If this happened in a country where people have integrity, all members of the house of assembly that benefitted from that judgement in view of what supreme court has said, should on their own resign and then go for election.”

He further cautioned that some of the reports in the media regarding the delivered judgement last week were mere comments. He added that no need to cry foul when not seen in the hardcopy of the judgement.

“Some of the reports in the media were actually passed as comments and remarks after judgement was delivered. I just want to caution that when the hard copy of the judgements is released and some of these comments don’t feature there, there should be no insinuations that they have doctored their judgement.”

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