HALF SCALE JUDGMENT!
October 27, 2007 by 
Che Oyimnatumba · Leave a Comment
The air wave is saturated with the news of the removal of Governor Celestine Omehia of
Rivers State. Yours truly is also glad but beyond the first flash of emotional ecstasy, one is forced to read deep and evaluate.
The second leg of the judgment is one I have found hard to swallow. What are the bases under which the Supreme Court imposed Ex Speaker Rotimi Amechi as governor of
Rivers State?
Rotimi Amechi, did not contest the April general election. All he did was contest the PDP primaries, which the Supreme Court was right to declare him the rightful PDP candidate for the election.
As a result of the infighting in PDP, they fielded another candidate who did contest and “won” in the person of Celestine Omehia.
The questions arising from the imposition of Rotimi Amechi are these; is PDP primaries synonymous to general election? Can the Supreme Court declare a candidate who did not contest an election the winner? What are the fates of the petitioners against the election of Celestine Omehia?
The Supreme Court has given January 2008 as date to give reason(s) for their judgment but before then, these issues have to be examined.
Rotimi Amechi, did not contest the gubernatorial election in
Rivers State and it is a trite position of the electoral Act that a candidate must be sponsored by a political party. The voting /electioneering process in
Nigeria is based on individual/party affiliation. No individual goes to the polls without the backing of a party, same applies to a party. So what is the base of Supreme Court to award PDP’s victory to Rotimi Amechi?
Some electorates wouldn’t have voted PDP had Rotimi Amechi been the flag bearer at the April polls. This would have swelled the votes of other political parties in the election and may have tilted the scale of victory in favour of AC, ANPP, Labour and other social clubs, masquerading as political parties that contested the election.
This is the case in
Imo State, a PDP incumbent State that lost to an unknown PPA. The Imo PDP, encouraged their party members to vote against PDP instead of allowing Senator Ifeanyi Ararume, a Supreme Court imposed candidate on PDP to win. With hindsight on Nigerian political godfatherism, one can say that Amechi/PDP would have lost the April guber elections and Rivers PDP would have formed a new alliance with any party who sure would have won.
This Supreme Court judgment has robbed other candidates their rights and Supreme Court being next to God, to who do these aggrieved candidates appeal to? Or hasRotimi Amechi gone to heaven through the back door.
One would have thought that the example set in
Kebbi State, would have been give a seal of approval by the Supreme Court. Though I disagree with the
Kebbi State ruling. If a student gets first position in class by reason of fraud, cheating or undue influence, the natural thing to do, is to strip the cheat of the victory and elevate the 2nd position to 1st. The Olympic Games did this in the case of Ben Jonson and added to the gold medals of Carl Lewis.
The aggrieved candidates should commence a fresh suit against Rotimi Amechi at the tribunal and contest that he didn’t contest election and therefore should be removed as governor and the candidate that came second, be announced winner. The law is an ass and any smart Balaam can ride and the law can allow injustice so long as the just refuses to challenge it. Or as lawyers will say, the court is not a Father Christmas, she can offer you only what you ask.
I hope the Tribunal chairman will not hide under the 30 days rule within which to file a petition and fore close the other parties from bringing a fresh petition against Rotimi Amaechi.
Or is the Supreme Court telling Nigerians that once you win PDP primaries, INEC conducted election is merely to fulfill all righteousness and justify the foreign donors’ dollars toward a “peaceful” transition of government in
Africa. Or is this ruling a feather punch at PDP. None of the rulings have given outright victory to the opponents of PDP at the election. Sure these rulings are beginning to sound like Perambulation. The number of PDP governors has not been depleted.
Nigerians are quick to celebrate the judiciary once the judgment is in their favour, forgetting that Justice must be seen to have been done and there are other parties affected by a judgment, who may not see the justice in this judgment.
Che
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HELL IN RIVERS STATE
October 25, 2007 by Che Oyimnatumba · Leave a Comment
The Nigerian Judiciary, couple of hours ago nailed the already rattled PDP coffin. In an interesting ruling, the apex court, ruled that Governor Celestine Omehia, should vacate the Rivers State Government House and Ex Speaker Amechi should be sworn in as Governor!!!!!!
This interesting development has awaken hope in the judiciary and one is optimistic that the big iroko (Mr President), may also beat the dust. The flooring of Mr.President, wont be as easy as his in-law (Kebbi State Governor).The infighting in ANPP, has added a wage to the effective roll of the wheel of justice. We happily look forward to the technicalities underwhich the court will throw Buhari”s petition out.
As the Hell rages in Rivers State, one can prophetically predict that Edo State will join the fray of disgraced PDP ex governors.
I wish the new governor well.He has shown by his fight that though it may take long, the scale of justice is always tilted in favour of the just, who have articulated their position and tabled them before the high priest in the temple of Justice.
Che
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Samuel Peter retains WBC title
October 7, 2007 by OCI · Leave a Comment
Congratulations to fellow country man Ete, Samuel Peter who successfully defended his interim WBC heavyweight champion title. By this triumph Ete Peter is confirmed the substantive holder of the WBC title.
Although a difficult fight, Ete Peter emerged victorious; having been knocked down thrice in two rounds by MCcline his opponent.
NEW YORK — Opportunity knocked at Madison Square Garden for Jameel McCline last night. He declined to answer.
Despite dropping WBC interim heavyweight champion Samuel Peter once at the end of the second round and twice in a third round in which Peter tumbled around the ring like he was wearing roller skates, McCline found a way to lose a unanimous decision and his fourth shot at the heavyweight title by an almost impossibly wide margin.
