WHAT I KNOW ABOUT BOLAJI ALUKO’S HATEFUL BUT FUTILE PURSUIT OF MAURICE IWU

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT BOLAJI ALUKO’S HATEFUL BUT FUTILE PURSUIT OF MAURICE IWU

By: Dr. Tamuno Jonathan, USA

Having followed Professor Bolaji Aluko’s sustained rain of invectives on the person of Professor Maurice Iwu and government of Nigeria, I felt compelled to share with my fellow Nigerians what I observed when the duo of Iwu and Aluko encountered each other during the season of Iwu’s release of the official report of the 2007 elections in America. I was present at the event and I observed that Professor Iwu wanted the proceedings to be interactive and he was determined to give everyone the opportunity to speak or ask questions including even those that appeared to have been planted by interests hostile to him and INEC, like Mobolaji Aluko. Immediately after the event was over, Bolaji Aluko went to press to purvey all sorts of inflammatory remarks and made a helluva of misrepresentations, all in an attempt to rubbish Iwu and Nigeria’s electoral process. He confirmed that he harbored festering animosities towards Iwu and President Yar’Adua by freely admitting to his initial support of Buhari’s presidential bid (and later, Atiku) in an essay published on his own politically sponsored weblog – www.nigerianmuse.com.

Here is what Aluko said (paraphrasing to Iwu’s remarks at the event releasing the Election Report) “He (Iwu) said that INEC had THE BEST FACILITIES in Africa to run any elections; that on the eve of the elections, everybody including Gowon and Buhari and the Council of State testified to his readiness. [That is true: I watched that TV drama; Buhari lost my support on that day for not seeing through that charade.]” To this Aluko guy, I ask you this: If you didn’t agree that INEC had the facilities to conduct the elections, does that not put you squarely within the mold of those who wanted the elections not to hold? And if you were supporting Buhari, and he lost your support merely because he confirmed along with many others that INEC had the requisite preparedness to conduct free and fair elections, did you then turn an Atiku-supporter as you seemed to have suggested when you stated in the same essay under reference that (again referring to what Iwu had said): “He (Iwu) stated that power-drunk people with deep pockets - aka Abubakar Atiku, without naming him - were prepared to drag the country down, and even infiltrated his INEC”. Here again is a desperate distortion of the true import of Iwu’s general remarks. Atiku is not the only Nigerian with deep pockets opposed to Iwu, Obasanjo or President Yar’Adua. That Professor Iwu never named Atiku yet Mr. Aluko is now imputing it to him is very revealing and clearly points to an evil agenda on the part of Aluko, apart from confirming that he might have set up his website just to attack Professor Iwu, INEC and the Nigerian government as anyone can see from the sleazy nature of the putrid news and articles he gives prominence on that site – all against Nigeria with Maurice Iwu as his poster boy.

Back at the Press Club, Mr. Aluko had attempted to filibuster the proceedings by employing fuzzy math to back up his bizarre postulations that the number of petitions issuing from the 2007 elections is greater than the number in 2003, and he attempted to get personal with Iwu, all at once (calling Iwu ‘professor’ with a evident derision and combativeness in his voice and general demeanor). He also seemed to suggest that the South East (Igbos) dominates the ranks of past Chairmen of INEC and he started reeling out names of all Igbos who had held that position, conveniently omitting others who are non-Igbo. At this point, a good number of Nigerian Diaspora present challenged Aluko and told him to shut up but Professor Iwu told them to leave him be – showing that Iwu had the guts to do his own battles. So, when finally Professor Iwu took Aluko up on the miss-compared statistics he cited as evidence of more petitions in 2007; he just nodded and resumed his seat, remaining quiet throughout. Aluko just saw that his numbers didn’t add up. And Nigerians present enjoyed this brief intellectual exchange between two professors with Maurice Iwu clearly coming out the winner. A no contest of sorts, if you will.

