Read the statement by Garba Shehu below.
The Presidency has admonished the Peoples Democratic Party,
PDP to stop dragging the presidency into their current sponsored media smear
campaign against the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab
Bulkachuwa.
Reports claiming that an agency of the government, the
Department of State Services, DSS has indicted Bulkachuwa of corruption are the
latest of this sponsored campaign aimed at causing disaffection between the
Executive and the Judiciary, the two arms of government that had operated smoothly
under the present dispensation.
While the PDP and its candidates are free to exercise their
right to challenge the results of the 2019 presidential election, it is
unacceptable to drag the name of the President or other organs of the executive
branch into the campaign of character assassination against the President of
the Court of Appeal.
The DSS doesn't conduct its duties in the manner so
described and you can't use a fake security report to drag the presidency into
a smear campaign against the President of the Court of Appeal.
Attacking judges because the outcomes of cases don't favour
you and keeping quiet when the verdict is in your favour smacks of insincerity,
double standard and mischief. Intimidating and impugning the character of judges
in order to force them to bow to blackmail is against the spirit of an
independent judiciary.
The PDP praised the verdict of the Osun gubernatorial
election tribunal because it favoured them, but they are now singing a
different tune because they lost their appeal. We cannot keep changing the
definition of an independent judiciary to suit our political convenience and
bias without ultimately creating chaos in the system.
If the PDP continues to blackmail and smear judges with fake
news stories, we will ultimately find ourselves dealing with a situation where
judges may be afraid to handle cases, thereby creating delays in the
dispensation of justice.
If the presidency had any influence on election petition
tribunals, APC candidates wouldn't have lost a single case before the courts.
