By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
A US based professor of journalism, Farooq Kperogi, has alleged that a Nigerian judge revealed to him how a cabal in Aso Rock determines who should win what election petition case, and how the judges are eventually rewarded.
In his Saturday, August 29 column, Kperogi said the unnamed judge reached out to him because of his articles and posts on Twitter predicting that the judges that sat on the panel of the 2019 presidential election between President Muhammadu Buhari and his rival, Atiku Abubakar, would be rewarded with elevation.
“In September 2019, for instance, I wrote on Twitter that members of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal who delivered a predictably questionable judgement in favor of Buhari would be rewarded,” he said.
According to Kperogi, the September 2019 Twitter post reads in part: “Let me give you guys a little homework. From now till 2023, observe what happens to the judges that delivered the laughably tendentious and predetermined #PEPTJudgement.
“Buhari will reward them and/or their children. He already rewarded INEC’s Mrs. Amina Zakari by appointing her biological son as his SA on Infrastructure. Recall that Buhari has openly admitted that he appointed 84-year-old retired Justice Sylvanus Nsofor as Nigeria’s ambassador to the US because he wrote a dissenting judgment at the Court of Appeal in his favor. He rewarded many others,” he said.
According to Kperogi, as if to prove him right, just one month after their judgement in favor of Buhari, Justices Mohammed Garba and Abdul Aboki were recommended for promotion to the Supreme Court. He said it took the protest of opposition political parties and of senior judicial officers for the National Judicial Council to withdraw their promotion to the Supreme Court.
“But on Friday, August 14, Buhari elevated the same people yet again to the Supreme Court. Justice Mohammed Garba, in case you didn’t know, headed the patently prejudiced Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in 2019 that gave legal imprimatur to Buhari’s electoral heist. Justice Abdul Aboki was also a member of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal,” Kperogi said.
According to Kperogi, the judge who had been following his articles and Twitter posts on election petition cases in Nigeria, told him that: “there is a judicial cabal at the Court of Appeals of Nigeria that writes judgments for election petition tribunals.”
He said the judge told him that it was the same cabal that wrote “the recent ludicrous judgment of the Bayelsa State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, which the legal community and commentators have unanimously condemned for daring to overrule the Supreme Court.
“Indeed, the judicial cabal in the Court of Appeal was created by the late Chief of Staff to President Buhari, the late Abba Kyari” with the help of a senior judicial officer whose name I have chosen to omit for legal reasons.
“I learned that judges who resent the overt politicization of election petition judgements were ecstatic when Justice Monica Dongbam-Mensem was appointed President of the Court of Appeal through external pressures, particularly the open letter Colonel Dangiwa Umar wrote on her behalf when it became apparent that she was going to be passed over by the Buhari regime.
“Justice Dongbam-Mensem was thought to be independent-minded, scrupulous, opposed to politically motivated judicial activism, and capable of dismantling the judicial cabal. However, there are indications that she lacks the courage to do so and, may have compromised her integrity,” Kperogi said the judge told him.