Now, having read the rest of what Aluko had to say on his website, I am persuaded that he also harbors some tribal animosity towards the Igbos, and Iwu just happens to be the center piece for attacks Aluko really meant to haul at an entire ethnic nationality; and he doesn’t care if Nigeria’s image abroad is caught in the crossfire. Here is what he said “All the people who asked questions - except maybe three of us - might as well all have been from Imo State, possibly even from Iwu's village, maybe all with the last name of Iwu but with pseudonyms”. Even a non-Igbo like my humble self would be put off by such naked ethnic-baiting and wild guesses. Pray, what does an Igbo expressing his opinion on a presidential election won by a Yar’Adua from the North (Katsina State) have to do with being Igbos from Imo State? Or, why does Aluko find something negative to say about everybody and organization that as much attempts to express a positive view about Nigeria? Just go to the web, and if you google Aluko’s write-ups, you will see his consistent diatribes against Nigeria and her public institutions. Why would Aluko say that he called on President Yar’Adua to fire Iwu, knowing fully well that he is also challenging the legitimacy of President Yar’Adua’s election?

Continuing - Aluko (and his ilk) seem to harbor some guilt about aiding and abetting the conspiracy to stop the election as he revealed in his essays. Here is what Aluko said (i.e. referring to Iwu’s remarks), “He (Iwu) stated that some people in Washington, colluding with some Nigerians in Washington - and looking slightly towards me - colluded against Nigeria”. So, here you have it folks. Now judge for yourselves why Iwu’s general allegations had to make Aluko uncomfortable, merely on some transient eye contact. Iwu did not ‘slightly’ look to anybody’s direction. He made eye contact with the crowd and waxed emotional and patriotic when he condemned such conspiracy against “my country” (which were the words Iwu used to refer to Nigeria – it was admirable, my eyes misted too). People sighed and nodded in agreement, and Aluko squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. I think it was James Hardly Chase that said that “the guilty are always afraid”.

As for the millions of Euros and EU’s request for biometrics data of Nigerians, which Iwu had rejected, everyone who spoke up both at the Press Club and the Embassy praised Iwu’s stance and agreed that he did the right thing. It will be an egregious breach of Nigeria’s national security to turn over the biometric data of over 60 million Nigerians to all manners of foreign governments in Europe. Even in the US (where Aluko resides permanently), citizens have fought the right of their government to a national biometric data collection based on fingerprinting, except on occasions where a citizen committed a felony or some foreigner applied for immigration benefits. Why would Aluko suggest that Nigerians and Iwu should have gone willy-nilly to turn over our biometrics to Europeans merely because we want their 40 million Euros (peanuts) and their stamp of approval on our election process? If Nigeria cannot go to our foreign reserves to get the money, then 1000 Nigerians can contribute 40 thousand Euros each to pay for our elections.

Finally, Iwu’s patriotism and pride as a Nigerian are clear and credible and it makes a lot of people like a Professor Bolaji Aluko uncomfortable. Some proof found when Aluko visibly became agitated and uncomfortable each time Iwu mentioned Nigeria in glowing terms, such as calling Nigeria “my country” with an emotional tinge to his voice. Ditto for when Iwu said “the God that I serve”. Go and read Aluko’s essay and see for yourself (too much to quote here). Everything he said on that essay raises uncanny questions about the true motives of his diatribes against Nigeria, INEC and Iwu. If you read his many internet essays, you are sure to also see a growing pattern of targeting people from a certain area of Nigeria. First, Aluko railed against Okonjo Iweala, and then Soludo of CBN, and now Iwu (all Igbos and competent to boot).

