As the rest of the world grapples with the stunning revelation of compromise from the spouse of immediate President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, a former Bar leader, Olisa Agbakoba, has called for a radical cleansing of the Judiciary.
Senator Adamu Muhammad Bulkachuwa, husband to the retired PCA, publicly admitted to influencing his wife, while in active service, to judicially favour his friends, in the Senate.
A viral video showed that the senator, representing Bauchi North, made the unforced confession, during the valedictory sitting of the 9th senate.
The jurist retired from the Bench on March 6, 2020, at the mandatory 70 years.
The PCA solely picks all the members of the election petition tribunals nationwide as well as the appellate panels, save for the Supreme Court.
All National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly election cases terminate at the Court of Appeal stage, while only the governorship and the presidential get to the Supreme Court.
The PCA is also responsible for putting together the Presidential Election Petition Court.
Justice Bulkachuwa was forced off the PEPC adjudicating the 2019 presidential contest by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), due to her husband’s membership of the ruling All Progressives Congress.
The Court had absolved her of any complicity due to her marital connection and dismissed PDP’s concern, though Bulkachuwa still had to excuse herself, due to the heat generated by PDP’s protest.
With her husband coming into the open to confess, influencing her professional decisions to favour friendly senators, Agbakoba who led the Nigerian Bar from 2006 to 2008, in a Twitter statement, asked President Bola Tinubu to act with dispatch.
He said, “Senator Bulkachuwa’s statement at the Valedictory of the 9th Senate is a monumental disgrace for our institutions. This man deserves to be taken up immediately by the authorities.
“It is a blight on my confidence in our systems. I represented Usman Tuggar in relation to disputed elections between him and Senator Bulkachuwa for Bauchi North senatorial. We lost in 3 (three) courts.
“Senator Bulkachuwa seems to suggest why President Bola Tinubu @officialABAT, must cleanse the system in a most dramatic and fundamental process if he wishes to succeed.”
Alluding to another scandal on the economic front, the learned silk said, “The chairman of @NDICNigeria, has also made dramatic revelations pointing to possible deep rot in our systems of Government responsible for financial and monetary policy.
“The president ought to act now!!!”
Meanwhile, the National Judicial Council (NJC) is holding its monthly meeting this week.
The two-day meeting will take place between Wednesday and Thursday.
It is yet unknown if the issue of the Bulkachuwas will be part of the meeting’s agenda.
Justice Zainab was a ranking member of the Council between April 2014 and 2020, by virtue of her position as the President of the Court of Appeal (PCA).
The PCA is an automatic member of the Council.
Bulkachuwa was the first female PCA in the history of Nigeria’s judiciary.
Retired jurists, according to the revised disciplinary procedure of the Council, can now be punished for misconduct of active years.
Normal retirement from service can be converted to compulsory retirement or even dismissal and prosecution in extreme cases.
As Council member, Bulkachuwa voted to have the tenure of a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, terminated, for alleged misconduct.
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