By Tordue Salem

ABUJA—A Port Harcourt-based legal luminary, Sebastine Hon, SAN, has described as illegal the Independent National Electoral Commission’s, INEC, decision to conduct governorship elections in Sokoto, Ekiti, Bayelsa, Kogi, Cross River and Adamawa states.

INEC had a few weeks ago announced that it would conduct elections in more than six states, which governors took fresh oaths of office after guber re-runs.

But Hon said in a statement that the declaration was wrong and could only succeed in unnecessarily heating up the polity.

“The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, recently announced that it shall, in the 2011 general elections, be conducting election into offices of governors whose tenures were truncated and who by fresh elections had been ushered in for fresh terms of office.

“This declaration, amounts to unnecessarily stirring the hornet’s nest of the political firmament of Nigeria . It is completely ill-advised, unconstitutional and unlawful, for the following reasons:

“The elections of those governors were declared null and void by the various Divisions of the Court of Appeal and fresh elections ordered.

“The law is that once an action is null and void, it is deemed not to have existed. See A.S.C.O.N. vs. Akinbami (2008) All FWLR (Pt. 401) 937 and Ayisa vs. Akanji (1997) 7 NWLR (Pt. 406) 129. More specifically, the Supreme Court, in the recent case of Labour Party vs. INEC (2009) All FWLR (Pt. 478) 233 at 248, held quite emphatically thus:

“In summary, as rightly submitted by the respondent, once an election is declared null and void, the law regards whatever was purportedly done in the name or guise of an election, as not having taken place at all. In the eyes of the law, the election is void ab initio, and a fresh election is conducted as if the earlier one did not take place at all.”