Dear Editor,
It is eminently requisite that the democratic contours of the aspirations of the 1980 Constitution (Art 8) and the language of the pertinent Art, ie 161(2), comprised of the concepts, precepts and its precise words must be given their purposive meaning. In so doing, its holistic interpretation is ineluctably given expression for the benefit of right thinking persons, whether they be intellectually gifted or possessed of the barest minimum of human reason/common sense.
Without any scintilla of doubt this Art recognises that there are two main dramatis personae, ie the Leader of the Opposition and the President, with mutually exclusive roles but interdependent, if not symbiotic, in consequence. Six persons comprising a list represent the supporting cast. These persons are selected by the Opposition Leader individually, and/or collectively, ie one of whom must be “not unacceptable” to the President, not all of them. It is not the list itself which must be found to be “not unacceptable”.
The draftsperson and the approving authority, ie Parliament, could hardly have intended or comprehended otherwise, having regard to its syntactic composition.
The notion of ‘other’ is, ex facie, exclusionary and therefore, ex necessitate, not inclusionary. It would not be unfair to conclude that where more than one category or genre is identified, upon the exhaustion of one, the other(s) is (are) entitled to consideration. However, within this category/genre the “other” persons ought to have attained a level of recognition which would parallel that of the earlier class of alternate(s) to render them “fit and proper” and therefore “not unacceptable” within the syntactic inevitability and context of the Art.
It is with this backdrop and sedulously constructive methodology that it is submitted that an appointment need not be central to/or dependent solely upon a judge-related qualification. Equally pivotal to the eligibility criteria is that the nominees/candidates as earlier explained ought to be found “not unacceptable” unless their acknowledged pre-eminence in their field of exposure is palpably asymmetrical with the composition of the constitutional terminology/framework employed by the draftsperson in the parliamentarily approved article, ie not only the members of the National Assembly but the incumbent executive President.
Yours faithfully,
Justice Charles R Ramson
