At the risk of sounding offensive, wisdom appears to have deserted our lawmakers when they made the Court of Appeal the court of first instance to deal with petitions that may arise from presidential and governorship polls. By the provisions of sections 133 and 134 of the 2010 electoral act, that judicial nightmare would be our lot, unless the lawmakers quickly retrace their steps. What they have asked for, by the provisions of those sections, is for the 70 justices of the Court of Appeal to preside over the deluge of election petitions that would likely arise after the next elections.

The lawmakers are aware that currently, a tribunal is made up of five judges, but even if it is reduced to three judges per tribunal, we would have 23 tribunals, to resolve the petitions over gubernatorial disputes from the 36 states of the federation, plus the disputes that may arise from the presidential election. With an average of, say, three petitions per state, we will have 108 petitions, plus may be another three from the presidential election for the 23 tribunals to resolve.

This approximation does not take the number of political parties into consideration. When the provisions of those sections are added to the requirement for cases to be decided within 180 days of the declaration of result, it becomes clearer why we questioned the wisdom of our lawmakers.  

This realistic assessment should compel the legislators to quickly amend those provisions of the Electoral Act and revert to the former provision where governorship and legislative election petitions are dealt with by election petition tribunals as courts of first instance. The Court of Appeal should remain appeal courts for those petitions, while only handling presidential election as trial court. To disregard the public outcry, particularly that of the new leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) over this matter, is an invitation to chaos. 

In addition to these reasons which are more than compelling, members of the National Assembly should remember that the appeal court has its other statutory responsibilities, to hear appeals from civil and criminal cases emanating from the high courts. It would be unconscionable to expect that the constitutional rights of other litigants would remain in abeyance until the political cases are dealt with. Even with the best of health, the judges of the appeal court are always hard put to deal expeditiously with their regular appeals, not to talk of when an extra burden of engaging in full trial of litigious politicians is added.      

There is also the attendant risk from the exposure of the apex court of the land to multiple election cases, and the inevitable accusations of corruption, undue influence, favouritism and similar ills that could only dent the integrity of the Supreme Court justices. As the ultimate bastion of our judicial ethos, the Supreme Court justices must be isolated from the dirty dealings of our desperate politicians. To think that the politicians would not attempt to influence them is a folly, just as it is to think that they would not boast and claim to have such influences, even when false.

So, let us have our old petition process, while all hands are put on deck to ensure a freer and fairer electoral process, so that election petitions are reduced. Let the National Judicial Council (NJC) , headed by the Chief Justice of the Federation use its constitutional prerogatives to deal with cases of corruption against the election tribunal and appeal court justices. To take over those responsibilities from the NJC is not the answer.