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Governorship election may not hold in five states this April following a ruling by a federal high court in Abuja, yesterday, extending the tenure of the incumbent governors. Presiding judge, Adamu Bello, said any such election in Kogi, Sokoto, Adamawa, Cross River and Bayelsa states will have to wait till next year.

The ruling also set new dates for the termination of the tenures of the governors. Ibrahim Idris, Kogi, will stay on till April 5,2012; Aliyu Wammakko, Sokoto, remains till May 28,2012; Timipre Sylva, Bayelsa, leaves the next day on May 29, 2012; Liyel Imoke's tenure in Cross River terminates on August 28, 2012; and Murtala Nyako, Adamawa, gets his tenure elongated till April 30th, 2012.

The five governors had gone to court to challenge the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission to conduct governorship elections in their states this year. They said their tenure only began after they won the run off in their states and so should not be terminated in April 2011. They named INEC and the Peoples Democratic Party as first and second defendants respectively..

Electoral commission waits

When contacted last night, the electoral chairman's spokesperson, Kayode Idowu, said the commission will not be rushed into taking any decision until it has made further consultations on the judgment. "When we receive the judgment, we will have to sit down with our lawyers to study the decision. Taking a decision now will be too sudden." Mr. Idowu said.

The counsel to the five governors: Lateef Fagbemi, Kanu Agabi, Sunday Ameh, Ladi Rotimi Williams and Paul Erokoro had asked the court to stop INEC and the PDP from conducting elections in the five states, citing Section 180 (2) of the 1999 Constitution. They said the law that the four-year tenure of office for a governor begins from the day the person takes an oath of office and oath of allegiance is a sacrosanct provision and cannot be abridged or ignored.

In opposing the governors' request, the government urged the court to dismiss the case for lack of merit.

Mr Bello however held that since the 2007 elections were nullified and set aside by competent courts, the oath of office and allegiance subscribed to by the five governors have all been nullified and set aside along with the elections. He said, "the tenure of governors start counting from the day they took their oath of office and oath of allegiance." The judge further said that in line with section 180 of the 1999 Constitution, the tenure of the governors legally commenced in 2008 when they were sworn in after their first elections were annulled and rerun ordered.

According to Mr Bello, the 2007 elections used by INEC to determine the tenure of governors were legally declared null and void by competent courts of law.

Differing views

Adeniyi Akintola, who stood in for the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Bello Adoke, argued that no tenure elongation should be granted to any of the governors since the amended 1999 Constitution was opposed to such a move.

But the PDP, represented by its national legal adviser, Olusola Oke, said the tenure of any governor in Nigeria today legally begins from the date the governor takes the oath of office and oath of allegiance.

The party claimed that the 2007 elections that brought the five governors to office in the first instance were voided and set aside for fresh ones by courts. The party therefore insisted that the oath of office taken by the affected governors have been voided along with the elections and were of no effect whatsoever in law.

INEC had announced that the tenures of governors who were re-elected after their 2007 elections were cut short by tribunals would end on May 29, 2011, like those of other governors.

What the law states

In the recently amended 1999 Constitution, Section 135 of the Principal Act, which deals with the issue of governors' tenure, has been altered in subsection (2) with the insertion of a new paragraph which states that: "in the determination of the four-year term, where a re-run election has taken place and the person earlier sworn in wins the re-run election, the time spent in the office before the date the election was annulled, shall be taken into account."

However, in justifying the ruling by Mr Bello, Jiti Ogunye, a Lagos-based lawyer said the new amendments cannot have an effect on incidents before it. According to him, "That amendment does not cover this kind of case, because any law cannot be applied retroactively."

Victory for the rule of law

Reacting to the judgment, Doifie Ola, spokesperson for the Bayelsa State governor, described the court ruling as a victory for the state and the rule of law in the country. He said, "The extension will give the administration more time to deepen development and democracy in the state." In Cross River, the PDP lauded the judgment while the opposition parties under its umbrella body, Conference of Nigerian Political Parties [CNPP] said the court ruling was a setback to the quest for a change in the governance of the state.

Cross River State Commissioner for Information, Patrick Ugbe, described the judgment as the best thing that has happened to the administration and commended the judiciary for righting the wrong caused by the Court of Appeal sitting in Calabar on July 14, 2008.

‘'We are happy with this judgment. It has strengthened our faith in the judiciary and our position that INEC was wrong in interpreting our tenure. The first oath of office taken had become a nullity. Therefore the second oath suffices, meaning Governor Liyel Imoke commenced his first term on August 26, 2010. The law cannot take retroactive effect'', he said.

Rosh Hashanah (Hebrew: ראש השנה‎, literally "head of the year," Israeli: Hebrew pronunciation: [ˈʁoʃ haʃaˈna], Ashkenazic: ˈɾoʃ haʃːɔˈnɔh, Yiddish:[ˈrɔʃəˈʃɔnə]) is a Jewish holiday commonly referred to as the "Jewish New Year." It is observed on the first day of Tishrei, the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar.[1] It is ordained in the Torah as "Zicaron Terua" ("a memorial with the blowing of horns"), in Leviticus 23:24. Rosh Hashanah is the first of the High Holidays or Yamim Noraim ("Days of Awe"), or Asseret Yemei Teshuva (Ten Days of Repentance) which are days specifically set aside to focus on repentance that conclude with the holiday of Yom Kippur.

