A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Oba Maduabuchi, has faulted the recent lawsuit filed at the Federal High Court in Abuja challenging former President Goodluck Jonathan’s eligibility to contest the 2027 presidential election, describing it as a blatant abuse of court process.
Speaking on Arise Television’s Morning Show on Tuesday, Maduabuchi stated that the matter of Jonathan’s qualification had long been decided by a competent court in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, and that the judgment remains valid since no appeal has been filed against it.
According to him, “That suit in the Federal High Court Abuja is an abuse of court process. Once an issue has been conclusively determined by a court of competent jurisdiction, bringing it up again before another court is an attempt to relitigate what has already been settled — and that’s simply a misuse of the judicial process.”
The senior lawyer clarified that the 2018 constitutional amendment — specifically Section 137(3) — which restricts a person who has previously completed another president’s tenure from seeking more than one full term, was not in effect when Jonathan assumed office in 2010 following the death of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
He stressed that the law could not be applied retroactively, noting that at the time Jonathan took the oath of office in 2010 and later contested in 2011, there were no legal barriers preventing him from running for two full terms.
Maduabuchi said, “What governs any act is the law as it stood at the time the act was done. When Dr. Goodluck Jonathan became President in 2010 and later contested in 2011, Section 137(3) did not exist. That provision only came into effect in 2018, long after Jonathan left office.”
He concluded that unless the existing Yenagoa judgment is overturned by a higher court, it remains the definitive legal position, warning that any attempt to reopen the issue amounts to “judicial busybodyism.”
