27th October, 2023
As the Supreme Court Thursday affirmed the election of President Bola Tinubu unanimously, the Leader of the Senate, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele warned opposition parties and their candidates against stampeding the judiciary into partisan politics through disinformation, mal-information and misinformation.
Bamidele, who chaired the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters in the ninth National Assembly, kicked against how they unduly dragged the judiciary into partisan politics in pursuit of their selfish interests at the expense of the collective interest of Nigeria and Nigerians.
He expressed these grave concerns in a statement his Directorate of Media and Public Affairs issued on Thursday in Abuja following the decision of the apex court that affirmed the election of President Tinubu.
While celebrating the victory of the president at the apex court, Bamidele condemned the undue blackmailing of the judiciary even before the petitions of the opposition parties and their candidates were decided.
He observed that the judiciary “is one of the most consistent, dependable and reliable democratic institutions that still stands for and with the oppressed in this federation. It is therefore amoral and immoral for any political actor or party to subject the judiciary to media trial rather than abiding by the rules of law.
“Judiciary has never been vilified in the recent history of this federation by petitioners who at different times benefitted tremendously from the independence and neutrality of the judiciary,” the senate leader noted with grave concern.
At the inception, Bamidele noted that the petitioners “claimed to have won the 2023 presidential elections during their separate world press conferences. But when they failed to prove their cases, they selfishly resorted to blackmailing the time-tested institutions, especially the judiciary
Beyond their campaign of calumny, he observed that the decisions of the appellate and apex courts “have clearly shown that the last elections are the most credible since the beginning of the Fourth Republic with the deployment of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, which the Independent National Electoral Commission used for the conduct of the elections.
He, therefore, commended the apex court for standing for the truth and truth alone amid ferocious, needless and relentless intimidation of judicial officers by the petitioners, who trampled upon the national interest in pursuit of their self-centric political agenda.
Now that Judiciary has concluded all the presidential election petitions in favour of President Tinubu, Bamidele warned all political actors, interests and parties “to henceforth stop playing politics with the rule of law and the integrity of the judiciary.”
He, also, warned them “against the perverse culture of stampeding the judiciary into partisan politics. As far as Nigeria is concerned, judiciary remains an unbiased arbiter wholly committed to the dispensation of justice without regard to any ethnic, economic, political, religious consideration.
“It is therefore unfair and uncalled to paint the judiciary, the only source of hope for the oppressed, black in the eyes of the whole world. This does not harm the judiciary alone, but also portray all of us, Nigerians at home and in the diaspora, bad before the eyes of the whole world. This is completely unacceptable! And it must be stopped!”