The Tinubu Media Support Group (TMSG) has described as utterly befuddling and baffling former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s recent attempt to denigrate the judiciary, an arm of government that saved him from the hands of his then-former boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo.
In a statement signed by its Chairman Emeka Nwankpa and Secretary Dapo Okubanjo, the group said it was also reckless and unstatesmanly of the former Vice President to make sweeping allegations against the judiciary on election matters.
It read in part: “We are indeed baffled that former Vice President has again resumed his penchant for throwing tantrums and making uncomplimentary remarks about the nation’s judiciary in the public space when things do not go his way.
“For us, it is a worrisome trend that a supposed statesman who once occupied the second highest office in the land could spare no effort in talking down on the judiciary and making wild allegations against the courts.
“If there is indeed a senior Nigerian citizen who has had a working knowledge of governance, especially the Independence of the Nigerian judiciary, that person has to be the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 Presidential election.
“This is one man who, as a sitting Vice President, his principal, Olusegun Obasanjo, literally stripped and publicly disrobed of the constitutional rights of the nation’s No. 2 office which he held in 2006 and dragged him before the anti-graft agency, amongst other ignoble treatment had to be saved by the judiciary. It took the courage of judges at different levels of the strata to save him from the hangman.
” We are aware that Atiku Abubakar, in fact, waged a series of successive court battles which not only ended in his favour but also drew huge satisfaction from the then Vice President who was on record to have described the judiciary as truly, truly independent.
“He is also known to have had nice words for the judiciary whenever politicians from his party won at election tribunals and we cannot recall at any time that he called to question the intervention of the judiciary in electoral matters that went against his direction.
“We therefore find it utterly strange that the judiciary is considered perfect whenever he or his party members secure positive verdicts in courts but when things fail to go his way, the former Vice President riles against the judiciary in the most scathing of words as if it was placed there to satisfy his ego.
“There was even an instance in 2019 when the former Vice President subtly called to question the credibility of a one-time President of the Appeal Court Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa and demanded that she recuse herself from a 5-man tribunal to hear his legal challenge of President Muhammadu Buhari’s election on the ground that her husband was a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
“The country had never seen anything like that before and even though the tribunal did not see any reason for her to step down from the panel, Justice Bulkachuwa did but Atiku still failed to have the tribunal overturn Buhari’s election.
“So aside from the series of electoral losses to his name, the former Vice President also regularly failed at various tribunals but we do not expect him as a statesman to make unsavoury comments against the judiciary and rubbish the institution.
TMSG urged the former vice president to show more belief in the same system that had been so desperate to rule over and be statesman-like in his public interventions.
