Ex-Adamawa Gov Haruna Refutes Allegations of Bribing Judges to Secure 2003 Win
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Adamawa State’s two-time governor and former minister of youth development, Boni Haruna, has cautioned the public against a social media fad 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 through the exchange of money between his attorneys and the judges.
He claimed that the people who spread this bold tale claim that WikiLeaks Reports is responsible for it, but he maintained that the story was false.
Governor Haruna claimed in a press release released in Abuja that he was “dismayed at the blatant 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, tranquilizing as it were the already frayed nerves of the voting populace of Adamawa State.”
Such innuendo and heinous slander against my person and reputation, 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 serve in the Supreme Court of Nigeria, the country’s highest court—is defamatory and libelous.
He said it is disgusting that those who spread this false information in the WikiLeaks report about bribery to the Court of Appeal judges chose to use the report as if it were a sacred text whose contents are inviolable to draw conclusions about the judiciary’s condition, the judges’ personalities, and the purported function of the Afe Babalola chambers rather than the merits of the Appeal Court panel’s decision.
According to him, “it will seem that the people spreading this story don’t care as much if they use sensationalism, lies, and fabrications to destroy others.”
He pointed out that many people selling this story have never read the rulings of the Court of Appeal panel or the Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, stating that “a careful reading of both judgments would easily reveal that 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.”
He pointed out that “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,” even in their much-discussed WikiLeaks report.
In order to appease their employers, 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 judgment. They do this by relying on a fictitious account from an unnamed lawyer from Afe Babalola’s Chamber.
“Once more, the so-called WikiLeaks report also explained why the Election Tribunal’s and the Appeal Panel’s judicial decisions differed so greatly by quoting portions of the Appeal Panel’s decision, stating that “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.”
According to him, the Distinguished Jurist, Honourable Justice James Ogebe, JSC (Rtd), provided additional evidence in his 2020 autobiography JUSTICE UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE ALMIGHTY if more testimony is required from those who spread this story and those who might be duped by their false narratives and deceptive conspiracy theories in order for them to believe in the erudition, authenticity, and self-evident truth in the Appeal Panel’s decision.
He stated, among other things, that “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” on page 57, paragraph 2 of that book. Adamawa State Governor Boni Haruna was elected, but the election tribunal declared his victory invalid. After hearing the appeal, a five-member panel of justices—including myself, Francis Ogbuagu, Pius Aderemi, Musa Muhammad, and Victor Omage—restored Governor Boni Haruna. The tribunal’s decision struck us as strange. Evidence that was dismissed during the proceedings was ultimately incorporated into the tribunal’s ruling.
Remarkably, according to Boni Haruna, Hon. Justice James Ogebe JSC (Rtd) claimed in a press release that he and his fellow Justices of the Appeal Court, three of whom are now late, were bribed by the Afe Babalola chambers to render the decision that overturned the previous Adamawa State Governorship Election Tribunal verdict. He also denied the bribery allegations made in the WikiLeaks reports and offered to be investigated.
Governor Haruna has advised everyone with a critical mind to read the rulings, which are publicly available records, and make their own judgments instead of falling for the falsehoods spread by the WikiLeaks revelations.
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