Ubani Urges Election Tribunals To Set Penalties For ‘Unimportant’ Cases

The Chairman, Section of Public Interest and Development (SPIDEL) of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Monday Ubani, has urged the election petitions tribunals to set sanctions and standards for irrelevant cases seeking court hearings.

“We must begin to set some level of standards in the legal profession that any case that looks hopelessly useless, you don’t need to go to court. If you do that, then there is a penalty,” Ubani said during Channels Television’s breakfast programme Sunrise Daily on Wednesday.

According to him, there are categories of cases which are not court-worthy, but politicians often want to test technicalities to “superintend over substantial justice”.

The human rights lawyer said, “If you don’t impose that penalty, people will keep on going to court, saying, ‘Let’s go and ventilate grievances, I have access to the court.’ There must be a limit to the kind of cases we begin to file in court.”

He stated that election contenders are never satisfied until they see that all the loopholes are explored up to the final verdict by the Supreme Court.

“The moment our judicial system works in such a manner that you adhere principally to precedents, you find out that politicians may not likely begin to go to court in the manner they want to,” Ubani said.

The SPIDEL chairman argued that if limits and penalties are not placed, adding that if this is not done it would fuel access for politicians to ventilate grievances.

Ubani noted that the credibility of the court has to be earned with established precedents to discourage petitions.

“The court also must maintain some level of consistency in their judgement, so that when they see that the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal are not bending, nobody would begin to say, ‘Let’s go and try; we may succeed on technicalities.’

“They must remain persistent and consistent with the precedents already established so that when those things are done and your case falls on the same facts, you would know you are wasting your time,” he said.

Ubani noted that the system sets court layers to address the human factor.

“All these processes laid out are set to ensure that justice is meted out adequately, and to ensure that filtering is done, if there is any wrong judgement that is given at the lower court,” he said.

“Then the appellate court should be able to look at it independently and in an unbiased manner and review the process in which that judgement was arrived at and give a better judgement and then now up to supreme court level,” he said.