Dr. Tamuno Jonathan wrote in from Potomac, MD USA tamunojonathan@yahoo.com

MORE REASONS WHY THE TRIBUNAL RULING IN ABIA CANNOT STAND: Part Two

MORE REASONS WHY THE TRIBUNAL RULING IN ABIA CANNOT STAND: Part Two

By: Attorney Aloy Ejimakor

This is the second part of a learned treatise on the nullification of the election of Governor TA Orji of Abia State. Part one is already published and in it, I critiqued that part of the ruling holding Governor Orji to membership of a secret society. This second part will deal with the portion of the judgment that also resolved Ugochukwu’s assertions of non-resignation against Orji and Akomas. As was done in the previous piece, this one will be glanced off the pertinent provisions of the Nigerian Constitution and the Electoral Act and interspersed with some thorough analysis of the Nigerian (or common law) rules of evidence germane to all the material facts at issue.

Now to the main point of this treatise and the second basis for ruling against TA Orji – that he and Akomas did not resign their political appointments, which also were held by the tribunal to have met the definition of public or civil service within the provisions of the pertinent statutes. Leaving aside the unique nuances that can, at law, differentiate political appointments from public/civil service appointments for the moment, let us now turn to the legalities of adequate resignation. Resignation is a word of art for describing an employee’s voluntary termination of an ongoing employment by oral or written notice to the employer. At law and jurisprudence, resignation can be either actual or constructive. It is ‘actual’ (or written) and therefore a no-brainer when there is sufficient litter of paper trails or real evidence clearly bearing the act of resignation.

The paper trail begins with a letter or some other form of written correspondence from the person resigning addressed to and received by the authority standing in law as the proper destination for the correspondence; and barring any printer’s devil and allowances for lack of form or human error, a letter of resignation bears both the date of its writing and the effective date thereof. And the trail may continue with another correspondence (usually an acceptance letter) sent back to the person resigning informing him that his resignation has been accepted. In this case, proving that one resigned is as simple as tendering the originating correspondence and its acceptance. But keep in mind that extant Nigerian law does not require resignation to be accepted in order to be valid for purposes of proving qualification to run for office. In other words, resignation can still be valid even when it appeared to have been unilateral, as the letter submitted by Akomas seemed to have suggested. And no straightjacketing is required – meaning that there is no particular format required for resignation to pass legal muster, including the strict requirement of being dated or written to form as was held by the tribunal when it discredited Akomas’ letter for lack of form.

The act of resignation, like all other human transactions, can sometimes be in dispute, and when that happens, it is often because it was not actual (written) or that it was written but missing the critical elements showing when it was written and when it became effective. In such a case, the fact-finder must proceed to the use of parole (mostly oral) evidence to determine whether resignation can be said to be, in point of law and fact, constructive. And where a respondent rebuts with the defense that resignation was not required, the court must also examine whether employment has been terminated by some supervening event that rendered resignation superfluous. In other words, where actual resignation (or effective date thereof) is in material dispute and central to the final determination of important political rights between two disputants, a serious court must look to parole or other alternative evidence to disprove any assertion of the negative, especially where the popular will of super majorities of the voters of a State was also at stake.

But in all instances, the burden of proof and persuasion rests squarely and throughout with the party that brought the act of resignation into dispute – in this case, Chief Ugochukwu. And the burden even becomes greater because Chief Ugochukwu is not in any privity with Chief Orji and Akomas with respect to whether they resigned or not. Therefore, without the lax rules allowed by the Abia tribunal, Chief Ugochukwu could have been held not to have the standing and thus not credible to raise the issue in ordinary judicial proceedings before our superior courts. The legal and procedural rationale is simple and that is: if such wild bare assertions of the opposite are allowed a free reign in our courts of law, all of us will be in court everyday burdened to disproving claims as wild and prejudicial as being accused of grand larcenies, without the concomitant burden on the part of the accuser to prove the truth of the negative he is asserting.

