NIGERIAN President, Muhammadu Buhari said that the law has changed since his defeats in the 2003, 2007 and 2011 presidential elections, noting that it takes less time for petitions to be treated than it was before.
“In the case of Atiku and Buhari, the whole process took barely six months, just over six months, what was the difference, the law had changed since my ordeal in 2003, 2007 and 2011,” Buhari said.
The President stated this on Wednesday at the 60th Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Annual Conference where he was virtually represented by Vice President, Yemi Osibanjo.
Lamenting the slow pace of court trials, Buhari narrated his ordeals when he challenged the results of the 2003, 2007 and 2011 presidential elections.
“In the case of CPC and INEC, I spent another eight months in court, in the end, I lost all three cases, I wondered then why it needed to take so long to arrive at the verdict and If I had won the case and someone who did not legitimately win the election would have been in the office all that time,” he said
“In 2019, my status improved, I was no longer petitioning, I had now become the respondent. You had now introduced time limits for election petitions which must be done between a six to eight-month period.”
He called for the same process of not more than 12 months in criminal and civil cases in the country.
“My question then is why can’t we have a time limit for all cases. Why can’t we put up a rule that would say a criminal trial all the way to the Supreme court should not exceed that 12 months in duration and why can’t we do the same for civil cases even if we say that civil cases must not go beyond 12 and 15 months,” Buhari said.
“I think that for me would be stepping-forward. The question of speed raises a related of speed.”
The Nigerian President also lamented what he called the ‘multiple and sometimes conflicting orders of the court’.
“Recently my party APC had an internal crisis, in the six week period before I chaired a sitting, there were at least eight different conflicting rulings of the court, the most incredible one was one court saying that we should not hold the meeting and on the eve of the meeting, a state high court somewhere ordered us to hold the meeting.
“The multiple and conflicting rulings from the court usually and sometimes expertly makes a mockery of the judicial process,” Buhari noted.
Lukman Abolade is an Investigative reporter with The ICIR. Reach out to him via [email protected], on twitter @AboladeLAA and FB @Correction94