|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The presidency has threatened to instigate legal actions against Nnamdi Nwokocha, a private lawyer, over the President’s alleged lack of certificate and declaring him guilty on the pages of newspapers.
A statement by Presidential Media Aide, Garba Shehu, reacting to Nwokocha’s press interviews, explained that it is unfair for a lawyer who is a litigant in a case in court to go out of his way to hijack the power of a Judge by declaring the President guilty of what he is accused of.
Shehu who was reacting a recent interview Nwokocha granted a national daily stated that it is unfair for a lawyer who is a litigant in a case pending in court to hijack the power of a judge by declaring the President guilty of what he is accused of on the pages of newspapers.
“If Nwokocha does not stop his unfair and professionally inappropriate abuse of free speech, the President’s competent team of lawyers will seek the instrumentality of the law in dealing with his unethical actions. You cannot be a litigant and be a Judge at the same time” Shehu said.
According to Shehu, newspaper pages are not alternative courts where a lawyer can declare anybody guilty of anything when the court has not formally given a definitive judgement on an issue before it. The two pages interview breaches a lawyer’s ethical code and “we hope that the court and the Bar Association will take notice of this”.
The Presidential Media Aide said any lawyer that sincerely believes in judicial process and the rights of other parties to a case would not have engaged in the inappropriate and unprofessional practice of trial by media, especially a situation where Nwokocha openly declared the President guilty when the court didn’t make that declaration.
Shehu noted that gag orders emerged in the United States on account of lawyers’ inappropriate conduct on trying and convicting people on the pages of newspapers or the court of public opinion.
The Presidential Media Aide noted that free speech is not synonymous with recklessness and wanton abuse of the rights other parties to a case in court. The litigant’s unabashed claim that he was a card-carrying member of the opposition PDP which lost power in the last election clearly indicates a scheme that seeks power by circumventing the democratic process of elections.
Nnamdi Nwokocha lawsuit challenging the academic credentials of President Buhari was last week adjourned indefinitely.
The suit which was heard by Justice Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal High Court, Abuja, on Thursday, June 16, 2016 with the President’s 13 Senior Advocate of Nigeria in attendance was adjourned following a notice of appeal filed by the representatives of President Buhari.
