Paper Tiger Claims: Akpata Hits Back at Wike, Warns Against Using NBA as Campaign Fodder

President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr. Olumide Akpata on Thursday reacted to a recent description of the NBA as a paper tiger by Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike.

The Rivers state governor who is also a presidential aspirant under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had at a book launch in honour of recently retired Supreme Court Justice, Hon. Justice Mary Odili, condemned the NBA for being weak and ineffectual. According to Wike, the NBA had been doing nothing more than issuing statements.

Akpata in a statement on Thursday linked Wike’s critical remarks to his presidential aspiration and warned against using the NBA as a talking point to garner public support.  The NBA President said the Governor “cannot and should not be allowed to use the NBA as fodder of any sort for his vaulting ambition.”

The NBA President mentioned several instances where the body had risen in defence of the judiciary, including when it fought in the cause of recently retired Supreme Court Justice Mary Peter-Odili, the Chief Judge of Cross River State, Justice Akon Ikpeme and Justice Inyang Ekwo of the Federal High Court.

Akpata said: “As President of the NBA, it is not usual for me to respond to criticisms regarding the activities or performance of the NBA, and indeed our philosophy has been to welcome all such criticisms and take useful lessons therefrom. But I am unable to allow the Governor of Rivers State make such baseless allegations against the NBA particularly as he is a senior member of the legal profession who will be presumed by many to be speaking from a position of knowledge.

“It is indeed quite ironic that Governor Wike made these unfortunate statements at an event held in honour of the Honourable Justice Mary Peter-Odili in support of whom, the NBA stood firm in the face of that brazen attack on her home in Abuja by some persons who are now standing trial in our law courts. That Governor Wike has chosen so quickly, to either forget or ignore this and other actions of the NBA in support of the Judiciary is suggestive of a dissonance that is most disconcerting and should give one serious cause for concern.

“It is very convenient for Governor Wike to ask Nigerian lawyers (as he did at the Book Launch) to emulate their apparently more courageous Pakistani colleagues when the issues at stake do not concern him directly, but when in 2019 the very same Nigerian lawyers had the “temerity” to question his handling of the security situation in Rivers State and threatened to boycott the courts if there was no abatement of the rising insecurity in the State, he was only too quick to lambast the lawyers and to withdraw his “support” for the NBA in the State.

“While we understand that Governor Wike is currently on the political soapbox and, like a man with the proverbial new hammer, to whom any and everything is a nail, he will latch unto any chance to sell his candidacy, he cannot and should not be allowed to use the NBA as fodder of any sort for his vaulting ambition.”

He said the politico-legal history of Nigeria is replete with the commendable role that the NBA has played, and continues to play, as a primary defender of the rule of law and protector of the Judiciary in Nigeria.”

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