Private legal practitioner Martin Kpebu says there is no law that automatically stops a public officer from performing their duties simply because a case has been filed at the Supreme Court.
Reacting to discussions around the Supreme Court’s decision affecting the Electoral Commission on the Kpandai parliamentary rerun, Mr Kpebu explained that the law does not operate on automatic assumptions but on the specific nature of applications filed before the court.
“You cannot stop a public officer from performing their duties unless there is an express order,” he said, adding that merely filing an application does not in itself halt proceedings.
According to him, what was filed at the Supreme Court in this instance was an application for judicial review in the nature of certiorari, not an application for stay of execution.
“That distinction is important,” he stressed. “An application for certiorari, by itself, does not stop anything.”
Mr Kpebu explained that decisions by the Supreme Court are taken on a case-by-case basis, depending on the circumstances and the nature of the reliefs being sought.
He rejected claims that the EC acted wrongly by continuing its work, noting that past governments and public institutions have proceeded with major policies even while cases were pending before the apex court.
Citing the implementation of the E-Levy, he recalled that government went ahead with the policy despite ongoing Supreme Court proceedings, largely because of the urgency and promises attached to it.
“In law, the life of the law is not logic, it is experience,” he said, explaining that legal outcomes are shaped by context, judicial discretion and the specific facts of each case.
Mr Kpebu likened legal interpretation to the story of people touching different parts of an elephant and arriving at different conclusions, stressing that judges also have varying ideologies and perspectives.
He insisted that no lawyer can point to any provision in law that says once a case is filed at the Supreme Court, all related actions must automatically stop.
“If you want an automatic stop, you know what to file. And that was not what was filed here,” he added.
Mr Kpebu urged the public to avoid sensationalism around legal processes and called for more focus on substantive national issues rather than procedural noise.
