Chikelubawritings

Nigeria has a lot of issues, for instance, who do you blame for immigration officers wearing slippers or flip-flops with their uniforms at the airport, or Uber drivers accepting trips and proceeding to charge you higher than the app for an offline trip? For us to get the country we want, we have to change our mindset—Osi_Suave In the country of Armenia, in 1988, Saanielle sent their young son, Armand, off to school. Samuel squatted before his son and looked him in the eye. “Have a good day at school, and remember, no matter what, I’ll always be there for you.” They hugged and the boy ran off to school.   Hours later, a powerful earthquake rocked the area. In the midst of the pandemonium, Samuel and Danielle tried to discover what happened to their son but they couldn’t get any information. The radio announced that there were thousands of casualties.  Samuel then grabbed his coat and headed for the schoolyard. When he reached the area, what he saw brought tears to his eyes. Arm...

With 10 serving Justices, the Supreme Court has 11 vacancies waiting to be filled. Politicians have learnt to turn election dispute resolution into auditions for shifting judicial deck chairs. First they rig elections in order to get the opportunity to rig the courts with judges ready to help them to validate rigged elections. That is the legacy of the unspoken antecedents of Awolowo v. Shagari. When the presidential election petition process began in March, Nigeria’s Supreme Court comprised 13 Justices. The court had received a bumper injection of seven new Justices in November, 2020, after the conclusion of the disputes arising from the presidential election of the previous year. That was the last set of appointments to the Supreme Court. Since then, six Justices have retired; another three have died. Indeed, in the period since the commencement of the presidential election petition in March, one Justice of the Supreme Court has died. Another retired three days before the judgment of...

  …and when, where and how were they written? …US, UK and Nigerian Rights and Democracy Groups and campaigners demand public snswers within deven days from five justices of the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal or face international lawful campaigns The United States, United Kingdom and Nigerian Human Rights and Democracy roups and campaigners are strongly and humbly calling on the five Justices (Justices of the Court of Appeal) of the Nigeria’s 2023 Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) led by its Chairman, Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani (Bauchi State) to publicly tell Nigerians and the world “who actually wrote the 2023 Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal Judgments and when, where and how they were written”. Signatories to this joint-statement are the Global Igbo Leaders based in the United Kingdom led by Amadiebube Mbama, the Ekwenche Research Institute based in the United States of America led by Prof Justin Akujieze, John Gregg, an American respected Inter...

I have been laughing in VERNACULAR since this evening when my attention was first drawn to a banal trending story on the social media, titled, “OUTRAGE AS ENTRANCE TO MIKE OZEKHOME’S HOUSE IN IKOTUN-IGANDONIS LITTERED WITH CALABASHES OF SACRIFICE” ( news.phxfeeds.com ). I would have completely ignored the story, but for the fact that numerous calls have since kept pouring in, all callers worried about my safety. Keep your peace, my loving fellow compatriots, for I am hale, hearty and covered with the blood of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who fights my battles for me ( Exodus 14:14 ). The said alarmist story is largely baseless, funny and phony. That is why I have never stopped laughing. I am now used to such jejune and insipid stories which I am told is part of the fate of a “celebrity lawyer”, as  many are want to regard and call me. I thank God Almighty for making me whom it pleased Him to make me of-a resonating story of “grass-to-grace”. What has the write-up got to do with me, ev...

The 6 September 2023 judgement by the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) was honestly not unexpected. While the judgment did not come to me as a surprise, what rather jolted me was the manner in which it was framed: it was almost as if the judges were the attorneys for the defendants and were therefore visibly angry with the petitioners and their lawyers for daring to bring such petitions before them. The judgments, whatever their merits on points of law, were delivered in very pedantic, if not condescending manner to the petitioners. Let me mention that I am not a lawyer (though, in addition to my academic qualifications in Political Science and Development Studies, I also have an LLM degree in Media Law from a respected London University). But I am a student of Nigerian election history and have also read some remarkable judgments by famous jurists. Additionally, as a publisher of twenty years standing, with an indexed, peer-reviewed academic law journal (African Journal ...

The week was ushered in with a gross and temperamental preview by retired supreme court Justice Mary Odili wherein she took direct aim at a party (and its surrogates) to the dispute before the Presidential Elections Petitions Court, PEPC. Her speech at a ceremony in honour of a lawyer, Mr J.K Gadzama was a study in the chauvinistic triumphalist celebration of a judicial victory in view and was remarkably badly written and poorly delivered. At the fairly partisan   gathering , she assumed the posture of an aggressive agenda setting partisan privy to the judgement that would be delivered in the course of the week. There appears to be the ulterior motive of preempting the judgement of the PEPC and harangue the potential loser to take it or shove it.  The missive was deliberately provocative and commensurately elicited a severe backlash. She courted a renewed critical attention on her pedigree including, especially, the watershed judgement given in favour of her husband, Dr Peter ...