The only parties in ordinary privity and thus possessing of clear standing to raise credible claims of non-resignation against Orji/Akomas are the Abia State government and the former Governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, at whose pleasure both TA Orji and Akomas served as political appointees. Take this further to INEC which screened Orji and Akomas and did not find cause to disqualify them on the basis of non-resignation. This point is being made because the tribunal seems to have applied the evidentiary doctrine of ‘rebuttable presumption’ against Chief Orji and Akomas (instead of against Chief Ugochukwu) as if the allegation of their non-resignation was a plain truth raised by those under whom they served (with personal knowledge of the issue) or the agency that screened them (INEC). Therefore, lacking in any personal knowledge and absent credible hostile evidence compelled from or volunteered by those possessing personal knowledge, Chief Ugochukwu must be assumed at law to be a busy-body on a fishing expedition and thus imputed with the burden of strict proof of his bare assertions before any burden of impeachment, contradiction or rebuttal could be said to shift to Orji and Akomas. This, the tribunal did not do.

According to the record, the tribunal discredited Orji/Akomas’ real evidence of their resignation on a finding of absence of some official stamp or other mark showing when the correspondence was made or received by the authorities (implying uncertainty of effective date or lack of form). Though, it never would have become necessary to hold Orji/Akomas to disproving what Ugochukwu has not yet proved, the tribunal can be said to have amazingly assumed the worst against Orji/Akomas or abandoned the path of good law (or reasoned analysis) and looked to only one aspect of legal proof of resignation. Simply put, the tribunal held Orji and Akomas to the strict and narrow absolutism of perfected paper trails as the only form of proving resignation (or disproving claims of non-resignation). This is unknown to modern notions of our common law and jurisprudence which have long recognized as a settled rule that resignation can also be constructive when it can be proved by evidence other than the sort represented by some paper trails. Such other evidence is what is generally called parole (read: oral or admissible alternative) evidence, which is even used in resolving disputes implicating real property law – the only part of our common law that can be said to still strictly require everything to be in writing. In the case of Orji and Akomas, such parole evidence is legion and they are admissible to boot. For purposes of clarity, let me list some of them below and in seriatim.

More than thirty days to the election, there was no pay stubs or other credible financial records presented by Ugochukwu to corroborate his bare assertions that both Orji and Akomas continued to receive salaries as employees of Abia State government; Orji and Akomas had both held out to the whole world as no longer in the employ of Abia State government; they had stopped acting in their former capacities as employees of Abia State government; new people had been appointed to the positions they formerly held in Abia State government; Abia State government and the whole world at large had ceased seeing them or referring to them as occupying the offices at issue; there was no evidence-in-chief led by Ugochukwu showing that Orji or Akomas signed any letters or correspondence in which they passed off as officials of Abia State government, carried out any official functions in their former official capacities, received any financial emoluments entitling to those occupying the offices from which they resigned, or otherwise engaged in any other act that can be said to have reasonably established that they still continued to occupy positions as officials of Abia State government within the statutory time-line.

Keep in mind that, at law, both Orji and Akomas bore no burden of proving any of the foregoing or even disproving the opposite until Ugochukwu has amassed quantum material evidence weighty enough to discharge the many evidentiary presumptions against him. That any of them – Orji and Akomas went the extra mile to tender a letter of resignation represents a mere attempt at corroboration because, other than that letter, there is plenty of other competent evidence in plain view that preponderated in favor of the presumption that they were no longer public or civil servants long before the time-line mandated by law.

And above all, there was no scintilla of hostile evidence compelled or subpoenaed from Abia State government tending to show that Orji and Akomas continued in some form to be employees of the government. The uncorroborated parole evidence led by Ugochukwu demonstrating that Orji and Akomas were seen in official vehicles and continued to retain their official residences may, at first impression, appear material and damning but becomes rebutted, on a balance of probabilities, by the greater weight of the opposite parole evidence enunciated in the preceding paragraphs. This last point frames the further issue that the tribunal clearly erred by allowing Ugochukwu a free reign on leading liberal parole evidence but seemed to have held Orji and Akomas to the strict parameters of producing actual proof (or perfected letters) of resignation.