Judge Billy Costello scored the fight 115-110. Judge Steve Weisfeld had it 115-111 and judge Julie Lederman scored the bout 113-112. No one, including McCline, disputed the scores. ESPN’s card had Peter winning as well, 115-111, with Peter sweeping the last nine rounds after twice pulling himself off the canvas in Round 3.
“I let him get away,” McCline said sadly after the decision was announced. “I could have finished him. I should have finished him but I didn’t.
“I thought I had it but he got away. That’s why he’s still the champion.”
That was one reason. The other was McCline’s odd refusal to move his hands after Peter rose with 1:47 to go in Round 3 after a right hand to the chin sent him toppling forward onto his hands and knees.
Peter was wobbling when he got up and McCline patiently measured him before sending him to the floor a second time behind three straight left jabs with right hands right behind them. That final combination jolted the champion and sent him flat on the seat of his powder blue trunks with 57 seconds still to go in what was probably the biggest round of Jameel McCline’s career.
But Peter (29-1, 22 KO) pulled himself back up again and despite still moving as if walking across a sheet of ice on a frozen sidewalk, McCline oddly began to retreat. Perhaps he was punched out.
Perhaps he thought he was being patient. Perhaps he had too often studied Peter’s similarly odd performance in losing to Wladimir Klitschko, when he dropped Klitschko three times and failed to win another minute of the fight, losing the decision and an elimination bout that would have made him the mandatory challenger for the WBO title, and ended up duplicating it.
Whatever McCline was doing, as things developed he was accomplishing one thing. He was blowing the biggest chance of his career.
“When I was knocked down I knew I had to stand up and defend my belt,” said Peter. “I’m a champion.”
The fact that he still is was as much courtesy of McCline’s odd refusal to throw his hands with anything resembling bad intentions for the rest of the fight as anything that Peter managed to do.
The more laconic that McCline became, the more the lumbering Peter grew bolder, using his jab and a harsh body attack that often strayed below boxing’s demilitarized zone and only a few of the sizzling right hands that had knocked out so many of his earlier opponents to control the rest of the fight.
As had happened to him so often in the past, the 6-foot-6, 266-pound McCline clearly began to tire under Peter’s relentless, though often ponderous, attack. His mouth began to hang agape and more and more often he would clinch and then stare over Peter’s shoulder into the eyes of his chief second, Poppa Ray Drayton, as if he was a man looking for some sort of suggestion about what to do next.
Whatever Drayton told him before they left the locker room was clearly right on target, starting at the very end of round 2 when McCline knocked Peter off-balance with his shoulder and then dropped him on his pants with a sweet, compact right hand to the chin.
Drayton had no answers after those knockdowns however, and certainly neither did McCline. Each round he threw his jab and the straight right hand behind it that had been so instrumental in his early success less often. That allowed Peter not only to clear his head and begin to take control of the real estate but also to no longer run the risk of again being strafed by those rights that had hurt him early. The few times McCline did land the right hand after that, it seemed to wobble Peter but no longer with the same kind of concussive intensity of those early moments.
After the decision was announced Peter claimed he had broken his left hand during training camp but hid the fact to the commission because he did not want to follow in the footsteps of the man he was originally supposed to be facing, WBC champion Oleg Maskaev.
Maskaev had pulled out of the fight because of herniated discs in his back.Though Peter’s promoter, Dino Duva, said he had not yet seen any medical reports confirming that injury they had agreed to accept the interim title and push on to keep the card (and Peter’s payday) intact.
After three rounds it didn’t appear that that was the wisest choice but then Jameel McCline mysteriously stopped fighting. When Sam Peter refused to follow suit, the fight, and McCline’s fate were sealed.
“You learn every day in life,” promoter Don King said. “Like a toddler, he learned one thing tonight. He learned to get up.”
Late in the final round McCline’s wife appeared to be a woman who had learned a lesson as well. She learned that her husband was in trouble.
“Please, Jameel!” she screamed at ringside as her husband repeatedly declined to move his hands in anger. As with most of what went on after Round 3, Jameel McCline did not reply.
SOURCE:ESPN
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James Ibori Escapes
October 2, 2007 by OCI · Leave a Comment
It may yet be uhuru for the Ex-Governor of Delta State, Mr James Ibori in his current case with the Metropolitan police in London that obtain a ruling sometime ago to freeze Ibori’s assests in the UK and elsewhere.
Most Nigerian newspapers (Guardian, The Sun, Thisday, Punch) have been awash with different shouting headlines about the victory in far-away London of the said Ibori’s victory. The way and manner the headlines were written speaks less of media organs that are in support of on-going war against corruption in Nigeria. This posture may not be suprising since it is clear they are reading the lips of Mr President that have continued to pay lip-service to the war which Obasanjo prosecuted with vigor despite the alleged ‘witch hunts’. It is high time Mr President and his jobbers tell us their mind rather than hidding under the over-flogged dictum ‘rule of law’ that pervades all discissions when serious issue as crime is being mentioned in the polity in recent times.
Another, disheartening dimension to the Ibori saga is the reaction of the government and people of Delta State to the confistication/freezing episode. Actually, it is the people of Delta State that have been latently pauparised in the past eight (8) years that should be screaming ‘blue murder’ for the ‘theifery’ of their collective resources ; rather they are being mandated by the stooges in Asaba to attend a thanksgiving service. How guillible we have become.
We emplore the EFCC and the ICPC not to give up the fight yet, all these are expected and should not discourage you from prosecuting this all important fight against graft at the highest level. Mr President on his part should be a lot more proactive in the fight against corruption rather than his veiled reference to the ‘rule of law’ always when serious corruption related issue are raised.
Mr President, we are looking forward to reading your lips better, so that we can be bold enough to tighten to noose around the Iboris and his co-travellers to avoid this sort of escape now and in the future.
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