BMO urges Supreme Court, NBA to call CUPP to order

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The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) has called on the Supreme Court and Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) to curb activities of the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) that undermine the judiciary as an institution.

In a statement signed by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju in Abuja on Tuesday, BMO said that CUPP was being used to tarnish the image of national institutions, under the guise of representing a coalition of smaller parties.

“We call for a curb on the activities of the Coalition of United Political Parties
(CUPP) and its spokesman Ikenga Ugochinyere for their consistent assault on
the Supreme Court and blackmailing the Judiciary.

“CUPP is a body led by a known Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) member that
is bent on stoking crisis in the country on behalf of his paymasters.

“What they are doing amounts to desecrating the temple of justice and they
need to be stopped,” Akinsiju said.
He recalled that BMO had actually raised the alarm few weeks ago about a
PDP plot to intimidate and harass the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Tanko
Mohammed into recusing himself from the Supreme Court panel to sit on the
appeal filed by the party and its presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar.
“We said that it was part of a new strategy concocted in Dubai, so we are not
surprised to see this unguarded attack being led by a known PDP attack dog
who has been unleashed to do the dirty job of ridiculing the Supreme Court.
“This was a similar ploy that played out when the Appeal Court, President,
Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa was forced to recuse herself from the panel that
heard the petition.
“It is a known fact that Ugochinyere is a political jobber that has for years been
associated with the PDP when the party was in control at the federal level but
has in recent times presented himself as the spokesman of a non-existent
coalition of political parties.
“Even long before the 2019 election when he got a party curiously known as
Action Peoples Party (APP) registered, he had been operating on the sideline
of PDP activities as one of the aides of the then Senate President Bukola
Saraki.”

According to him, it is surprising that the arrowhead of a political party that
could not win even a seat in any state house of assembly has been using the so-
called CUPP to give the impression of an opposition alliance against virtually
every national institution.
“But we have always known that CUPP does not represent any party aside
from PDP. What is of concern to us is that he has been allowed, for too long, to
harass national institutions, especially the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) and the Judiciary before and after the 2019 general
elections.”
Akinsiju urged the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC) of the
Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to take a second look at the activities of
Ugochinyere who, in spite of being a lawyer, is the arrowhead of the campaign
of calumny against the Apex Court, and by extension, the Judiciary.
“We would have expected him, as a lawyer, to be circumspect but since he is a
paid hack of the opposition party, he clearly has no qualms about bringing the
Bar and Bench to disrepute.
“He must have violated some laid-down rules and regulations guiding the
profession in his constant insult of the judiciary as well as his latest outburst
against the Supreme Court in spite of a warning from the court,” Akinsiju
said.

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