And for good measure, the tribunal should have taken administrative (or judicial, if you prefer) notice that both Chief Orji and Akomas ‘openly and notoriously’ ceased to hold public office due to their disengagement by the former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu as far back as October 2006. This partly supports the pre-eminent issue framed by Orji’s lawyers that the governor and Akomas never really needed to resign. And the secondary point in favor, though most probably of first impression and thus bound to be contentious, is that the appointments they held are not hit by the legal definition of the sort that strictly requires resignation before seeking election into public office. In other words, they held political offices in the mold of all other public officers from Vice President Atiku, National Assembly members, governors and some political appointees who contested for elections while holding fast to their public (read: political) appointments.

Thus, in addition to further arguments and authorities that can be better developed and presented as an appellate brief, coupled with the points enunciated in the first part of this treatise, it is expected that upon balanced review of the record, the learned Court of Appeals will move to admit the appeal as meritorious and reverse the judgment in its entirety.

Aloy Ejimakor is of Law Group International, Washington DC alloylaw@yahoo.com

MORE REASONS WHY THE TRIBUNAL RULING IN ABIA CANNOT STAND: Part One

MORE REASONS WHY THE TRIBUNAL RULING IN ABIA CANNOT STAND: Part One

By: ALOY EJIMAKOR

This is a learned treatise that will come in two parts. This is part one and it will deal with the ruling resolving the claim of membership of a secret society against Governor Orji. The second part will deal with the portion of the judgment that also resolved Ugochukwu’s assertions of non-resignation against Orji and Akomas. Both parts will be glanced off the pertinent provisions of the Nigerian Constitution and the Electoral Act and then interspersed with some thorough analysis of the Nigerian (or common law) rules of evidence germane to all the material facts at issue.

The law of evidence is the basic kernel that underpins the administration of the civil and criminal laws of any common law country when it comes to fair and balanced resolution of disputes presented before the courts. Nigerian superior courts operate within the parameters of settled common law rules of evidence received from the British as a consequence of colonialism, and then adopted and saved by local legislation and judicial precedents as part of the laws of Nigeria after independence. Nuances may be present but they are wont to be tangential and infinitesimal. The only marked departure from the common law precepts can be found only in our Customary and Sharia court systems where strict adherence to the common law (or federal) rules of evidence is not mandated as the norm.

On the other hand, our High Courts of original jurisdiction, including the Election Tribunals are bound to some strict application of the federal (common law) rules of evidence, which for the most part, have been codified in the Evidence Act. It cannot be otherwise without being repugnant to the system we currently operate. It follows therefore that whenever the record on appeal demonstrates a clear violation of the evidence rules, a court of appeal is expected to easily find error or abuse of discretion and reverse or remand. This is why some outrage is now trailing the recent ruling of Abia Governorship Election Tribunal nullifying the election of TA Orji and declaring Ugochukwu the duly elected governor. For a tribunal charged under law to interpret our electoral statute and the constitution (and weigh the scales of hard evidence), voiding an election based on the reasons it adduced is troubling because there is hardly anything in our current substantive and adjectival laws that can justify the ruling, even by some stretch. Add the tribunal’s clear and quantum breach of our settled rules of evidence and you have a judgment most likely to be struck down on appellate review. Reversal becomes ever so likely and may even turn summary when you consider the flurry of critical treatise and outrage issuing from Nigerian and foreign jurists of world acclaim.

