I’m not aware Bulkachuwa’s son campaigned for me, Buhari tells tribunal

President Muhammadu Buhari, on Wednesday, told the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja that he was not aware that biological son of the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, Aliyu Haidar Abubakar, campaigned for his re-election.


Buhari, said he only got to know that Abubakar was his supporter, after he read a copy of the motion the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, filed to disqualify Justice Bulkachuwa from presiding over the five-man panel tribunal that is hearing petitions challenging the declaration that he won the February 23 presidential election.

President Buhari, who is the 2nd Respondent in Atiku’s petition marked CA/PEPT/02/19, said his attention was further drawn to exhibits that contained newspaper cuttings, indicating that Justice Bulkachuwa’s son canvassed for votes in his favour.

Nevertheless, in a written address he filed in support of an 11-paragraphed affidavit he lodged to counter Atiku’s motion, President Buhari, insisted that the petitioners, failed to prove that Justice Bulkachuwa had in any way, exhibited any form of bias against them, since the petition was entered before the tribunal. The counter affidavit was deposed to by one Kolawole Andrew Aro, a litigation officer in the chambers of President Buhari’s lead counsel, Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN.

In the written address, President Buhari, who was represented at the tribunal on Wednesday by a team of lawyers led by seven Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SANs, said he had since his emergence to power, refrained from dabbling into the membership of any judicial panel. He said he never interfered with the constitution of any tribunal, “whether the panel is adjudicating on election petitions relating to the office of President, Governor, National or State Assembly, or sitting in any civil or criminal matter howsoever”. President Buhari said he had no power whatsoever to decide those to be appointed into any judicial panel or tribunal, stressing that such interference would amount to a gross abuse of the principle of separation of powers.

He said he was aware that Justice Bulkachuwa had at the inaugural sitting of the presidential election petition tribunal on May 8, assured all the parties that in dealing with the petitions, the court, would be guided by the constitution, the law and international best practices. Consequently, he maintained that Atiku and the PDP, had no reason whatsoever to be apprehensive about the involvement of the Court of Appeal President in the adjudication of their dispute with regards to the outcome of the 2019 presidential election. 

He said: “Having said that, and bearing in mind the sole issue distilled for determination by the respondent supra, it is the Respondent’s humble submission that whether or not the honourable President of the Court of Appeal should recuse herself from further sitting or participating in the proceedings in this petition and be replaced by another justice of this honourable court to sit in his place to hear and determine petition, as prayed by the petitioners, is within the prerogative and discretion of the honourable President of the Court of Appeal.

Vanguard