Rosh Hashanah is the start of the civil year in the Hebrew calendar (one of four "new year" observances that define various legal "years" for different purposes as explained in the Mishnah and Talmud). It is the new year for people, animals, and legal contracts. The Mishnah also sets this day aside as the new year for calculating calendar years and sabbatical (shmita) and jubilee (yovel) years. Jews believe Rosh Hashanah represents either analogically or literally the creation of the World, or Universe. However, according to one view in the Talmud, that of R. Eleazar, Rosh Hashanah commemorates the creation of man, which entails that five days earlier, the 25 of Elul, was the first day of creation of the Universe.[2]

The Mishnah, the core text of Judaism's oral Torah, contains the first known reference to Rosh Hashanah as the "day of judgment." In the Talmud tractate on Rosh Hashanah it states that three books of account are opened on Rosh Hashanah, wherein the fate of the wicked, the righteous, and those of an intermediate class are recorded. The names of the righteous are immediately inscribed in the book of life, and they are sealed "to live." The middle class are allowed a respite of ten days, until Yom Kippur, to repent and become righteous; the wicked are "blotted out of the book of the living."[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosh_Hashanah

For secular Jews

It would happen each fall around the Jewish new year. At the very time when renewal was in the autumn air, Arnold Barnett, an engineer from Moorestown, would go into a mild funk. His wife eventually figured it out: He was less than enamored with high holiday synagogue services.

"He simply wasn't engaged by what went on inside our Reform synagogue, or with the traditional approach to Judaism," said Ellen, 70. "I knew he was struggling. So sometimes, I would just go to services alone."

Then last year, the Barnetts saw a small notice in a local Jewish newspaper about a recently formed group in South Jersey. "We went to a meeting that was focused on Jewish history," Arnold, 71, recalls, "and that was something I could relate to. It was much more appealing."

And so the Barnetts will celebrate Rosh Hashanah, which begins Wednesday at sundown, by meeting Sunday with like-minded members of South Jersey Secular Jews - a group of people who may or may not believe in God, but do believe in caring about the world and one another, respecting and understanding Jewish history, and celebrating a culture that has meaning and emotional pull.

"The most important aspect of secularism is the survival and continuity of the Jewish people," said Paul Shane, a native New Yorker now living in Philadelphia and married to the daughter of Holocaust survivors.

Shane, 75, a member of the more established Philadelphia Secular Jewish Organization, believes humans are responsible for what happens on Earth. The here and now is central, and actions speak louder than words.

That philosophy resembles traditional Judaism. But secular Jews and traditional Jews part company when it comes to accepting religious dogma.

If you're secular, God is optional. (Traditional Judaism has "God at its heart. That's not an option," said Rabbi Ethan Franzel of Main Line Reform Temple Beth Elohim in Wynnewood.) Also, life-cycle events are handled individually - for instance, there are no set burial or wedding traditions in secular Judaism.

Of course secularism, in which one adheres to cultural norms rather than religious ones, is hardly new. During the Renaissance, from 1450 to 1600, and the Enlightenment in the 18th century, many Jews shed the God-oriented elements of their Jewishness, according to Shane, a professor of social policy at Rutgers University in Newark. That shedding also continued in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

What's different today is that a growing number of secular Jews are finding one another, forming groups, and practicing the social responsibility Judaism requires - minus the synagogue.

Rifke Feinstein, executive director of the national Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations, says there are approximately 2,000 affiliated secular Jews in the United States. But because seculars typically are unaffiliated, and therefore uncounted, estimates for the entire American secular population range from 8,000 to 40,000.

In the Philadelphia area, there are six such organizations for secular Jews - including the five-year-old South Jersey Secular Jews - all under the local umbrella cooperative venture called Kehilla for Secular Jews.

For many people, discovering that such an organization exists has been a relief.

" 'I thought I was the only one!' is what people often express when they discover that they are not alone in their secular relationship to their Jewishness," said Larry Angert, 59, a member of 11-year-old Shir Shalom: A Havurah for Secular Jews. "The Jewish tent is big, and there's room for all of us in it."

Some local secular groups, like Philadelphia's Sholom Aleichem Club, which started in 1954, and Philadelphia Workmen's Circle, founded nationally in 1900 to aid Jewish immigrant workers and to promote Yiddish, have graying memberships. Bob Kleiner, 85, of Elkins Park, a retired sociology professor at Temple University, and his wife, Frances, a teacher of Yiddish, both long active in the secular movement, lament that younger people are not actively involved in these historic groups.

But the formation of new groups, such as South Jersey Secular Jews, is evidence the movement still has traction.

Credit Naomi Scher, 64, of Cherry Hill, whose children attended the Jewish Children's Folkshul, another Kehilla group, which is a parent-run cooperative held at Springside School in Philadelphia. About 100 children receive their Jewish education, not in a traditional Hebrew school but in classes that nourish social justice and individual responsibility. Bar and bat mitzvah aspirants undertake personally meaningful projects that they ultimately share with the entire Folkshul community.

Although Scher formed relationships with parents of her children's classmates, commuting to Philadelphia became burdensome once her children graduated, and in 2005, the retired social worker decided to start a secular group closer to home.

What began as a gathering of eight to 10 people now regularly attracts 30, meeting monthly with speakers who address social and political concerns, Scher said.

Deborah Chaiken, 74, of Palmyra is delighted to have a group close to home. "In the formal Jewish community, I felt that I didn't really have a voice. Here, I know that I do."

Dues are $25 a year, and participants are asked to bring food for potluck dinners. Meetings are held on the second Sunday of the month at Unitarian Universalist Church in Cherry Hill..

South Jersey Secular Jews members Cary and Bilha Hillebrand of Cherry Hill call the group a welcome addition to the local landscape. For Bilha, 54, the philosophy of the group is more in keeping with that of her native Israel, where the majority of the population leads a more secular lifestyle.

"We are not in any way antireligious," says Cary, 60. "We hold the belief that we are responsible for what happens to ourselves and to the world. And to us, that's the essence of what religion is, and should be."