“Do your thing, Play your Game, Chop your Moni, Smile to the Bank But don’t feed us with Absurd Decisions – Lawyer, Steve Sun writes Open Letter to Supreme Court Justices

by Admin · July 29, 2023

Ebonyi State based lawyer and activist, Steve Nwankwo, popularly known as Steve Sun has written an Open Letter to Supreme Court Justices begging them to not to deliver absurd decisions.

In an Open Letter published on his Facebook page, the Senior Lawyer lamented the confusing decisions emanating from the apex court regarding the computation of time in law.

Steve Sun told the Supreme Court Justices to play their game, Chop their moni and smile to the bank as they wish but the should not deliver absurd judgements as he knows that there are many reasons why a judgement may go one way or the other.

READ THE OPEN LETTER:

OPEN LETTER TO THE SUPREME COURT!

Dear, Supreme Court of Nigeria..

I’m not a naive person, and i’m not the complaining type. And i don’t fight clean when my opponent is fighting dirty.. If my opponent wins me while fighting dirty, i can never complain! It simply means i was stupíd to be fighting clean while he fought dirty.

I understand that there are a thousand and one reasons why judgment of a court can go either way. I understand this perfectly well and i’ve written about it in the past

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2431779560428036&id=100007880470308&mibextid=2JQ9oc

I equally understand that you guys are human beings like us, and you are Nigerians and you have interests to protect.

I understand all that; i’m not naive.

I know you look at the politicians and think to yourselves “how can a politician with little or no educational qualification be packing billions of naira while i’m here, doing backbreaking mental work, interpreting stupíd laws, and being paid peanuts”!

I understand all that; i’m not naive.

I agree that you have the right to earn much more than the politicians.

You have the right to live big and get a large chunk of the national cake/pie!

I understand all that; i’m not naive.

All i’m saying is that you guys can still play whatever games you want to play without feeding us with absurd decisions.

Take Section 15(2) of the Interpretation Act for instance. It states that whenever you’re computing time, you have to exclude the day of an event.

For instance, if i have 6 days to file an Election Petition from the date results were declared..

If the results were declared today being 29th July 2023, what the Interpretation Act is simply saying is that you have to exclude today in your computation of 6 days. In other words, i have to file my Petition not later than Friday, 4th August 2023.

Telling you to exclude the day of an event is just another way of simply telling you that a day is made up of 24hrs; and 2 days are made up of 48hrs and 3 days are made up of 72hrs, and so on and so forth..

But you guys have on your own, without any statutory backing, decided in numerous cases that the day of an event is included in computation of time in electoral matters and that the Interpretation Act is not applicable to electoral matters, whereas the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has clearly stated in Section 318(4) that the Interpretation Act SHALL APPLY to all provisions of the Constitution and by necessary implication, to all items in the Exclusive Legislative List.

The resultant effect of this ona absurd decision, is that a day is now made up of zero hours and two days are now made up of 24hrs instead of 48hrs.

How does that make any sense to you guys for crying out loud?!

And this is just one out of many instances where you guys have come up with absurd decisions in recent years, ever since the likes of Niki Tobi & co, bowed out of the scene!

Biko merenụ mmadụ ébérè! Have mercy on us!