Thus, as regards the evidence-in-chief (the video) introduced and admitted to prove Orji’s membership in a secret society, our law of evidence was variously violated both in its spirit and black letters because it strictly requires that no photographic or video evidence is admissible without proper foundation or authentication, unless in some rare cases where such evidence is at once both self-authenticating and non-hearsay – meaning that such evidence is generally viewed as hearsay unless robust evidence is led by the proponent showing why it should be recognized as one of the few exceptions to the hearsay rule. In other words, what is depicted in the video or photograph must make both legal and common sense. Therefore, considering the possible abuse of the scientific techniques of superimposition and the high motive for subornation of perjury in cases bordering on high contests for public office; and that it does not make sense for anyone to shoot his own video in near nudity before a shrine or consent to its making thereof, that video of someone purported to be Governor Orji in diapers and manacles can hardly be said to be self-authenticating because it just doesn’t make any sense that any person (or his agents) would willingly consent to being videoed in such a demeaning manner. The claim by another person (the shrine secretary) that a Dr. Duru shot the video was inadmissible hearsay because the Dr. Duru was never produced in court to either admit or deny the statement. In that case, the tribunal should have assumed that the identity of maker of the video remained unknown and un-established, and then allow the rest of the evidentiary process to proceed on that premise.

So, who really shot the video, when it was shot and for what purpose were central to determining credibility and admissibility but the tribunal failed to fully pursue that inquiry before ruling to admit the video. Thus, as introduced through sources that can be imputed with the high proclivity for tampering, embellishment, mischief and ill motive, the tribunal should have elicited hard foundational and confrontational testimony, not by shifting the burden of disprove or contradiction to TA Orji as the tribunal implied by its ruling but by applying the presumption of hearsay against Chief Ugochukwu. To be sure, proper foundation strictly requires the purveyor of such highly prejudicial evidence to prove the identity of who made the video, when it was made, whether the video is a copy or original, the purpose for which the video was made, in-court production and technical inspection of the recording device used in producing the video; and most importantly, that the video depicted TA Orji being initiated into secret cult membership that took effect before the election, and not after. The testimony from the witness claiming to be the secretary of Okija shrine constitutes mere corroborative testimony – meaning that until the video is properly admitted as competent evidence, any testimony proffered as corroborative must fail simply because corroboration can never carry a greater weight than the piece of evidence it is seeking to corroborate. Simply put, it is unknown to law to say that you can corroborate hearsay.

The point about the date of production of the video is ever so important and dispositive because it is implied in the Nigerian constitution that before one is damned by his membership of a secret cult or society, there must be hard proof that his membership occurred and was subsisting before he ran and won the very election at issue. Our laws do not yet have statutory bar to running for public office based on an ex post facto membership of a secret cult or relating back to void an election won by someone who became a member of a secret cult after winning the election at issue. Therefore, absent a date-stamp or other admissible proof of when the membership became effective (other than the oral testimony of the said shrine ‘secretary’), it could as well be assumed at law and evidence that if the video is in truth that TA Orji being initiated into the membership of Okija ‘secret’ cult, it then follows that his membership, most assumedly occurring after he won the election, cannot stand in law to meet the implicit constitutional requirement that such membership must have been perfected and he also remained in good standing before he ran and won the election. In such a case, the evidence embodied in the video can only be held as a possible statutory bar to Chief Orji’s probable re-election bid in 2011, and not before; or better still, as grounds for preferring articles of impeachment against him at the pleasure of the House of Assembly. Again, it constitutes error for the tribunal to rely on the solitary, uncorroborated testimony of the ‘secretary’ of Okija shrine in resolving a claim that bore all the infirmities of a terrible hearsay. If it is that easy, then it might as well become a field day for politicians in Nigeria to just go somewhere and suborn testimony from some fringe fellow parading himself as ‘secretary’ of some shrine and use that to overturn the election of a rival and even one who won with super majorities like Governor Orji.

In my opinion and that of my American colleagues familiar with Nigerian rules of evidence and the rampant use of modern techniques of technology to create ‘believable’ hoaxes, that video reeked of multiple layers of hearsay (think: the widely discredited videos of UFO and the Abominable Snowman shot in the plains of Alaska and Wyoming). At common law, in operation in Nigeria, Britain and the United States, hearsay evidence is roughly defined as a prior statement or any proposition being presented in court as evidence by a person other than the ‘utterer’ or maker for the purpose of proving the truth of the matter asserted in the statement or proposition. In lay terms, hearsay arises when someone else seeks to repeat what another person said without the person that made the statement being in court to deny, admit or be cross-examined on the statement.

