News Paper Review|

ELECTORAL ACT: BUHARI LOSES AS SUPREME COURT STRIKES OUT SUIT AGAINST NATIONAL ASSEMBLY – PUNCH PG.10

The Supreme Court has struck out a suit by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), and the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN) seeking to void the provision of Section 84(12) of the Electoral Act 2022. In a judgment on Friday, a seven-member panel of the apex court, headed by Justice Musa Dattijo Mohammed, was unanimous in holding that President Buhari, having participated in the making of the law by assenting to it, could not turn around to fault its provisions. The court upheld all the grounds of objection raised by the National Assembly, through its lawyer, Dr. Olukayode Ajulo, against the competence of the suit marked: SC/504/2022. The President and the AGF had through their Lawyer, Lateef Fagbemi SAN argued among others, that Section 84(12) of the Electoral Act was made in excess of the constitutional powers of the National Assembly and therefore, unconstitutional and illegal.

THE SUPREME COURT MUST PUT ITS HOUSE IN ORDER – DAILY TRUST PG.3

The Supreme Court justices in a recent letter to the CJN, which leaked to the public, accused the CJN of neglecting their welfare in addition to his refusal to carry them along in the management of the court. The justices also complained of the state of the litigations department and the general dilapidated condition of services in the Court. In the leaked letter titled “The State of Affairs in the Supreme Court of Nigeria by Justices of the Court”, the justices asked the CJN to act before it’s too late on their challenges of justices’ accommodation, vehicles, electricity tariff, supply of diesel, internet services to our residences and chambers, and epileptic electricity supply to the court. “Your Lordship with all due respect, this is the peak of the degeneration of the court; it is the height of decadence, and clear evidence of the absence of probity and moral rectitude,” they wrote. The 14 aggrieved justices further said CJN’s inactions portend imminent danger to the survival of the apex court and the judiciary as an institution.

WHY WE CAN’T RELEASE DARIYE, NYAME, OTHERS DESPITE PARDON –NIGERIAN CORRECTIONAL SERVICE – PUNCH PG.4

Two months after they were granted state pardon, 159 convicts, including a former Governor of Plateau State, Senator Joshua Dariye, and a former Taraba State Governor, Jolly Nyame, have yet to be released, Sunday PUNCH has learnt.  The Council of State led by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), had on April 14 approved the pardon of the convicts, a decision which generated outcries. Nyame is serving a 12-year jail sentence for diverting N1.64 billion during his tenure as governor of Taraba, while Dariye is serving 10 years’ imprisonment for N1.126 billion fraud.  But while justifying the clemency, the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the president, Garba Shehu, had said it would have been insensitive for the President not to pardon the duo, saying that they had life-threatening illnesses.

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