The pro-Islamic Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) on Tuesday accused Nigerian Catholic Bishops of bullying and intimidating the Judiciary especially the Supreme Court over looming appeals to the verdict of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) on the February 25, 2023 Presidential election poll.
MURIC said Nigerian Catholic Bishops “are worse than Obidients.”
On September 6, 2023, the PEPT had upheld the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and struck out the petitions filed by Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of Labour Party.
But the two Presidential candidates rejected the verdict of the PEPT and vowed to challenge the outcome at the Supreme Court.
On Sunday, President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), Archbishop Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji, during the opening ceremony of the 2023 second plenary assembly of the CBCN in Abuja, asked the Supreme Court not to bend the law in favour of anyone.
However, in a statement on Tuesday, MURIC Executive Director, Professor Ishaq Akintola, called out the Bishops for being insincere, double-speaking, bias against those who won the case at the tribunal and bullying of Supreme Court Judges.
“MURIC finds the bishops’ stand on the verdict pregnant with insincerity, double standard and bias against the defendants. In particular, we find the bullying of Supreme Court judges debasing, denigrating and totally unacceptable.
“It is a manifestation of insincerity for the bishops to first reject the tribunal’s verdict and to follow it up by warning the Supreme Court judges ‘Not to bend the law in favour of anyone’. It simply means the bishops spoke with a mindset. They have a favourite. They have a candidate and what they mean is this, ‘Oh ye judges of the Supreme Court, the tribunal has ruled in favour of ‘someone’ but we have rejected it because the judges ‘adopted a dismissive approach’. We therefore warn you ahead. Your ruling will be rejected by us if it also fails to favour our candidate,” Akintola said.
He expressed surprise that the Bishops described a judgement document of over 798 pages as ‘dismissive approach’ and that the voluminous document got many of the lawyers sleeping in court as it took 14 hours to deliver.
The MURIC boss said that as leaders the Bishops failed to advise the opposition against cyber bullying, threats, insults, abuses and blackmail.
“Perhaps the Bishops are comfortable when Judges and members of their families are threatened and when the pictures of people’s children are sent to them as threats.
“Instead of speaking out against these bohemian attitudes, the Bishops decided to set bad precedent by sending a chilling warning to Judges of the Supreme Court.
“For deciding to issue this jaundiced statement, and for warning the highly revered Judges of the Supreme Court, the Bishops have proved that they are worse than the Obidients. There is no difference between that warning and the threats issued by the Obidients.
“By issuing that warning, the bishops became impediments to a free judiciary. It is not only a tyrannical government that can be a threat to the independence of the judiciary and its freedom, a belligerent citizenry as well as any arrogant institution or group, whether social or spiritual, that proves unwilling to submit to the rule of law can equally constitute cogs in the wheel of freedom of the judiciary,” Akintola said.
He said that the Bishops action is calculated to coerce the Judges to make judicial pronouncements that will favour the their favourite candidate.
“MURIC charges Judges of the Supreme Court to ignore the veiled threat from the Catholic Bishops and to confront the case brought before them with truth, strength, vigour and faith,” he said.
