A group, under the auspices of the Association of Ebonyi Indigenes Socio-Cultural in the Diaspora (AEISCID) has reacted to recent comments credited to the husband of the former President of the Court of Appeal, Adamu Muhammad Bulkachuwa, enjoining Nigerians with discerning minds not to take such statements with a pinch of salt.
Recall that Senator Bulkachuwa had during a valedictory session for the 9th Senate revealed that he had reasons to intervene for his friends and colleagues while his wife, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa served as the President of Nigeria’s Court of Appeal.
But in a statement circulated by Amb. Paschal Oluchukwu, AEISCID President, worldwide, on Monday, in Abuja, the National Judicial Commission, NJC- the body vested with the powers to appoint and discipline erring judicial staff under the Nigerian legal system should probe Bulkachuwa’s comment.
he group, however, drew reference to a pending election case in the tribunal, saying the news which broke out on the 26th of April 2023 that the President of the Court of Appeal, Her Lordship, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensah has ordered the immediate relocation of both the National Assembly and Governorship/State House of Assembly elections petitions tribunals to Abuja from Abakaliki where cases were initially billed to be tried and determined was a huge relief.
Though the Court never made its reasons public, Oluchukwu said the fact remains that Ebonyi has been in the news not only for insecurity but more particularly for the way and manner the immediate past Governor of the State, Engr. David Umahi operated and treated the judicial arm of government in the State and in the country at large.
“We recall that the first time arguably in the history of the judiciary when a Court was sacked following a coordinated attack by political thugs and both men of the Bar and the Bench in Ebonyi had to take to their heels by scaling the fence was around early December 2014.
“The then ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP had planned to hold it’s primary election to elect a flagbearer for the ruling PDP in the State for the 2015 Governorship election on the 6th of December, 2014.
“This group further recalls that the battle for the Ebonyi PDP’s Governorship ticket had raged between Elechi’s anointed candidate and then Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu and Elechi’s Deputy whose relationship with his boss had gone South following his preference for the former to succeed him over and above his initially touted choice of Umahi.
“The media investigations had uncovered and consequently reported that as soon as the power-desperate Umahi learnt that a Senior Advocate of Nigeria hired by the then ruling PDP in Ebonyi from Kogi State to secure an injunction stopping the primaries, he allegedly unleashed an army of political thugs armed with guns, machetes and other dangerous weapons to the State’s High Court premises adjacent the old Ebonyi Government House.
“The sporadic gunshots that rented the air dispersed the entire judiciary and everyone took to his or her heels. The fears caused by the pandemonium orchestrated by the activities of the said hoodlums which the then Elechi government had vowed to probe but failed are still fresh in the minds of Ebonyians.
“AEISCID reminisces further that at the larger national scene, Justice Inyang Ekwo of the Abuja Federal High Court I recollect, had come under intense criticism from Umahi following his March 2022 sacking of Umahi as Governor as a result of his defection from the PDP to the APC in November 2020. An emotional Umahi who couldn’t hide his feelings literally dragged the judiciary into the mud, insisting the judgment was purchased by his traducers.
“We enjoin the Nigerian Judiciary in particular and the Ebonyi election petitions tribunals in particular should therefore know that they are actually on trial in this period of our nation’s history. And like American Diplomat, Benjamin Franklin rightly noted: “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are,” hence this timely caution.
The ball is now on the court of their Lordships to either make history or mar themselves and their reputations,” the Group noted.