More than two years after he was impeached, the Supreme Court on 21st November ordered immediate reinstatement of the former Deputy Governor of Taraba State, Alhaji Sanni Abubakar Danladi. The court was unanimous in its judgment, that the impeachment panel of the Taraba House of Assembly set up to investigate allegations against Danladi violated his rights to fair hearing.
Danladi served the panel court papers challenging its composition, it ignored him. He raised the same issues at the Taraba State High Court and again at the Court of Appeal, both jettisoned his pleas to a hearing. Justice Sylvester Ngwuta, who delivered the lead judgment, said that both the Court of Appeal and the Taraba State High Court, which had dismissed Danaladi’s suit, ought to have listened to Danladi and resolved the issue of fair hearing in his favour.
Garba Umar replaced Danladi. He became the acting governor, following Governor Dambaba Suntai’s ill health that resulted from a plane crash in November 2012. Danladi’s return has altered political permutations in the State that were tilting towards Umar being elected governor in 2015. The immediate annulments of all political appointments Umar made since 14 November 2012 was the first shot. The Speaker of the State House of Assembly Josiah Sabo Kente, a strong Umar supporter resigned to avoid impeachment.
These developments, however, are not as important as the principles of fair hearing that the Supreme Court espoused in the judgment. Danladi did not even get a hearing. He complained about the composition of the panel, nobody listened to him. He obtained a court order, to press his rights. He was further ignored.
A determination to get him out of office had more premium than law and order, on which the institutions that hounded him – the Taraba State House of Assembly and the courts – were created. Both institutions chose to act on their own, what the Supreme Court referred to called “an academic exercise”.
The exercise had its consequences. After Suntai’s accident, an illegal Deputy Governor, a creation of the impeachment of Danladi, governed the State for two years, making decisions that were “illegal”, since his appointment as Deputy Governor was an act of illegality. The slow pace of justice, which had some speed in this instance, finally got Umar out.
Suntai may have become a later day ally of Danladi, but it is a fact that Danladi could not have been removed without Suntai’s approval. The ease of removing deputy governors persists, though constitutional provisions should make it tough.
We are celebrating the quiet victory in Taraba that again emphasized the right to fair hearing, often a mute point when the might set out their interests.
