Some legal practitioners under the umbrella of Lawyers in Defence of Democracy (LDD) have urged members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to direct their grievances at the leadership of their party which purportedly screened and cleared the said deputy governorship candidate of their party in Bayelsa State, instead of attacking Justice Mary Odili of the Supreme Court.
In a statement jointly signed by its National Coordinator, Barrister Ohazuruike Tochukwu and Publicity Secretary, Ishaq Bello, yesterday, the group, said it observed that the APC and its supporters have deliberately singled out Justice Odili and attempted to malign her reputation, following the ruling on the Bayelsa governorship election at the Supreme Court, last Thursday.
The legal practitioners said Justice Odili “neither wrote nor read the lead judgment”, stressing that the Supreme Court per Justice Odili had read the lead judgments in the Katsina, Kaduna, Lagos and Nasarawa governorship appeals, all won by the APC.
“It is obvious that the leadership of the party in order to divert attention from its failures and impunity, yet again, as it did in Zamfara and Rivers states that have instigated these supporters, social media blackmailers and other uninformed Nigerians to begin to defame an eminent jurist of the Supreme Court.
“How these APC members and their leadership quickly forgot that the same Justice Mary Odili was still married to a PDP stalwart when she read the lead judgment in the Katsina, Kaduna, Lagos and Nasarawa governorship appeals, all won by the APC, is amazing.
“If Justice Odili is as compromised as they would now want Nigerians to believe, how then did the APC win all the appeals where she wrote and read the lead judgments?”, the group queried.
The group said while anyone was at liberty to respectfully disagree with the judgment of any court, it, however, argued that there were legal ways of doing that, and it does not include maligning justices of the Supreme Court, making speculative allegations against the justices or putting the marital status of the justices in issue just because a case did not go the way of a particular interest.
