A suit seeking to bar former President Goodluck Jonathan from contesting the 2027 presidential election has been described as an abuse of court process.
This description was provided by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Oba Maduabuchi, regarding the matter.
The lawyer while speaking on the Arise Television Morning show on Tuesday, said the appellant in the matter is only trying to relitigate a case that has already been settled by a court of competent jurisdiction.
Maduabuchi added that the legal issue of the former president’s qualification or disqualification to contest any presidential election in the country has since been adjudicated in Yenegoa.
He said that since then nobody has gone further to appeal the judgment of the court.
Maduabuchi said, “Until that judgment is set aside, it remains what the law is.”
He also noted that an individual or a party who takes a settled issue to a court of coordinate jurisdiction is simply “abusing the process of the court.
According to the senior lawyer, such a person’s action would only be branded as one carried out by “a busybody.”
In addition, Maduabuchi queried whether Section 1373 existed in 2010 when Jonathan took the oath of office. He said the law that was quoted in the matter only came into effect in 2018 when the former president was taking his oath of office.
“When Goodluck Jonathan was taking the oath of office … there was no statutory limitation … which could inhibit him from running his constitutionally guaranteed two terms,” the lawyer stated.
He questioned whether Jonathan swore any oath after the amendment of 1373 and likened attempts to apply a later law earlier to punishing someone under a law that did not exist when the act occurred.
Maduabuchi recalled that judges’ retirement age was formerly 65, then changed to 70, and asked if a judge who had retired just before that change would sue to be reinstated under the new law.
He further emphasised that law demands certainty, and noted that “in 2011 and 2010, when Goodluck Jonathan swore the oath … Prohibition of 1372 was not in existence. It was not binding on him.”
He said no “pyrotechnic” argument can breathe existence into a law that did not exist.
He further referenced a case in the Federal Court of Appeal which affirmed that Jonathan had the right to run and one cannot apply retrospective laws to him.