Therefore, as a matter of evidence law, a video is a statement of fact or a proposition that seeks to prove a material fact at issue. So, the person seeking to introduce the video (the shrine ‘secretary’) cannot be different from the person claimed to have made it (Dr. Duru) unless the maker was in court to be confronted and cross-examined to determine veracity, credibility and chain of custody; except in the rare event that the maker is dead. There is nothing in the record of proceedings leading up to the admission of the video that can suggest that the tribunal subjected the video to even the most liberal (or even lay) tests of hearsay before ruling to admit it into the record and then finally using it the way it did to set aside the overwhelming popular will of the people of Abia State. Again, was it Chief Ugochukwu that adorned some night-vision camera and somehow trailed Governor Orji against the odds of the scary everglades of Okija shrine to make the video or hired some resourceful paparazzi to do so? We don’t know. This is but one of the myriad questions that a fact-finder must resolve before ruling to admit such a video.

However, in all fairness to Chief Ugochukwu (considering that the video constitutes his evidence-in-chief), if the tribunal determined the origins of the video in his favor and that the locale depicted in the video is that of Okija shrine with TA Orji under the pain of some ritualistic initiation into the ranks of its membership, then it may no longer be hearsay and may thus become admissible to prove that TA Orji was present at the Okija shrine at some time before or after the election. But before Governor Orji can be said to be finally damned by his presence at the shrine, three further questions must be resolved, and they are: One – whether his presence at the shrine was for purposes other than initiation into its membership; Two- if infact his presence at the shrine was for the purpose of initiation into its membership, can the shrine be said to meet the constitutional definition of a secret society or cult; and Three – did Chief Orji become a member before he ran for governor? At this point, the tribunal should then analyze the nature and practices of the Okija shrine against the constitutional definition of what constitutes a secret society and proceed to making a clear finding in favor of one of the two opposite propositions.

If the tribunal finally determines that Okija shrine met the constitutional definition of a secret society or cult, then it must reach a clear finding grounded in hard evidence in the record that Chief Orji became a member before he ran and won the election, and not after he became governor. But as we have seen from the contents of its judgment, the tribunal did none of these. If it did, it would have elicited the later admission made by the shrine ‘secretary’ that the video was shot during TA Orji’s ‘initiation’ after he became governor, and not before. The full content of the interview is at Page 23 of Tell Magazine issue of April 14, 2008. So, given that the shrine ‘secretary’ was a hostile witness against TA Orji, this post-trial statement of his squarely constitutes admission of a party-opponent and thus admissible to impeach his claims of pre-election initiation, if not as solid proof that Orji’s membership most probably occurred after he became governor, which does not meet the basic element required by the constitution before the issue can be raised as a possible bar. I will be surprised if Orji’s lawyers failed to make contents of that Tell Magazine interview a vital part of their appellate brief.

Therefore, the video claimed to have placed Chief Orji at the specific locale of Okija Shrine is not admissible because, as presented, it clearly constitutes hearsay; and if it does not, then it is manifestly insufficient to prove a pre-election membership in a shrine which can hardly be said to meet the strict definition of a secret cult under the laws of the Federation of Nigeria. If Okija shrine is a secret cult (and not a mere pagan religious order) based on the lone testimony of its ‘secretary’ that it is, then any of the received mainstream religious organizations common to majority of Nigerians can be easily branded a secret society merely on the tenor of the uncorroborated testimony of anyone purporting to be its ‘secretary’ tendered before a tribunal that might have been challenged by some cultural misunderstanding or mischaracterization of the unique use of rituals, animal sacrifices, or other ethereal practices in the religious traditions of all persuasions.

Aloy Ejimakor is of Law Group International, Washington DC. alloylaw@yahoo.com