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1. “The PDP’s presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku, recently made comments regarding suspension of CJN Onnoghen. Atiku’s release is entitled “State of the nation address”.
2. it will go down in political history as a classic of self-incrimination. Atiku thinks the piece exalts him. Instead it evinces his penchant for wilful misstatement that make him unfit for the office he now seeks and has always coveted.
3. “Where was he (Atiku), his voice and action during Abacha’s suffocating maximum rule? Was he not a member and cheer-leader of one of the five Abacha parties aptly described then as five leprous fingers of Abacha?
4. Did he even have the courage to visit his mentor, late Major General Shehu Musa Yar Ádua, in jail for fear of Abacha stopping him from running for the governorship of Adamawa?
5. His previous life of over seventy years was one of skirting democracy and of blatant impunity in attempting to enshrine reactionary government and installing an unjust political economy on the backs of the people.
6. In his address, he claims the nation has entered a difficult moment. To my dear and good friend Atiku, I say the difficulty is not so much with the moment but with your memory.
7. When you lorded over Nigeria in tandem with President Obasanjo, there were myriad court orders mandating that your government render to Lagos state the funds due it to improve the lives of its millions of inhabitants.
8. Instead, you gladly and without dispute joined Obasanjo in utter disregard for these unambiguous legal verdicts. In so doing, you demeaned the rule of law.
9. You also readily sacrificed the economic development and welfare of millions of innocent people in Lagos just to gain some illicit political advantage that proved to be fleeting and of no avail to you in the end.
10. Your love for democracy is such that you were recently observed apologising to the PDP for not rigging the Lagos 2003 gubernatorial polls as you did the polls in the other Southwestern states.
11. Instead of repenting for rigging at least five states too many, your expressed regret was that you had not rigged enough; that you rigged one state less than the complete mauling of democracy your party and your principal had mandated.
12. Regarding such a destructive love as this, I am sure democracy and fair elections would rather do without.
13. A few weeks ago in a televised broadcast you even revealed to the people that your official policy envisioned the base enrichment of your friends should you achieve the presidency.
14. Strange that you would choose to depict the current situation so inaccurately as to stir emotions unduly. You claim that CJN Onnoghen has been removed. However, this is not so. He has been temporarily suspended.
15. If justice was your goal, you would acknowledge that the CJN has only been temporarily suspended not permanently removed.
16. Thus, your recourse to saying that the president violated the constitutional provision regarding the removal of a CJN is inaccurate in that Buhari never intended to remove the CJN.
18.What he has done is to have the CJN temporarily get out of his chair so that the serious matters against him can be heard by someone other than himself.
19.Should the charges show themselves to be wrong or unproven, the CJN will be automatically reinstated as the head of the Nigerian judiciary.
20.However, for Atiku to state that the CJN should remain on seat while credible and grave charges swirl around him is to put the entire workings of the Supreme Court under a heavy cloud.
