By Starrys Obazei | February 6, 2023
starrys@ddnewsonline.com
United States-based Farooq Kperogi, one of Nigeria’s most powerful newspaper columnists, has blown hot against the Supreme Court of Nigeria for dashing the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan what ‘rightly’ belongs to Bashir Sheriff Machina, both contenders for Yobe North All Progressives Congress, APC, Senatorial District candidacy in this year’s election. Machina had earlier been confirmed winner of the contest at both the Federal High Court and Court of Appeal. Farooq Kperogi’s piece is reproduced here:
Lawan and Supreme Court of Shameless Judicial Bandits
By Farooq Kperogi
I was awoken on this side of the world by news of the reversal by the Nigerian Supreme Court of Senate President Ahmed Lawan’s primary election loss. I was already mentally prepared for it after the same Supreme Court affirmed Godwin Akpabio’s fraudulent primary win a few days ago. It’s a well-planned judicial choreography.
The Nigerian Supreme Court is straight-up the most hopeless Supreme Court in the history of the world’s supreme courts. The same Court violated common sense and the will of voters and gave us a “Supreme Court governor” in Imo State who never even pretended to have won an election.
Now it has given Yobe and Akwa Ibom states “Supreme Court Senate candidates” in Lawan and Akpabio. Lawan was too busy trying to be APC’s presidential candidate to even participate in the Senate primaries in Yobe and unsuccessfully begged Machina to stand down for him, but the Supreme Court just declared him the winner of a contest he didn’t participate in anyway.
It’s a blatant case of justice for sale. Nigeria’s Supreme Court is, without a doubt, a rotten gaggle of useless, purchasable judicial bandits. The highest bidder gets their judgment.
And they’re not even hiding this. Against the judicial oaths they swore, they openly cavort with politicians whose cases they sit in judgment over. They are greedy, grasping, unprincipled curmudgeons who need money, and anybody who gives them the most money gets the most favourable judgment.
I think it is Akpabio who popularized the saying that whatever money cannot do in Nigeria more money can do it. He knows Nigeria really well.