SAN Dismisses Fresh Suit Against Jonathan’s 2027 Bid, Calls It ‘Abuse of Court Process’
a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Oba Maduabuchi, has faulted the fresh suit filed at the Federal High Court in Abuja, challenging the eligibility of former President Goodluck Jonathan to contest the 2027 presidential election, describing it as “a clear abuse of court process.”
Maduabuchi, who spoke on Arise Television’s Morning Show on Tuesday, told PulseNets that the issue of Jonathan’s qualification had already been determined by a competent court in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State — a judgment which, according to him, has neither been appealed nor vacated.
He stressed that “until that subsisting judgment is overturned by a superior court, it remains the valid legal position,” adding that “any attempt to reopen the matter amounts to relitigation and abuse of judicial process.”
The senior lawyer explained that Section 137(3) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), which restricts a person who has previously completed another’s presidential tenure to only one more term, did not exist when Jonathan first took the oath of office in 2010 after the death of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
According to Maduabuchi, law and logic both demand certainty and fairness, insisting that it would be absurd to apply a law retroactively to disqualify Jonathan when the provision was nonexistent at the time.
He told PulseNets:
“In 2010 and 2011, when Dr. Goodluck Jonathan took the oath of office, Section 137(3) was not in existence. It was not binding on him. The Constitution cannot operate backward. Law must be predictable, not experimental.”
Drawing an analogy, he recalled how the retirement age of judges was once 65 before being amended to 70, asking rhetorically whether “a judge who retired at 65 before that amendment could now go to court and demand reinstatement under the new law.”
He further stated:
“No amount of legal pyrotechnics can breathe life into a law that didn’t exist at the material time. The 2018 amendment cannot retroactively restrict a right that was constitutionally guaranteed.”
Maduabuchi maintained that under the constitutional framework as it stood during Jonathan’s presidency, there was no legal impediment preventing him from running for two full terms.
He told PulseNets that:
“That suit in the Federal High Court, Abuja, is simply an abuse of court process. The Yenagoa High Court already ruled on Jonathan’s qualification, and no appeal has been filed. Until that ruling is set aside, it remains the law. Anyone filing another case elsewhere is merely being mischievous.”
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The Senior Advocate concluded that the law applicable to any action remains the one in force at the time the act occurred — not one introduced years later through constitutional amendment.
