Boni Haruna, a former minister of youth development and two-time governor of Adamawa State, has cautioned the public against a social media trend that claims the Appeal Court Election Panel’s 2004 ruling, which reinstated his governorship mandate after it had been declared invalid by the Adamawa Election Petition Tribunal, was obtained with money transferred from his attorneys to the judges.
Although its proponents claim that this bold story is attributed to WikiLeaks Reports, he maintained that the news was false.
“I am appalled by the obvious inferences to influence peddling and bribery in a case whose outcome was hailed to have upheld the truth and nothing but the truth at the time that judgment was delivered by the Appeal Court Panel, soothing as it were the already frayed nerves of the voting populace of Adamawa State,” Governor Haruna said in a press release issued in Abuja.
It is both slanderous and defamatory to use such innuendo and heinous slander against my person and character, as well as against the person of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the distinguished Justices of the Appeal Panel, many of whom went on to the Supreme Court of Nigeria, the country’s highest court.
In order to draw conclusions about the state of the judiciary, the character of the judges, and the purported role of Afe Babalola chambers, the authors of this false story in the WikiLeaks report that claimed bribery to the Court of Appeal judges chose to rely on the report as if its contents were a divine holy book, he said, rather than the merit of the Appeal Court panel’s decision.
“If the people spreading this story use sensationalism, lies, and fabrications to destroy others, it will seem that they don’t care as much,” he stated.
“No judge who sat on the said appeal at the Court of Appeal Jos needed to be bribed to arrive at the painstaking judgment that was given as a careful reading of both judgments would easily reveal,” he said, pointing out that many people selling this story have never read the rulings of the Court of Appeal panel and the Governorship Election Petition Tribunal.
“The verdict of the Appeal Court and the Election Tribunal differed significantly on their findings on the relevant facts that they beg the question of whether one verdict or the other may have been ‘influenced’ by outside parties,” he said, citing their widely publicized WikiLeaks report.
However, those who are attracted to sensationalism, regardless of how humorous their story may be, would prefer to limit it to the Court of Appeal panel’s ruling as the compromised ruling in order to appease their employers. They do this by relying on a fictitious account from an unnamed lawyer from Afe Babalola’s Chamber.
By quoting portions of the Appeal Panel’s decision, the so-called WikiLeaks report once more offered an explanation for the stark discrepancies between the Election Tribunal’s and the Appeal Panel’s judicial decisions: “The Appeal Court in Jos, however, found that the evidence used by the Election Tribunal was inadequate even to prove the simplest of a criminal offense, very impotent to affect the appellants/cross respondents with the commission of an electoral offense, and that the evidence was scandalous and naive as a basis for nullifying the election.”
To be able to believe in the erudition, authenticity, and self-evident truth in the Appeal Panel’s judgment, he said, purveyors of this story and those who might be duped by their false narratives and misleading conspiracy theories need to provide additional testimony. The Distinguished Jurist, Honourable Justice James Ogebe, JSC (Rtd), provided this proof in his 2020 autobiography, JUSTICE UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE ALMIGHTY.
He writes, among other things, on page 57, paragraph 2 of that book, “Three of us from the division were taken to Jos to hear Boni Haruna’s case from the Adamawa Governorship Tribunal despite the shortage of Justices.” Although Boni Haruna was elected governor of Adamawa State, the election tribunal declared his victory invalid. Governor Boni Haruna was reinstated after the appeal was considered by a panel of five justices, including myself, Francis Ogbuagu, Pius Aderemi, Musa Muhammad, and Victor Omage. We thought the tribunal’s ruling was strange. The panel ultimately considered the evidence that was rejected during the hearings in its ruling.
Remarkably, according to Boni Haruna, Hon. Justice James Ogebe JSC (Rtd) in a press release has not only denied the bribery claims made in the WikiLeaks reports, but he has also offered to look into the claims that his Honorable self and his fellow Justices of the Appeal Court—three of whom are now late—were bought off by the Afe Babalola chambers to render the decision that overturned the previous Adamawa State Governorship Election Tribunal’s verdict.
Instead of believing the false information being promoted in the WikiLeaks reports, Governor Haruna has advised all astute minds to study the judgments, which are all publicly available records, and make their own judgments.
